Smuggling as governance: variations in migrant experiences under border externalisation

Why do some migrants experience protection from smugglers, while others face neglect or abuse? As irregular migration intensifies and border regimes harden, the stakes of these relationships have never been higher. While recent scholarship challenges the portrayal of smugglers as inherently violent, it often overlooks variation in migrant experiences. Drawing on 32 in-depth interviews with Gambian migrants, this article examines how smuggling enterprises’ organisational structures shape divergent outcomes. I develop a theory of endogenous institutions to explain how norms of trust and accountability emerge within smuggling networks. Then, I explore how these are reshaped by state interventions such as police raids. Rather than treating enforcement as having uniform effects, I show that the relationship between smuggling modality and migrant protection is mediated by externalisation: different enforcement contexts interact with distinct network structures to produce variation in trust, accountability and vulnerability. By linking smuggling business models to migrant experiences, this study contributes to debates on criminal governance, informal institutions and migration governance. It shows how actors deemed ‘criminal’ participate in governing mobility through relational systems of coordination and control that are structured by, rather than separate from, the policy architectures of border externalisation.