Abstract
This study examines the emerging social representations of actors described as “cross-border facilitators” within irregular migration networks along the Balkan Route. Unlike figures commonly framed as human smugglers, these actors are portrayed by migrants as offering selective assistance outside a purely commercial logic, often with minimal or no financial compensation. Drawing on qualitative interviews with migrants and individuals who interact with such facilitators, the research explores how their roles, motivations, and vulnerabilities are discursively constructed. The findings suggest that these “facilitators” symbolically disrupt the dominant migration economy by challenging profit-driven models of smuggling, provoking narrative contestation, reputational attacks, and heightened legal scrutiny. Using the concepts of anchoring and objectification from social representations theory, the analysis reveals how facilitators are framed in contrast to smugglers, highlighting themes of moral positioning, trust, and selective solidarity. Rather than reflecting fixed categories, these distinctions emerge from the stories told by migrants navigating complex moral and economic landscapes. The study contributes to broader debates on irregular migration, criminalization, and the contested meanings of border-crossing assistance.
Reframing Mobility: Cross-Border Facilitators and the Contested Dynamics of Irregular Migration
The Balkan Route has long been a key corridor for migrants entering Europe, shaping the dynamics of irregular migration and the networks that support it. Terminology such as “smuggler,” “facilitator,” or “broker” remains fluid, contested, and context-dependent. Scholars like Kyle and Liang (2001), Zhang (2008), and Sanchez (2015) have shown that such labels are externally imposed and shift in meaning across legal, geographic, and cultural contexts. While some use “smuggler” and “facilitator” interchangeably, others distinguish them by intent, profit-orientation, or moral framing. These categories, however, are unstable and politically charged. This study examines how these distinctions are narratively constructed and strategically mobilized by migrants and others to negotiate legitimacy and trust within precarious mobility systems.
In this complex landscape, actors described as “smugglers” remain central, offering border-crossing services for financial compensation within profit-driven networks. These figures facilitate mobility but often impose coercive conditions, reputational pressure, and economic dependency. Alongside them, however, appear other actors—referred to by migrants as “cross-border facilitators”—who operate outside a fully commercial logic. Their assistance is selective, low-cost or unpaid, and often motivated by relational, moral, or political considerations.
Despite their presence, these facilitators remain under-examined in migration literature. Frequently cast as humanitarian figures, they also disrupt dominant migration economies, provoking tensions with smugglers and attracting legal scrutiny. As narrated by migrants, they occupy a contested symbolic space marked by solidarity, discretion, and suspicion.
This study analyzes how facilitators are represented through the narratives of migrants, their supporters, and their critics. Drawing on qualitative interviews, it examines how these actors are positioned within irregular migration economies and how their assistance challenges the transactional logics of smuggling. Facilitators offer a form of mobility support grounded in selective solidarity, introducing tensions around legitimacy and risk.
Framing these actors through the lens of emerging social representations, the article situates irregular migration as a site of symbolic and moral contestation. At the intersection of smuggling research, critical migration studies, and humanitarian-bordering scholarship, it advances three key contributions. Empirically, it centers low-volume facilitators absent from profit-centric accounts. Conceptually, it shows how solidaristic micro-practices unsettle state–market assemblages and moral economies. Normatively, it examines how labels like “smuggler” or “helper” are strategically adopted or contested to manage risk and assert credibility. Border-crossing assistance, the study argues, is shaped not simply by legality or intent, but by dynamic and negotiated claims to legitimacy within criminalized migration regimes.
Navigating the Gray Zone: Understanding the Roles, Identities, and Motivations of Cross-Border Facilitators
Research on human smuggling increasingly presents facilitation as a continuum—ranging from profit-driven networks to low-fee, solidarity-based assistance (Achilli 2018; Campana 2020; İçduygu 2020). Rather than opposing altruism and profit, recent studies illustrate how actors—variously labeled as “smugglers,” “facilitators,” or “intermediaries”—modulate their engagement based on financial need, moral obligation, social ties, or political commitments (Baird and van Liempt 2016; Triandafyllidou and Palumbo 2023). These works challenge simplified binaries and emphasize the fluid, relational, and context-dependent nature of facilitation practices. This study builds on that perspective, avoiding rigid categories and instead examining how the smuggler–facilitator distinction is narratively constructed and strategically mobilized by actors navigating irregular migration (see Poppi 2025a). Rather than essentialist definitions, it proposes an analysis of how actors discursively position themselves as facilitators within morally and legally ambiguous terrains.
