‘Protection’ on my own terms: human smuggling and unaccompanied Syrian minors

Child migration has generated shock, the global public appalled by photos of corpses of children washed ashore or abandoned in deserts. However, despite the growing visibility of child migration there has been scant research into the practices and interactions often associated with the smuggling of minors. We still lack a clear understanding of the interactions between minors and smugglers that go beyond a stereotypical predator/victim frame. This paper is grounded in the conviction that any understanding of the complex interactions between minors and migrant smugglers requires an epistemic reversal in conventional learning and debate. Instead of investigating the systematic exploitation of vulnerable migrants at the hands of criminal rings, we need to focus on the capacity of minors to exert agency and craft new spheres of possibility in situations characterised (also) by exploitation and extreme dependence. The article does so by investigating the day-to-day interactions between facilitators and Syrian minors who left their country following the outbreak of the civil war in 2011. What will be shown is that minors’ interactions with human smuggling provide them with new forms of action, while contending with exploitation, constraints or dependency.