Abstract
This dissertation critically examines the efficacy of enforcement-led approaches to disrupting Channel people-smuggling networks operating across the English Channel, with particular focus on the United Kingdom’s “smash the gangs” rhetoric and associated policy interventions. Through systematic literature synthesis, this study investigates whether militarised border enforcement, criminalisation strategies, and targeted network disruption achieve genuine dismantlement of smuggling operations or merely displace harm towards more dangerous routes and increased migrant vulnerability. Drawing upon criminological research on covert network structures, empirical studies of Mediterranean and Channel migration corridors, and operational research on interdiction effectiveness, the analysis reveals that smuggling networks demonstrate remarkable resilience and adaptability, frequently reconfiguring following enforcement interventions rather than collapsing. The findings indicate that low-level facilitator arrests rarely impact network functionality, whilst interventions targeting central brokers and financial nodes show greater promise. The dissertation concludes that sustainable disruption requires integrated strategies combining intelligence-led targeting of key network actors, expansion of safe legal pathways, and economic interventions addressing structural migration drivers, rather than enforcement-dominant approaches that predominantly displace crossings to more hazardous routes.
Introduction
The English Channel has emerged as one of Europe’s most contested migration corridors, with small boat crossings becoming a defining political and humanitarian issue for the United Kingdom. Since 2018, irregular Channel crossings have increased dramatically, with over 45,000 individuals arriving via small boats in 2022 alone, prompting successive governments to prioritise enforcement-led responses under the banner of “smashing” or “breaking” the criminal gangs facilitating these journeys (Home Office, 2023). This enforcement-first paradigm rests upon assumptions that smuggling operations constitute hierarchical criminal enterprises susceptible to dismantlement through arrests, asset seizures, and enhanced border security.
However, substantial criminological and migration scholarship challenges these foundational assumptions, suggesting that people-smuggling networks operate through decentralised, adaptive structures fundamentally different from the cartel-style organisations implied by political rhetoric (Sanchez, 2017). Understanding this disjuncture between policy assumptions and empirical reality carries profound implications for resource allocation, harm reduction, and the protection of vulnerable migrants.
The academic significance of this topic extends across multiple disciplines. For criminology, it illuminates how covert networks resist intervention and adapt to enforcement pressure. For migration studies, it reveals how policy choices shape migration routes, costs, and dangers. For public policy, it demonstrates the limitations of deterrence-based approaches when structural drivers remain unaddressed. Practically, failed interventions waste substantial public resources whilst potentially increasing migrant deaths and exploitation.
This dissertation therefore addresses a critical knowledge gap regarding what genuinely works to disrupt Channel smuggling networks versus what merely displaces harm. By synthesising evidence across criminal network research, migration studies, and policy evaluation, it provides an evidence-based foundation for more effective, humane, and sustainable approaches to this complex transnational challenge.
Aim and objectives
Main aim
This dissertation aims to critically evaluate whether enforcement-led “smash the gangs” approaches effectively disrupt Channel people-smuggling networks or predominantly displace harm towards more dangerous routes and increased migrant vulnerability, whilst identifying alternative or complementary strategies demonstrating greater efficacy.
Objectives
To achieve this aim, the following specific objectives guide this research:
1. To analyse the organisational structure and operational characteristics of Channel people-smuggling networks, examining how these differ from conventional assumptions underpinning enforcement strategies.
2. To evaluate the effectiveness of militarised border enforcement, criminalisation measures, and network interdiction strategies in genuinely dismantling smuggling operations versus displacing routes and harms.
3. To synthesise evidence from criminal network research regarding which intervention strategies most effectively fragment covert networks and reduce overall operational capacity.
4. To assess alternative and complementary approaches including legal pathway expansion, economic interventions, and risk awareness campaigns in reducing demand for smuggling services.
5. To develop evidence-based recommendations for integrated strategies that achieve genuine network disruption whilst minimising harm displacement and protecting vulnerable migrants.
Methodology
This dissertation employs a systematic literature synthesis methodology, integrating empirical findings, theoretical frameworks, and policy analyses from peer-reviewed academic sources to construct a comprehensive evidence base regarding smuggling network disruption. This approach is particularly appropriate given the covert nature of smuggling operations, which renders primary data collection challenging, and the substantial existing scholarship requiring systematic integration (Snyder, 2019).
Search strategy and source selection
Literature was identified through systematic searches of academic databases including Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar, using search terms combining “people smuggling,” “migrant smuggling,” “human trafficking networks,” “Channel crossings,” “network disruption,” “border enforcement,” and “criminal network intervention.” Searches were restricted to English-language publications from 2015 onwards to ensure contemporary relevance, though seminal earlier works were included where foundational.
