Human smuggling. A new mass phenomenon of global migration

Recently human smuggling has become a new mass phenomenon of worldwide migr ation. Despite its increasing international significance, migration sociolo gy has hardly drawn attention to this problem so far. Against the backgroun d that Germany is a target country, the paper offers both basic information about the problem and its analysis from a sociological perspective. Human smuggling is a social process, that is triggered by an exchange interaction between migrants and smugglers, while the process itself becomes increasin gly organized. In the paper, I explain the enormous growth of human smuggli ng by globalisation on the one hand smuggling related feedback processes on the other hand. The evaluation of previous measures shows, that western so cieties cannot control human smuggling without enforcing their borders.