ABSTRACT
In this research, smuggling will be looked at from an inside perspective. Even though smuggling has received strong attention from the media, policymakers, and scholars, migrant accounts are rarely featured as the primary source of information about smuggling. Personal stories will reveal what it is like to be smuggled, something hardly ever heard about. The starting point of this research is a migrant’s self-agency, as also specified in the approach of Giddens (1984), who claims that people are not ruled by society, but have agency even when their options are limited. The central question of the research is: what does it mean for the evolution of the migration process if people are constrained in their mobility, and therefore need to make use of the services of intermediaries, such as smugglers? Sub-questions are: why do people need smugglers? What does the decision-making process look like? How do smuggled migrants exert power in negotiations with their smuggler? And what different types of smuggling can be identified in relation to the migrant’s role in deciding the final destination?