Source selection prioritised peer-reviewed journal articles, followed by reports from governmental bodies, international organisations including the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and academic monographs from recognised publishers. Sources were excluded if they constituted opinion pieces, journalistic accounts without empirical foundation, or publications from advocacy organisations with potential bias.
Analytical framework
The synthesis employed a thematic analytical framework organised around the research objectives. Literature was coded according to: network structure and characteristics; intervention type and implementation context; measured outcomes regarding network disruption; evidence of harm displacement; and methodological quality. This enabled systematic comparison across studies employing different methodologies and examining different geographical contexts.
Limitations
Several methodological limitations warrant acknowledgement. First, the covert nature of smuggling operations means all empirical studies rely upon incomplete data, typically derived from law enforcement records, judicial proceedings, or migrant testimonies, each carrying inherent biases (Yeung, Di Clemente and Lambiotte, 2025). Second, publication bias may favour studies reporting significant findings over null results. Third, cross-national variation in legal frameworks, enforcement capacity, and migration pressures limits direct transferability of findings to the specific Channel context. These limitations are addressed through triangulation across multiple sources and explicit acknowledgement of evidential gaps.
Literature review
The organisational structure of people-smuggling networks
A fundamental tension exists between political rhetoric characterising people-smuggling as organised crime dominated by sophisticated criminal enterprises and empirical research revealing considerably more complex, heterogeneous organisational forms. Sanchez (2017) provides critical perspectives demonstrating that most migrant smuggling is decentralised, locally organised, and frequently embedded within migrant and refugee communities rather than controlled by distant cartel-style kingpins. This “protection from below” framing reconceptualises smuggling not simply as criminal predation but as a community safety system enabling mobility in highly militarised border contexts where legal pathways remain inaccessible.
Mengiste (2018) reinforces this analysis through ethnographic research on Eritrean-Ethiopian migration corridors, documenting how smuggling facilitators often emerge from refugee communities and maintain complex relationships combining commercial transaction with community solidarity and mutual obligation. These networks function through trust relationships, kinship connections, and shared ethnic or national identities rather than hierarchical command structures.
Punzo and Scaglione (2024) extend this analysis to Mediterranean smuggling dynamics, demonstrating that Italian migration control policies have reshaped but not eliminated smuggling operations, which continuously adapt organisational forms, route selection, and operational methods in response to enforcement pressure. Their research reveals smuggling networks characterised by modularity, with different actors handling recruitment, transit, logistics, and corruption of officials in loosely coordinated rather than centrally directed arrangements.
This decentralised structure carries profound implications for enforcement strategy. Interventions designed to “decapitate” hierarchical organisations by removing leadership prove largely ineffective against networks lacking such centralised control. Gazzotti (2021) argues that the “war on smugglers” consequently expands border apparatus whilst failing to achieve stated objectives, as field-level facilitators operate as easily replaceable components rather than irreplaceable specialists.
Militarised border enforcement and route displacement
The dominant policy response to Channel crossings has emphasised enhanced border security, naval patrols, surveillance technology, and interception operations. Evaluating this approach requires examining both immediate interdiction effectiveness and secondary displacement effects.
Garelli and Tazzioli (2018) provide critical analysis of what they term the “humanitarian war” against migrant smugglers at sea, examining how militarised Mediterranean operations have reconfigured rather than eliminated smuggling. Their research documents how enhanced naval presence in one zone consistently corresponds with increased crossings through alternative, often more dangerous, routes. Smuggling networks demonstrate remarkable intelligence-gathering capacity regarding patrol patterns, rapidly adapting departure points, timing, and vessel types to exploit enforcement gaps.
This displacement effect carries severe humanitarian consequences. When established, relatively safer routes become blocked, smugglers shift operations towards longer, more hazardous crossings using less seaworthy vessels (Sanchez, 2017). Crossing prices typically increase following enforcement intensification, as smugglers pass enhanced operational costs and risks to migrants whilst exploitation and coercion opportunities multiply (Gazzotti, 2021).
The Channel context demonstrates these dynamics clearly. Enhanced Franco-British beach patrols and increased small boat interceptions have not eliminated crossings but have altered departure locations, vessel types, and crossing times. Smugglers have responded by launching from more remote beaches, using larger vessels carrying more passengers to maintain profitability despite higher interception rates, and increasingly making crossings in dangerous weather conditions to avoid detection.