This approach departs from psychological models of volunteerism, which explain facilitation in terms of individual traits such as empathy or moral courage (Triandafyllidou and Maroukis 2012; Andersson 2014). While these perspectives highlight humanitarian motivations, they tend to overlook the relational embeddedness, strategic ambiguity, and discursive labor required to sustain facilitation under criminalized conditions.
Facilitators operate in legally precarious spaces and often avoid contact with researchers due to risk of prosecution (Baird and van Liempt 2016; Vergnano 2020). As such, their presence remains under-researched and conceptually underdefined. Although some studies recognize that smugglers may act humanely (Kyle and Liang 2001; Müller 2021), this article focuses on how facilitators actively construct counter-narratives to resist reductive portrayals—as either exploitative criminals or selfless idealists (Poppi 2024a). Their selective and morally framed assistance disrupts both criminalizing discourses and market-driven models of mobility.
The moral economy of smuggling has been central to recent debates. Achilli (2018) theorizes how actors navigate the tension between economic interest and moral obligation. Sanchez (2015), though without explicitly using the term, emphasizes how facilitators challenge state-centric framings through appeals to social responsibility, ethical justifications, and relational ties. Migrants often distinguish facilitators—seen as low-cost and selective—from smugglers associated with profit-seeking and coercion (Khosravi 2007; Perkowski and Squire 2018). Yet, as Sanchez (2015) and Kyle and Liang (2001) show, even altruistically perceived actors may engage in economically motivated practices, complicating the moral landscape and reinforcing the need to approach facilitation as a continuum rather than a dichotomy (Aziani 2023).
Ethnographic research has further reinforced this continuum view, challenging depictions of smuggling as the domain of hierarchical cartels. Brachet (2018), Missbach (2016), Zhang (2008), and Khosravi (2010) all document how irregular migration is facilitated by small-scale actors embedded in local economies. Brachet (2018) shows how anti-migration policies in the Sahara transformed ordinary drivers into criminalized “smugglers,” arguing that state repression has created new clandestine economies rather than eliminating mobility. Missbach (2016) similarly illustrates how impoverished Indonesian fishermen, pushed by economic collapse, took on marginal roles in smuggling chains and faced disproportionate penalties despite their limited agency.
Zhang (2008) and Zhang, Sánchez and Achilli (2018) offer an alternative to the cartel model, describing decentralized “cartwheel networks” of freelance facilitators in China. These actors operate through flexible, short-term partnerships grounded in kinship or community ties. Sanchez (2015) makes a parallel case along the United States–Mexico border, where facilitators often view their actions as obligations to kin, not commercial enterprise. Khosravi (2010), drawing on his own experience, frames facilitation as ethically defensible—even lifesaving—within criminalized systems of mobility. His work foregrounds the moral and affective logics by which migrants understand and legitimize assistance.
Further contributions underscore how facilitators build legitimacy through social embeddedness. Achilli (2018) finds that Syrian facilitators draw on cultural and religious ideals such as hospitality and reciprocity. Alpes (2017) shows that in Cameroon, brokers are seen not just as service providers but as custodians of hope in a landscape of blocked mobility. Their legitimacy emerges not only from logistical ability, but also from emotional resonance and narrative trust.
Existing scholarship has deepened our understanding of facilitators’ structural roles (Tinti and Reitano 2016), their informal embeddedness (Zhang 2008; Achilli 2018), and the interplay between economic need and moral commitment (Sanchez 2015; Baird and van Liempt 2016). Yet much of this literature continues to rely on high-level frameworks or broad typological distinctions, offering limited insight into how legitimacy is actively constructed and contested through narrative practices on the ground. This study addresses that gap by examining how facilitators are represented by migrants and interlocutors—tracing how their roles are negotiated through dynamics of trust, suspicion, and selective solidarity. Vergnano (2020) shows that motivations for facilitation span moral obligation, economic coercion, and symbolic compensation. Her findings also highlight key racialized dynamics: EU citizens are often involved in facilitation via activist networks, while racialized or non-EU actors are more frequently driven by financial pressures and face harsher legal repercussions. Poppi (2025c) extends this analysis by showing how facilitators resist dominant narratives that cast them as either criminals or naïve altruists. Through narrative positioning, they adopt identity frameworks—such as the “Robin Hood,” the “Normal Person,” or the “Organized Gooder”—to assert legitimacy and justify their actions within volatile migration economies. These identities not only counter stigmatization but act as protective strategies against criminalization (see Poppi 2024a, 2024b).
