Mixed Migration Review 2025
Migration in the context of geopolitical turmoil
Human Smuggling and Trafficking
The movement of refugees and migrants along mixed migration routes around the world is often facilitated by smugglers, with anti smuggling measures taking centre stage in policy responses around irregular movements. Migrant smuggling is often – and sometimes deliberately – conflated with human trafficking to justify ever more criminalised responses to irregular migration. Despite years of enforcement efforts and increasingly restrictive border controls, smuggling continues to adapt, thrive, and expand.
Featured report
How Smuggling Really Works
This report brings together evidence from over 80,000 interviews with people on the move along key mixed migration routes worldwide and more than 450 interviews with smugglers in Africa. This provides an accessible evidence-base that explains how smuggling really works and how current policies are strengthening the trade.
What are migrant smuggling and trafficking?
Refugees and migrants along mixed migration routes often encounter smugglers and traffickers, but the two are not the same – even if the lines can blur. Human smuggling, as defined by the Palermo Protocols, refers to a range of paid (or otherwise compensated) services that help a person enter a country irregularly.
MMC uses a broader interpretation of the terms ‘smuggler’ and ‘smuggling’, one which encompasses various activities — paid for or otherwise compensated by refugees and migrants — that facilitate irregular migration. These include irregularly crossing international borders and internal checkpoints, as well as providing documents, transportation, and accommodation. This approach reflects refugees and migrants’ perceptions of smuggling and the facilitation of irregular movement. Our interpretation is deliberately broader than the UN Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants’ definition. However, this does not imply that MMC considers all activities it includes in its broad understanding of smuggling to be criminal offences.
Trafficking, on the other hand, involves the use of force, coercion, or deception to exploit people—through forced labour, sexual exploitation, or other forms of abuse—and usually occurs without consent. In practice, the lines can blur when smugglers abuse or exploit migrants, violating fundamental rights and causing lasting harm.
“Smuggling” and “trafficking” are often conflated — sometimes deliberately — to justify hardline migration measures, including the militarisation and securitisation of borders, which make crossings increasingly dangerous.
Highlights from 4Mi Data Explorer
61%
of refugees and migrants reported using a smuggler at least once.
6%
refugees and migrants said smugglers influenced their decision to migrate.
57%
Of smugglers increased their fees in past 6 six months before the interview, partly in response to tighter border controls.
There are many types of smugglers. Some treat you badly, while others are more humane.
31-year-old Eritrean in Ethiopia
The work of smuggler brings more money than many. It’s a risky job, but we’re doing very well.
Interview with a smuggler
I was sold by my first smuggler, and forced to do difficult work without pay.
Nigerian woman in Niger
video
Six key messages on smuggling and mixed migration
Based on a decade of extensive research and expert analysis, including more than 85,000 4Mi surveys of refugees and migrants and hundreds of 4Mi surveys with smugglers..
Frequently Asked Questions
For general enquiries please contact [email protected]
Irregular migration is driven by both demand and supply: demand from people wanting to migrate (which in the absence of legal pathways translates into a demand for irregular migration), and supply from smugglers facilitating that demand when legal pathways are missing.
When policies focus primarily on cutting supply through deterrence and criminalisation, and insufficiently address the persistent demand for migration, rather than breaking the business model, they are boosting the business model of smugglers, who will adapt, divert to riskier routes and increase prices and profits.
Recent experiences provide valuable learnings. When the EU activated the Temporary Protection Directive for Ukrainians, granting millions immediate legal status and freedom of movement, this meant smugglers could not establish a market. Expanding safe and realistic pathways is therefore the most effective way to undercut smuggling networks and protect lives.
People mainly rely on smugglers when safe and legal routes are limited or difficult to access, to make their journey easier or for lack of other available options. Sometimes smugglers are people’s only way out of harm or the only way they find to achieve their migration objective. For example, MMC 4Mi surveys on migration routes from the Horn of Africa to the Yemeni coast, revealed that 99% of migrants and refugees surveyed turned to smugglers to reach Yemen, reflecting the lack of alternative safe and legal pathways and the difficult crossings which increase reliance on smugglers (based on 1,645 surveys with people on the move in Yemen in 2025). In Central Sahel, 49% of people who used smugglers (n=1550) were not irregular migrants, but chose to use smugglers to make travel easier (such as deal with checkpoints, authorities, or to provide assistance).
As evidenced by MMC, smugglers do not lure people into irregular migration. A total of 60,000 surveys with migrants and refugees on the move in different regions (carried out between January 2021 and March 2024) showed that the main influencers remain friends and family. Only 4% of respondents globally indicated that smugglers influenced their decision to migrate.
The UN Protocol against the Smuggling of Migrants’ defines migrant smuggling as “ a crime involving the procurement for financial or other material benefit of illegal entry of a person into a State of which that person is not a national or resident”.
MMC uses a broader interpretation of “smuggling” that encompasses various activities that facilitate irregular migration. These include irregularly crossing international borders and internal checkpoints, as well as providing documents, transportation, and accommodation. MMC uses this as it reflects refugees’ and migrants’ own perceptions of smuggling. This does not imply that MMC considers all activities it included in this broader understanding of smuggling to constitute criminal offences.
Corruption and collusion play a major role in the facilitation of irregular migration and migrant smuggling. Without the involvement of corrupt state officials, migrant smuggling could not flourish as it does along many major migration routes. In 480 surveys with smugglers on the Central Mediterranean route, 57% of smugglers reported direct contact with state officials to facilitate operations, mainly to release migrant detainees, guide border crossings, and share patrol information. The most common state officials involved, according to smugglers, were police and border control, followed by detention centre staff.
Whilst MMC does not explicitly ask people on the move about human trafficking, several of our reports do contain figures and information on this topic, spontaneously provided by respondents. Among all refugees and migrants surveyed worldwide by MMC, 5.7 percent have spontaneously reported having personally experienced trafficking and exploitation. Young people appear to be particularly vulnerable to this, with 6.5 percent of youths aged 18 to 25 reporting this issue, versus 3.9 percent of those aged 41 and above. Men also seem to experience trafficking more often than women – 6.2 percent versus 4.8 percent – as well as people who have used smugglers for their journeys.
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