Criminalisation and the targeting of low-level facilitators
Alongside operational enforcement, legal measures have progressively criminalised smuggling facilitation with enhanced penalties intended to deter involvement. However, research consistently demonstrates these measures predominantly impact marginal, easily replaceable actors rather than network organisers.
Siahaan and Saragih (2025) examine problems inherent in prosecuting people-smuggling perpetrators within transnational organised crime frameworks, finding that criminal justice interventions systematically capture boat pilots, drivers, and lookouts whilst core organisers operating across jurisdictional boundaries remain insulated. This pattern reflects both evidential challenges in proving conspiracy across borders and the expendable position of low-level facilitators within network structures.
Kosmas et al. (2020) provide operational research modelling demonstrating that when lower-level participants are easily replaced, interdicting them barely reduces overall network flow. Their analysis suggests law enforcement resources directed at replaceable actors represent inefficient allocation, achieving statistical success measured by arrests without meaningful impact on smuggling capacity.
Garelli and Tazzioli (2018) document how criminalisation measures have expanded the border apparatus without corresponding reduction in irregular migration, whilst creating additional vulnerabilities for migrants. Enhanced penalties for facilitators have not deterred involvement but have incentivised harsher treatment of migrants, including abandonment at sea when interception appears likely, to minimise evidence and potential sentences.
Criminal network resilience and adaptation
Understanding why enforcement interventions frequently fail to achieve lasting disruption requires engaging with criminological research on covert network dynamics. This literature reveals remarkable resilience and adaptive capacity across diverse criminal network types including drug trafficking, human trafficking, and smuggling.
Bright et al. (2017) examine criminal network vulnerabilities and adaptations, finding that networks respond to enforcement pressure through multiple mechanisms: replacing arrested members, altering communication methods, shifting geographic operations, and restructuring relationships to reduce vulnerability. Their research indicates that effective disruption requires sustained, targeted pressure on genuinely critical nodes rather than one-off enforcement actions.
Giommoni, Berlusconi and Aziani (2021) analyse international drug trafficking interdiction, developing frameworks for coordinated, targeted interventions based on network positioning. Their findings suggest that targeting key brokers occupying bridging positions between network segments, or financial nodes controlling resource flows, produces greater fragmentation than equivalent enforcement effort directed at peripheral actors.
Manzi and Calderoni (2024) employ agent-based modelling to assess drug trafficking organisation resilience to law enforcement interventions, finding that networks rebuild capacity following arrests by recruiting through existing social connections and trust relationships. This regenerative capacity proves particularly strong when enforcement fails to disrupt underlying recruitment and trust networks.
De La Mora Tostado, Hernández-Vargas and Núñez-López (2024) model human trafficking networks specifically, identifying limits to dismantlement strategies and concluding that sustainable disruption requires addressing demand-side factors alongside supply-side enforcement. Their analysis suggests that dismantlement strategies alone cannot succeed when fundamental demand for services persists.
Data quality and intervention targeting
A critical but frequently overlooked factor in intervention effectiveness concerns the quality of intelligence informing targeting decisions. Yeung, Di Clemente and Lambiotte (2025) provide important analysis demonstrating that data on covert networks are inherently incomplete, and over-reliance on network analytics with poor data quality can systematically misdirect interventions and waste resources.
Their research demonstrates that standard network analysis metrics identifying “central” actors for targeting prove unreliable when applied to incomplete network representations typical of intelligence holdings. Actors appearing peripheral in partial data may actually occupy central positions in complete networks, whilst apparent central actors may prove marginal. This “garbage in, garbage out” dynamic helps explain why operations claiming success based on arrests of “key” figures frequently fail to achieve lasting impact.
These findings suggest that effective targeting requires not simply sophisticated analytical techniques but also substantial investment in intelligence collection to achieve adequate network coverage before targeting decisions. This challenges approaches relying primarily on reactive intelligence from arrests and seizures, which systematically capture information on lower-level actors rather than protected organisers.
Alternative intervention approaches
Given the limitations of enforcement-dominated strategies, research has examined alternative or complementary approaches addressing different points in the smuggling system.
Ullah et al. (2025) examine labour market inequities and informal migration, demonstrating how economic pressures including unemployment and wage differentials drive human smuggling demand. Their research suggests that measures addressing push factors in origin regions potentially reduce reliance on smugglers over time, though effects require sustained investment and emerge gradually rather than immediately.
