Smuggling Networks, Saharan Corridors, and the Governance of Irregular Migration in the Sahel-Sahara Region

Abstract

The Sahara Desert, long imagined in Western political and media discourse as an undifferentiated barrier through which desperate migrants are herded by criminal smuggling networks, is in reality a complex and historically layered social space traversed by longstanding trans-Saharan mobility systems in which migration, trade, pastoralism, and kinship networks have been deeply intertwined for centuries. The contemporary governance of irregular migration through the Sahel-Sahara corridor — encompassing the principal overland routes connecting West and Central Africa to North Africa and, ultimately, to the Mediterranean — must therefore be understood not as the management of a novel phenomenon but as the political contestation of mobility systems whose logic and social organization long predate the modern nation-state. This article examines the political economy of migrant smuggling and the governance of irregular migration in the Sahel-Sahara corridor, focusing on the key transit hubs of Agadez in Niger, Sebha and Kufra in Libya, and Tamanrasset in Algeria. Drawing on a combination of ethnographic fieldwork at these sites conducted between 2018 and 2022, 86 semi-structured interviews with migrants, smugglers, transporters, local officials, military personnel, and representatives of international organizations, and a systematic analysis of European Union and United States migration control financing in the region, the article argues that externally imposed disruptions to established smuggling economies — most dramatically the EU-funded suppression of the formal Agadez transport trade following the 2016 EU-Niger agreement — have not eliminated smuggling but have reorganized it in ways that are more dangerous for migrants, more profitable for armed groups, and more corrosive of state legitimacy in fragile Sahelian states. The study reveals the deep entanglement of smuggling economies with local political orders, security sector interests, and cross-border community livelihoods, and argues that effective and humane migration governance in the corridor requires engaging with these political economies rather than simply attempting to suppress them through securitized externalization. The article contributes to the anthropology and political economy of borders, the sociology of informal economies, and the study of migration governance in fragile states.