The narrative economy surrounding facilitation is shaped by broader racialized and classed representations. Vergnano (2020) notes that White EU citizens are often portrayed as misguided humanitarians, while racialized facilitators are framed as dangerous profiteers. These distinctions are not merely descriptive but influence how the law is enforced and how moral credibility is distributed across racialized bodies.
This study builds on governance-of-smuggling literature that examines how migration enforcement interacts with illicit markets (Campana 2020; Triandafyllidou and Palumbo 2023). It extends that work in three ways. First, it shifts attention from large-scale smuggling to small-scale, relational facilitation carried out through kinship and activist networks (Zhang 2008; Khosravi 2010; Sanchez 2015; Missbach 2016; Achilli 2018; Brachet 2018). Second, it draws on Moscovici's theory of social representations to show how labels like “crazy amateur” or “good helper” are deployed as strategic tools in symbolic and moral struggles (Andersson 2014; Tinti and Reitano 2016). Third, it provides empirical insights into how facilitators adapt to recent enforcement tools—such as pushbacks, carrier sanctions, and joint patrols—which have intensified across the Balkan Route since 2021 (European Commission 2023; Amnesty International 2024).
Facilitators disrupt dominant migration economies by offering non-commercial alternatives that challenge the symbolic and material authority of smugglers. Though states retain legal control over borders, smugglers often exercise de facto control over mobility. Facilitators, by contrast, create small breaches in this monopoly by offering assistance grounded in trust, reciprocity, and selective solidarity. These acts undermine not only economic extraction but also the symbolic hegemony of profit-based models.
Müller (2021) contributes to this reframing by distinguishing between inherently and contingently wrongful smuggling practices. While some smugglers exploit migrants, others provide essential services in response to the failures of legal and humanitarian systems. His account rejects rigid moral binaries and instead emphasizes how practices are shaped by constrained opportunity structures.
Attributing facilitation solely to economic self-interest risks reducing actors to rational calculators. As studies on moral economy and volunteerism demonstrate, facilitation often stems from layered motivations—ethical commitments, affective ties, and political opposition to restrictive border regimes (Kende et al. 2017; Witcher 2021). Facilitators are thus not naïve idealists or opportunistic intermediaries, but strategic actors embedded in hierarchies of power, legality, and morality. While previous works highlight the interplay between profit and obligation, this study advances the analysis by showing how legitimacy is discursively constructed at the micro-level—through everyday storytelling practices that reposition facilitators outside dominant economic logics. This article contributes to this emerging field by analyzing how facilitators are interpreted, narrated, and morally framed by others—especially migrants navigating precarious systems. While earlier studies provide strong ethnographic foundations, this research introduces a distinct analytical perspective by combining social representations theory with narrative analysis. This approach allows for a finer-grained view of how legitimacy, discretion, and trust are constructed in storytelling, not as fixed attributes but as contested symbolic positions. Rather than proposing a new typology, the study highlights how facilitation is negotiated through situated narratives that respond to criminalization, market logic, and moral ambiguity. In so doing, it underscores that facilitation is not a static category but a contested social role shaped by symbolic struggles over meaning, morality, and movement—and that narrative acts themselves play a constitutive role in this negotiation.
Emerging Social Representations of Cross-Border Facilitators: Perceptions, Narratives, and Discursive Constructions
Accessing a significant number of cross-border facilitators poses notable challenges; this study therefore employs the concept of emerging social representations to examine how these actors are perceived and constructed within broader socio-political narratives. These representations reflect shared social knowledge shaped by individuals who have engaged in or benefited from facilitation. Drawing on Durkheimian theory (Durkheim 1995; Moscovici 2000), the analysis uses the concepts of anchoring and objectification (Moscovici 1984; Höijer 2011) to explore how marginalized and criminalized figures are made intelligible within migration dynamics (see Tutenges 2023; Tutenges, Wästerfors and Hedlund 2024; Poppi 2025b).
In Durkheimian thought, “collective representations” serve as symbolic frameworks that help individuals make sense of the world. Moscovici (1973) extends this to “social representations,” which organize collective experience while also guiding public perception and institutional response (Figari and Skogen 2011). These emotionally charged representations shape social action by portraying certain actors—such as facilitators—as morally legitimate or criminally deviant (Tutenges 2023).
Anchoring and objectification are central to these processes. Anchoring interprets unfamiliar phenomena through familiar categories, stabilizing meaning via pre-existing discourses (Moscovici 1984). Objectification converts abstract ideas into concrete, sensory representations, simplifying complex dynamics into accessible imagery (Höijer 2011). In migration contexts, media often uses visual and rhetorical frames to depict facilitators either as altruistic heroes or predatory criminals, influencing both public sentiment and policy (Tutenges, Wästerfors and Hedlund 2024).
