Description
This research critically deconstructs the persistent presence of sexual violence along international migration routes. There is robust evidence that sexual violence along these routes, while intersecting with existing vulnerabilities to violence, is often indiscriminate, affects all genders, and functions as an extreme articulation of power in an ungoverned international space (Innes and Pullerits, in draft). There is a dearth of protection in international law and governance that protects migrants in transit. Indeed, being in transit, particularly without state-authorisation, situates the migrant in an international space. Violence that happens in this space is not protected under the refugee convention which is limited to protection from violence in the country of nationality or habitual residence. Due to ever stricter border controls, migrants without documents are produced as a market for facilitators and smugglers to move across international borders. The use of (sexual) violence is common amongst facilitating networks, which often involves transnational organised crime (Soria-Escalante 2022, Rubini 2024, Adeyinka 2023, Infante 2020). This research draws on evidence of the transnational immigration governance, synchronous with sexual violence along migration routes, to argue that states have no interest or incentive to suppress violence used in the context of undocumented movement of people across borders. This violence functions consistently with the immigration-deterrence mechanisms and logic adopted by (global North) states. States appropriate the violence of transnational criminal gangs as a means of immigration deterrence. There is consequently a lacuna of accountability for the use of violence against migrants by both transnational criminal networks and states.