Tjaden and Gninafon (2022) evaluate risk awareness campaigns intended to discourage irregular migration by informing potential migrants of journey dangers and low success probabilities. Their quasi-experimental research in Guinea finds modest effects on stated migration intentions, though crucially these campaigns do not remove structural drivers motivating migration decisions. Individuals facing severe economic deprivation or protection needs may rationally accept known risks given limited alternatives.
Most significantly, research consistently identifies expansion of safe, legal pathways as potentially transformative in reducing smuggling demand. Sanchez (2017) argues that where legal migration routes exist and remain accessible, smuggling demand correspondingly decreases, as most migrants prefer legal options avoiding the costs, dangers, and uncertainties of irregular journeys. Mengiste (2018) reinforces this finding, documenting how absence of legal protection options for Eritrean refugees directly generates demand for smuggling services.
Garelli and Tazzioli (2018) frame this as a fundamental policy contradiction: states simultaneously restrict legal access whilst attempting to eliminate the irregular access methods these restrictions generate. This analysis suggests that genuine smuggling reduction requires addressing this contradiction through pathway expansion rather than solely enforcement intensification.
Discussion
The mismatch between policy assumptions and network realities
The evidence synthesised above reveals fundamental misalignment between assumptions underpinning “smash the gangs” rhetoric and empirical understanding of smuggling network structures. Policy discourse assumes hierarchical, cartel-style organisations susceptible to decapitation through leadership removal. Empirical research consistently documents decentralised, modular, community-embedded networks that regenerate following enforcement interventions.
This mismatch carries significant implications. Enforcement strategies designed against non-existent organisational structures inevitably underperform. Resources directed at low-level facilitators achieve arrest statistics without meaningful network impact. Claims of success based on misconceived metrics create false confidence whilst underlying challenges persist.
The “protection from below” framework (Sanchez, 2017) proves particularly important for the Channel context. Many facilitators emerge from migrant communities and maintain relationships characterised by solidarity alongside commercial transaction. Enforcement approaches treating all facilitation as equivalent criminality fail to distinguish exploitative from protective smuggling, potentially criminalising community members providing essential services in contexts where legal alternatives remain unavailable.
Harm displacement as the primary enforcement outcome
The evidence demonstrates consistently that enforcement interventions reconfigure rather than remove smuggling operations, with harm displacement representing the primary outcome. This pattern appears across militarised border operations, criminalisation measures, and interdiction efforts.
Displacement manifests across multiple dimensions. Geographic displacement shifts crossings to more remote, dangerous locations. Temporal displacement moves crossings to conditions (weather, darkness) increasing risk. Modal displacement alters vessel types, frequently toward less seaworthy craft carrying more passengers. Economic displacement increases prices, deepening migrant debt and exploitation vulnerability. Relational displacement shifts power toward more coercive smugglers as less exploitative community-based facilitators are eliminated.
For Channel crossings specifically, these displacement effects have contributed to increased fatalities despite enhanced enforcement. Larger vessels in dangerous conditions, launched from more hazardous beaches, with migrants less willing to signal for assistance given fears of return, create elevated mortality risk even as interdiction rates increase.
Conditions for effective network disruption
Despite predominant evidence of enforcement ineffectiveness, research identifies conditions under which targeted interventions achieve genuine network fragmentation. Giommoni, Berlusconi and Aziani (2021) and Bright et al. (2017) suggest that targeting actors occupying critical bridging positions or controlling financial flows produces disproportionate disruption relative to enforcement effort.
However, realising this potential requires overcoming substantial challenges. Effective targeting demands high-quality intelligence regarding network structure, which proves difficult to achieve for covert organisations actively concealing relationships. Yeung, Di Clemente and Lambiotte (2025) demonstrate that targeting based on incomplete data frequently proves counterproductive. Furthermore, even successful targeting of genuinely central actors produces lasting effects only when replacement proves difficult, requiring sustained pressure rather than one-off operations.
For Channel smuggling, effective targeting would require substantially enhanced intelligence regarding network organisation, financial flows, and key broker identities. Current approaches emphasising beach-level enforcement and small boat interception appear poorly positioned to generate such intelligence, instead capturing information predominantly regarding expendable operational actors.
The necessity of demand-side intervention
Perhaps the most significant finding from this synthesis concerns the fundamental importance of demand-side factors. Enforcement-dominated approaches treat smuggling as primarily a supply-side problem solvable through suppression. Research consistently indicates this framing is inadequate.