This study also draws on frame analysis, treating narratives as culturally embedded schemata of interpretation (Goffman 1974; Benford and Snow 2000). Following Entman (1993), framing is understood as the act of selecting and emphasizing certain aspects of reality. Labeling processes further shape how actors are classified as legitimate or deviant (Van Dijk 2009). In the migration context, such framing–labeling dynamics construct moral hierarchies among “smugglers,” “facilitators,” and “victims,” with important implications for both discourse and governance. This analysis links interviewees’ everyday storytelling to broader symbolic struggles over legitimacy, complementing the anchoring and objectification lens.
Migration studies have increasingly criticized “categorical fetishism”—the tendency to reify administrative labels such as refugee, migrant, or smuggler (Zetter 2007; Crawley and Skleparis 2018). A social representations approach deepens this critique by tracing how these categories are re-anchored and resignified in everyday discourse. It highlights how actors adopt, invert, or weaponize labels to manage risk, establish trust, or negotiate access in clandestine markets—dynamics often overlooked in mainstream smuggling scholarship (see Poppi 2024c).
Applying this framework, the study examines how facilitators construct and negotiate their roles through narrative practices. Rather than portraying them as either altruistic or profit-driven, the analysis shows how facilitators strategically position themselves by invoking solidarity, ethical commitment, or necessity to resist dominant portrayals of smuggling as coercive and commodified (Sanchez 2015; Kook 2023). Their selective assistance, often provided at minimal cost, helps construct moral identities that challenge criminalizing discourses (Boswell, Geddes, and Scholten 2011; Poppi 2025c). These narrative framings allow facilitators to position themselves in opposition to dominant representations without relying on binary moral schemas (see Poppi 2024c).
Rather than viewing smuggling as a monolithic or hierarchically structured system, recent studies emphasize the fluid, informal, and context-specific nature of facilitation practices (Van Schendel and Abraham 2005; Baird and van Liempt 2016; Sandberg 2017). Within this frame, criminality is not an inherent status but a discursive and institutional designation, shaped by enforcement regimes, social ties, and strategic ambiguity. Facilitators emerge not as fixed social types but as relational figures who toggle between licit and illicit registers, constructing legitimacy through discretion, boundary-work, and narrative labor.
Achilli and Abu Samra (2021) further blur the boundary between smuggler and humanitarian, showing how facilitators often straddle ideological and economic motives. Similarly, Kook (2023) demonstrates that even when facilitators are driven by material needs, they frame their actions as morally justified. These insights support the study's central claim: Facilitators resist fixed categorization by crafting self-narratives that reflect selective assistance, ambiguity, and situated ethical reasoning.
This research thus expands the analytical lens on human smuggling within the broader field of forced migration. It foregrounds how facilitators engage in meaning-making within complex symbolic economies, using narrative to navigate criminalization, assert credibility, and challenge dominant logics of enforcement (see Poppi 2024a). The findings show that facilitation is not reducible to legal status or economic rationale but is shaped by contested claims to legitimacy constructed in morally and politically charged environments.
By focusing on how facilitators articulate their roles and moral positioning through narrative, the study highlights the symbolic dimension of irregular migration—where authority, trust, and legitimacy are constantly negotiated rather than pre-assigned. In doing so, it contributes to a more nuanced understanding of facilitation practices as unstable, strategic, and embedded in contested social imaginaries.
Studying Cross-Border Facilitators: Context, Participants, and Narrative Analysis
This study is part of a broader research project on cross-border facilitators conducted in Trieste, Italy. This city is significant not only because it is where the author resides but also because it serves as a key arrival point on the Balkan Route (see Minca, Šantić and Umek 2018; Minca and Collins 2021; Bergesio and Bialasiewicz 2023). As a major transit hub, Trieste experiences a steady influx of migrants who, upon reaching Italy, either remain or more commonly move toward other European destinations, primarily Austria and Germany. The continuous movement of people has led to the involvement of a range of actors, including grassroots groups, migrants themselves, and individuals variously described as “smugglers” or “facilitators.” In line with the study's narrative and representational approach, particular attention is paid to how those identified as facilitators articulate their own roles, motivations, and ethical positioning. These self-understandings are treated not as transparent indicators of intent, but as discursive constructions through which actors negotiate legitimacy, moral identity, and distance from dominant criminalizing frames (Poppi 2024a, 2024b).
