La Muerte del Coyote: Human Smuggling in the Age of Asylum

ABSTRACT

Over the last decade, the prominence of asylum or asylum‐adjacent migration has overtaken undocumented migration, where many people are seeking to hand themselves into authorities rather than avoid detection. This has dramatically altered services offered by human smugglers. This article explores how smugglers adapted to current migration processes at the border and what strategies have been employed to continue to be profitable. By building on the ‘migration industry’ framework, we explore how illegal enterprises evolve in response to changes in migration policy in ways that both facilitate migration but also hinder migration and seek rents. This article expands on the concept of ‘bastard’ industries, helping understand how and why smuggling has developed an interconnected network of kidnapping and extortion. We argue that these changes expose some fundamental aspects of smuggling rather than representing an aberration of the smuggling industry.