Demand for smuggling services derives from interaction between migration drivers (conflict, persecution, economic deprivation) and pathway restrictions (visa requirements, carrier sanctions, border controls). Where legal pathways exist and remain accessible, smuggling demand correspondingly decreases. Pathway restriction without alternative provision necessarily generates smuggling demand.
This analysis suggests that sustainable smuggling reduction requires either addressing underlying migration drivers, which exceeds destination state capacity, or providing alternative legal pathways channelling mobility into safer, regulated routes. The latter represents more feasible intervention, though contradicts restrictionist political imperatives.
Economic measures addressing push factors in origin regions, examined by Ullah et al. (2025), offer complementary potential but require sustained investment with effects emerging gradually. Risk awareness campaigns provide limited additional contribution but cannot substitute for pathway alternatives when structural drivers persist.
Toward integrated intervention strategies
Synthesising across the evidence, effective smuggling network disruption requires integrated strategies combining multiple intervention types rather than enforcement dominance. Key components include:
First, intelligence-led targeting of genuinely central network actors, particularly financial controllers and key brokers, based on adequate intelligence coverage rather than reactive information from lower-level arrests. This requires sustained investment in covert intelligence collection and international cooperation given smuggling’s transnational character.
Second, expansion of safe, legal pathways providing alternatives to smuggling services. This might include enhanced refugee resettlement quotas, humanitarian visa programmes, family reunification expansion, and labour migration channels. Such measures reduce smuggling demand whilst channelling mobility through safer, regulated routes.
Third, economic and development measures in origin regions addressing fundamental push factors. Whilst effects emerge gradually, sustained investment in employment, wages, and economic opportunity reduces long-term migration pressure and smuggling reliance.
Fourth, protection system strengthening ensuring that individuals reaching destination states can access asylum determination and appropriate protection. Systems leaving individuals in prolonged limbo create continued vulnerability to exploitation and secondary smuggling.
This integrated approach represents significant departure from enforcement-dominated strategies, requiring acceptance that smuggling suppression alone cannot succeed without addressing demand-side factors currently generating business for smuggling networks.
Conclusions
This dissertation has critically evaluated whether enforcement-led “smash the gangs” approaches effectively disrupt Channel people-smuggling networks or predominantly displace harm. Through systematic literature synthesis, all five research objectives have been addressed, yielding significant findings with important policy implications.
Regarding organisational structure (Objective 1), the evidence demonstrates that Channel smuggling networks operate through decentralised, community-embedded, modular structures fundamentally different from the hierarchical criminal enterprises assumed by enforcement strategies. This mismatch between policy assumptions and network realities helps explain persistent intervention failures.
Concerning enforcement effectiveness (Objective 2), militarised border operations, criminalisation measures, and network interdiction predominantly reconfigure rather than eliminate smuggling, with harm displacement representing the primary outcome. Geographic, temporal, modal, and relational displacement increase migrant vulnerability, journey costs, and mortality risk.
From criminal network research (Objective 3), effective disruption requires targeting genuinely central actors, particularly brokers and financial controllers, based on high-quality intelligence. However, data quality limitations mean that targeting based on incomplete network representations frequently misdirects resources toward peripheral actors.
Regarding alternative approaches (Objective 4), legal pathway expansion shows greatest potential for reducing smuggling demand, whilst economic interventions addressing push factors offer complementary long-term contribution. Risk awareness campaigns provide modest additional effects but cannot substitute for pathway alternatives.
Finally, concerning evidence-based recommendations (Objective 5), sustainable disruption requires integrated strategies combining intelligence-led targeting of central network actors, legal pathway expansion, economic intervention in origin regions, and protection system strengthening.
The academic significance of these findings lies in demonstrating the limitations of enforcement-dominant approaches across multiple intervention types and contexts, whilst identifying conditions under which targeted interventions achieve genuine network impact. The practical significance concerns resource allocation, suggesting that current enforcement-heavy spending patterns represent inefficient investment relative to alternatives.
Future research should examine Channel smuggling network structures specifically using social network analysis of judicial proceedings data, evaluate pathway expansion effects on smuggling demand through comparative analysis, and develop improved targeting methodologies accounting for data quality limitations. Additionally, longitudinal research tracking network adaptation following specific interventions would strengthen causal inference regarding intervention effects.
In conclusion, whilst “smash the gangs” rhetoric offers political appeal, the evidence indicates that enforcement-focused approaches alone cannot succeed against adaptive, decentralised networks when structural demand factors remain unaddressed. More effective, humane, and sustainable approaches require integrating targeted enforcement with demand-side measures, particularly legal pathway expansion, currently absent from dominant policy frameworks.
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