Rather than applying fixed categories externally, the analysis is grounded in the meanings participants themselves attach to facilitation—letting narrative framings shape the analytic lens. Facilitators, as described by interviewees, offer selective assistance with cross-border movement, often navigating legal and logistical obstacles while advising on travel routes and enforcement risks. While their primary role often involves transportation, some also provide basic support and guidance during transit. Crucially, the label “facilitator” emerges from the stories and perspectives of participants, not from a normative classification imposed by the researcher.
To examine these representations, the study draws on interviews with 24 participants, recruited through the author's personal and professional networks, as well as those of research assistants working in the fields of volunteering, migrant reception, and legal assistance. The sample includes 18 male migrants aged between 21 and 33, from countries such as Iraq, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, along with six Italian citizens who support and assist two individuals described as “cross-border facilitators” operating in Friuli Venezia Giulia. Engaging participants from diverse backgrounds, rather than focusing solely on migrants, enables a multivoiced exploration of how facilitation is constructed, framed, and contested in narrative terms. Rather than seeking to objectively define who counts as a facilitator, this study investigates how such figures are discursively constructed by migrants and interlocutors, and how these narrative constructions reflect broader struggles over legitimacy, morality, and criminalization. The narrative-based qualitative accounts gathered through in-depth, semistructured interviews form the core of an interpretive approach that centers participants’ lived experiences and the ways they discursively construct meaning. Rather than identifying fixed roles or stable intentions, the study examines how facilitation is narrated, justified, and negotiated in situated contexts. Treating narratives as both data and discourse, this method foregrounds how individuals position themselves and others within morally and legally ambiguous terrains (see Poppi 2025a). It thus enables a distinctive focus on the performative dimensions of storytelling—revealing how legitimacy, trust, and selective solidarity are actively produced through everyday accounts of mobility under criminalized conditions.
All interviews were conducted individually in person, in accessible public spaces including cafés, squares, and open areas. Interviews totaled approximately 30 h and were carried out in English, Italian, or a combination of both, depending on the participant's preferences.
The research was grounded in a position of embedded proximity within the local context of Trieste, a city central to both the Balkan Route and grassroots migration networks. Familiarity with local actors and migration-related initiatives facilitated participant recruitment and narrative depth, while also introducing potential interpretive influences. Situated at the intersection of academic inquiry and informal contact with solidarity structures, the researcher's position—neither fully within migrant communities nor entirely external to their support networks—may have shaped dynamics of access, disclosure, and narrative co-construction. Awareness of these relational asymmetries informed the research process through systematic reflexive fieldnotes, dialogical engagement during analysis, and peer consultation aimed at minimizing interpretive bias.
Transcriptions were produced using AI-based software, followed by a rigorous manual review by the author and a trained assistant. This two-phase process aimed to minimize transcription errors and account for language variation, dialect, and contextual nuance.
While AI transcription offered practical benefits, it also introduced specific ethical concerns. In particular, issues related to accuracy, potential language bias, and data protection required careful attention. To address these, the research process included systematic anonymization, manual cross-checking of all transcripts, and encrypted storage of digital materials to ensure confidentiality and compliance with data protection protocols (Samuel and Buchanan 2020).
The interviews were analyzed using a two-stage thematic-narrative approach (Riessman 2008), supported by sensitizing concepts from Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (see Fairclough 2013). In the first stage, each transcript was segmented into narrative episodes and inductively coded line-by-line to identify plot structure, evaluative stance, and discursive framings. In the second stage, first-order codes were aggregated into broader themes aligned with Moscovici's anchoring and objectification processes, tracing how participants assign meaning, legitimacy, or blame to the figures they describe as “facilitators” and “smugglers.”
This interpretive method prioritizes the narrative as the central unit of analysis. The incorporation of CDA allows attention to power asymmetries, modality, and intertextuality in how narratives reproduce or resist dominant migration discourses. Analytical reliability was supported through double-coding of 20 percent of the dataset and iterative peer debriefing. An audit trail was maintained to document coding decisions and analytic developments.
The use of extended narrative excerpts serves not only to illustrate the dynamics of facilitator–migrant interactions but also to reveal how actors navigate social, legal, and economic ambiguity through storytelling. These accounts are not treated as transparent windows into action but as situated texts through which identity, moral positioning, and resistance are constructed and negotiated. This aligns with a body of scholarship that understands migrant narratives as discursive spaces where agency and meaning are actively produced (Hammack and Pilecki 2012; De Fina 2023).
