The migration industry and the commercialization of international migration

Migration has become business, big business. Over the last decades a host of new business opportunities have emerged that capitalize on migrants’ desires to move as well as on governments’ perceived need to control movement across international borders. From the rapid growth of specialized transportation and labour contracting companies, to multinational companies managing e.g. detention centers or establishing border security, to the organized criminal networks profiting from human smuggling and trafficking, a growing commercialization of international migration can be witnessed.

The edited volume by DIIS senior researchers Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen andNinna Nyberg Sørensenprovides arguments for the claim that it has become almost impossible to speak of migration without also speaking of the migration industry. Yet, acknowledging the role which the migration industry plays prompts a number of questions that so far has received only limited attention among scholars and policy makers: How should the migration industry be conceptualized? What role does it play in global migration governance? How does the migration industry impact on concrete migration trajectories? How does the neoliberal state and new public management relate to the growth of the migration industry? What does the privatization of e.g. border control mean for accountability and responsibility? And what are the relations between migration brokers, privatized border control, corrupted migration authorities and organized international crime in as diverse regional settings as Africa, Asia and Latin America?

The book provides comprehensive answers to these questions through an agenda-setting introduction and 11 case specific chapters. Contributors include Rubén Hernández-León, Alexander Betts, Ernst Spaan, Felizitas Hillmann, Kristin Surak, Georg Menz, THOMAS Gammeltoft-Hansen, Martin Lemberg-Pedersen, Hans Lucht, Ulla Berg, Carla Tamagno, Isabel Rosales Sandoval and Ninna Nyberg Sørense

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