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Refugee Protections from Below: Smuggling in the Eritrea-Ethiopia Context

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  • Tekalign Ayalew Mengiste

Abstract

This article is an analysis of the role of human smuggling practices and of the transnational social relations of Eritrean refugees exiting and transitioning through Ethiopia. Based on two years of multisited ethnographic fieldwork, I explore how smugglers, aspiring migrants, and former migrants, settled en route and in diasporic spaces, try to minimize the risk of violence through communities of support and knowhow. In so doing, I argue that smuggling is a socially embedded collective practice that strives to facilitate safe exit and transitions of Eritrean refugees despite the criminalization of migration, the militarization of borders, and the potential and existing criminal activity along Eritrean, Sudanese, and Ethiopian migratory corridors. The facilitation of irregular transits by migrants themselves reproduces a collective system of migratory knowledge that aims to bring refugees to safety—a community of knowledge—in which smuggling emerges as a system of refugee protection from below.

Suggested Citation

  • Tekalign Ayalew Mengiste, 2018. "Refugee Protections from Below: Smuggling in the Eritrea-Ethiopia Context," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 676(1), pages 57-76, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:676:y:2018:i:1:p:57-76
    DOI: 10.1177/0002716217743944
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    1. Joris Schapendonk, 2012. "Turbulent Trajectories: African Migrants on Their Way to the European Union," Societies, MDPI, vol. 2(2), pages 1-15, April.
    2. Biao Xiang & Johan Lindquist, 2014. "Migration Infrastructure," International Migration Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48, pages 122-148, September.
    3. Thomas Faist, 2014. "Brokerage in Cross-Border Mobility: Social Mechanisms and the (Re)Production of Social Inequalities," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 2(4), pages 38-52.
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    1. Luigi Achilli & Antje Missbach & Soledad à lvarez Velasco, 2023. "Migration and Crime in a Divided World: Strategies, Perceptions, and Struggles," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 709(1), pages 8-22, September.
    2. Kohnert, Dirk, 2024. "Les mesures internationales contre le blanchiment d’argent et l’évasion fiscale, ont-elles un impact significatif en Afrique subsaharienne ? [Money laundering and tax evasion : Do international mea," MPRA Paper 121355, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Federica Infantino, 2023. "Shaping Borders: Migrants’ Agency, Time Commodification, and Anticipatory Detention Strategies," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 709(1), pages 184-201, September.
    4. David L. Suber, 2023. "Corruption and Bribery at the Border: Strategies of Survival and Adaptation between People Smugglers and Border Enforcement," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 709(1), pages 65-85, September.
    5. Ruta Nimkar & Abdullah Mohammadi, 2023. "A Widening Moral Rift: The Complex Interactions between EU Externalization and Afghan Border Ecosystems," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 709(1), pages 46-64, September.

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