Narratives, as culturally embedded meaning structures, provide insights into how individuals make sense of mobility, legality, and assistance. Drawing on Durkheim's notion of collective representations (1995), this study interprets narrative framings of facilitators as symbolic devices through which actors organize experience and project legitimacy within morally contested fields. These stories embed assumptions about causality, responsibility, and justice, and are often structured around diagnostic and prescriptive elements (Rein and Schön 1996).
While narratives may include inconsistencies or symbolic exaggerations, their internal logic and social resonance offer rich insight into how actors position themselves and others within volatile migration systems. In this sense, the study joins a growing “narrative turn” in migration studies (Eastmond 2007; Boswell, Geddes and Scholten 2011; De Fina 2023), using personal accounts as analytical entry points into bordering, identity, and mobility.
Rather than categorizing “facilitators” and “smugglers” as discrete groups, this research foregrounds the contested nature of these labels. It seeks to understand how they are deployed by different actors to make moral claims, negotiate trust, and resist criminalization. In doing so, it contributes to recent efforts to analyze smuggling and facilitation not as fixed social roles, but as fluid, narrative constructs shaped by local knowledge, enforcement regimes, and social imaginaries.
Emerging Social Representations: Cross-Border Facilitators and Their Implications for Human Smuggling
The following analysis presents selected excerpts from interviews that contribute to the emerging social representations of individuals described by participants as cross-border “facilitators.” Since some narratives ambiguously referred to both such facilitators and to figures more closely associated with professional “smugglers,” priority was given to excerpts that either explicitly differentiate between these roles or refer more consistently to actors framed as facilitators by participants.
In the first excerpt, Abdul, a migrant from Pakistan, describes individuals who provide cross-border assistance selectively, choosing whom to help rather than offering services indiscriminately. His account introduces a distinction grounded not in fixed typologies, but in the perceived intent and relational positioning of these actors.
Excerpt 1: “They’re the ones who choose you because they say they don’t do this for business”
I know some people who help others cross [borders] because they helped two of my friends. But they don’t just take anyone—it's up to them. They’re the ones who choose you because they say they don’t do this for business. [And why do you think they do it?] I don’t know. They just ask where you want to go, and if that matches where they’re going, then it happens. That's what they told me once when I met these two who were doing this kind of thing.
This perceived distinction—between coercive commodification and selective, morally-inflected assistance—echoes Kook's (2023) observation that actors involved in irregular mobility often present themselves as motivated by ethical or political imperatives, even when material incentives persist. Abdul's framing aligns with this view, but also introduces ambiguity. The facilitators “choose you” without clear justification, suggesting that discretion may stem from pragmatic, affective, or ideological considerations. This ambiguity itself becomes a core feature of how such actors are represented. Framed through anchoring and objectification (Moscovici 2000), Abdul's narrative illustrates how unfamiliar roles are interpreted through comparison with more familiar categories. By asserting that facilitators “don’t do this for business,” he anchors them in opposition to the prototypical figure of the profit-driven smuggler (Aloyo and Cusumano 2018). Objectification occurs as Abdul renders their discretionary logic concrete: Facilitators do not advertise services or negotiate fees but instead align mobility support with personal trajectories or spontaneous affinity.
However, this construction also reflects underlying power asymmetries. By delegating decision-making entirely to the facilitator, the narrative implies an unequal dynamic—one where migrants must wait to be “chosen.” This stands in contrast to the more transactional clarity of smuggling arrangements (Campana 2020), where expectations and services are predefined. In this sense, Abdul's account exposes the fragility of trust within informal networks of facilitation and the opacity that characterizes such exchanges.
Analytically, his narrative disrupts the binary framing of smuggling versus humanitarianism. It instead reveals a space of discretionary agency where actors framed as “facilitators” negotiate shifting moral economies and fluctuating legitimacy. These actors, while resisting commodified logics, still operate within systems shaped by surveillance, scarcity, and selective solidarity. Abdul's description therefore aligns with moral-economy approaches to facilitation (Achilli 2018; Sanchez 2015) and challenges the epistemic stability of categories like “helper” or “criminal.”
In sum, Abdul's account positions facilitation as a selective and morally ambiguous practice, shaped by contingent alignments of need, opportunity, and discretion. The notion that facilitators “don’t do this for business” operates both as a claim to legitimacy and as a discursive tool to differentiate them from stigmatized smuggling economies. This emergent representation disrupts static categorizations and foregrounds the performative work required to assert moral credibility within contested mobility spaces.
In the following example, Omar, a migrant from Iraq, expands on these dynamics. His account contrasts actors he describes as altruistic and courageous facilitators with the figure of the “professional smuggler,” showing how discursive struggles over legitimacy are embedded in migrants’ accounts of risk, trust, and ethical judgment.
Excerpt 2: Those who do it as a hobby are just crazy
These people do it because they want to help those in need—they’re good people. Do you know that good people still exist? They’re rare, of course. But there's something else too: these people are also brave. Do you know how many [human smugglers] have told me to stay away from them? Because who knows? Those who do it for money will immediately tell you to avoid anyone who isn’t one of them. They say they’re the professionals, they know what they’re doing, while the others are crazy, they don’t know anything, and they’ll just get you arrested. The professionals say they know how to do things properly. [Like what, for example?] Once, I traveled part of the way with people I paid 500 euros upfront and another 250 euros upon arrival. Then I came back here, and even during the journey, they kept saying that only they and people like them could do this job well because they were professionals, while those who do it as a hobby are just crazy, and you can’t trust crazy people.
The excerpt exemplifies the processes of anchoring and objectification that underpin the social representations of these actors (Moscovici 2000). Omar anchors facilitators within a moral register by describing them as “good people” and “brave,” invoking ethical and affective criteria rather than professional qualifications. Smugglers, by contrast, objectify facilitators through negative typifications—calling them “crazy” or reckless—which serve to fix their image in the minds of migrants and exclude them from legitimacy. This binary framing not only informs individual choices but structures the symbolic field of border-crossing options (see Höijer 2011). Importantly, Omar does not uncritically adopt one side of this binary. While he initially defends facilitators, his narrative reflects the uncertainty and pressure migrants face when making decisions under conditions of risk, scarcity, and vulnerability. Smugglers’ insistence on professionalism and competence—reinforced through repeated discourse during travel—functions as a strategy of reputational control (Andersson 2014; Tinti and Reitano 2016), designed to consolidate their market position and dissuade defection to lower-cost or solidarity-based alternatives.
Omar's account also reaffirms the marketization of credibility. Smugglers construct their identity not only through logistics and service provision but through a narrative of technical expertise that justifies high prices and excludes moral challengers. Their rhetorical dichotomy—professionals versus amateurs—positions facilitators as both ineffective and threatening, exploiting migrants’ fears of arrest or failure. This corresponds to Maher's (2018) observation that illicit actors often deploy discursive strategies to police symbolic boundaries and ensure client loyalty.
At the same time, Omar's account challenges the conventional understanding of facilitators as simply “good” or humanitarian. While he characterizes them in moral terms, he also reflects internalized suspicions about their unpredictability. This ambiguity is central to their liminal status (Khosravi 2010): They are both alternative and marginal, simultaneously admired and distrusted, operating in spaces where institutional protections are absent and relational guarantees are fragile.
Rather than reinforcing a strict division between “smugglers” and “facilitators,” Omar's story points to a discursive field where identities are constantly negotiated, challenged, and reasserted (see Poppi 2024b). The facilitators he describes are not fully outside the smuggling economy but exist in symbolic tension with it, offering a relational mode of assistance that threatens established hierarchies. Their very presence signals a potential disruption of monopolized routes and of the moral economy on which professional smuggling depends (Sanchez 2015; Achilli 2018). Finally, this case contributes to the literature on the politics of representation in clandestine markets, showing how moral framings, pricing narratives, and accusations of recklessness serve as tools of symbolic warfare. Smugglers’ denigration of facilitators as “crazy” is not just a moral judgment—it is a strategic act that protects market share by delegitimizing non-commercial actors and reinstating risk as the exclusive domain of professionals.
In the next narrative, this symbolic boundary-work intensifies. Mulan, a migrant from Iraq, recounts how smugglers discredit facilitators not only by portraying them as reckless but by accusing them of betrayal—suggesting that those who offer free assistance may be informants collaborating with border authorities.
Excerpt 3: “They said that besides being crazy, these people would sell us to the border police”
When I was looking for contacts to cross, I first talked to my friends and then to some [human smugglers] who offered their services. We talked about money, and they told me to be careful with those who do it for free. They said that besides being crazy, these people would sell us to the border police. They seemed like good people, but they only did it to turn you in. They were like police officers, but without the uniform.
The social representation of these actors is shaped through anchoring, as smugglers embed facilitators into a familiar framework of betrayal and surveillance. Comparing them to “police officers without the uniform” allows smugglers to link facilitation with state repression—an especially powerful rhetorical device in contexts where state authorities are often experienced as violent or deceitful. Objectification further reinforces this association: The idea that facilitators “sell people to the police” converts abstract fears into a concrete image of treachery. In this way, facilitators are not just constructed as naïve or reckless, but as intentional deceivers, disguised threats who compromise the entire promise of mobility.
What emerges here is a form of reputational boundary-work (Andersson 2014; Maher 2018) aimed not only at asserting professional competence, but at disqualifying competing actors through moral suspicion. By deploying the label of “informant,” smugglers pre-emptively undermine the legitimacy of facilitators, limiting their influence within the migration economy and neutralizing their symbolic threat. This rhetorical tactic simultaneously defends market share and reinforces dependency among migrants, who are discouraged from exploring low-cost or non-commercial alternatives.
This framing also taps into a broader emotional economy of fear along the Balkan Route (Minca and Collins 2021). Migrants often rely on fragmented information, rumors, and the advice of peers. Smugglers exploit this uncertainty by planting narratives that position alternative actors as dangerous. As Sandberg (2017) notes, rumors function as tools of risk management in illicit markets—not just reacting to events, but proactively shaping behavior. In Mulan's account, facilitators are criminalized discursively, through insinuation and symbolic association, rather than through observed action.
Notably, this attempt to delegitimize facilitators operates at multiple levels: Epistemic (they “don’t know what they’re doing”), moral (they “betray migrants”), and strategic (they threaten the business model). These combined attacks create a totalizing narrative that makes any alternative to paid smuggling appear not only impractical, but actively dangerous. Yet, as previous excerpts have shown, such framings are deeply contested, and often reflect a struggle for discursive authority, rather than any consensus on the ground. Mulan's account aligns with findings in the literature on trustwork in illicit economies (Baird and van Liempt 2016), showing how actors maintain control not just through coercion or price, but through manipulation of symbolic capital. Facilitators’ refusal to monetize their services is interpreted not as generosity but as evidence of ulterior motives—a logic that reinforces smugglers’ role as necessary, if costly, intermediaries. Rather than interpreting this narrative at face value, it is more accurate to treat it as part of a symbolic field of contestation, in which actors struggle to define the moral boundaries of mobility. While Mulan does not directly endorse the smugglers’ suspicions, his repetition of their discourse illustrates how deeply embedded such narratives become in migrant imaginaries. Ultimately, this excerpt shows how the facilitator figure is not only marginal, but precariously situated—simultaneously evoking hope, distrust, and fear.
In the following Excerpt 4, Mohammad, a migrant from Bangladesh, challenges this logic. His account foregrounds the minimal financial demands made by those he refers to as facilitators, contrasting their solidarity-based model with the extractive practices of professional smugglers.
Excerpt 4: “They even bought food at the supermarket for him”
I don’t know why they do it because they don’t ask for money like the others, who want thousands of euros. The ones I know at most ask for money for gas and cigarettes. It seems like they just want to help without asking for much because they only help people in need. Once, I heard from someone who called me from Austria after being taken by them, and he told me they even bought food at the supermarket for him. So, for at least two days, he had food without any problems.
Importantly, Mohammad's account articulates a non-market logic of exchange within irregular migration. In contrast to the dominant economic rationality governing smuggling interactions, his depiction of facilitators suggests a form of gift-based reciprocity (Jones and Sha 2020), where assistance is conditional not on financial solvency but on perceived need or moral worthiness. The request for small sums “for gas and cigarettes” signals a symbolic economy that sustains dignity without reproducing exploitation. This shift reframes facilitators not simply as less greedy smugglers, but as actors operating under qualitatively different moral assumptions.
The narrative also reveals how legitimacy circulates within migrant networks. The mention of a friend calling from Austria to share his positive experience signals the importance of relational transmission of trust—a dynamic through which facilitators accrue reputational capital. This is not institutional legitimacy but narrative legitimacy, built through word-of-mouth storytelling that functions as both reassurance and informal vetting.
However, this representation also draws attention to the structural fragility of facilitation practices. Mohammad's account implicitly acknowledges the precarious infrastructure that underpins this form of mobility: Facilitators lack access to the bribery channels, transportation networks, and protection mechanisms often available to more organized actors. As such, their actions—though morally valorized—remain exposed to both logistical constraints and legal sanction (see Achilli and Tinti 2022). Their limited economic extraction may enhance their moral positioning but simultaneously undermines their operational sustainability in high-risk contexts such as the Balkan Route.
Seen through the lens of humanitarian bordering (Walters 2015; Pallister-Wilkins 2015), this narrative underscores how micro-practices of care can simultaneously challenge punitive border regimes and destabilize commodified migration systems. The act of “buying food at the supermarket,” though seemingly banal, becomes a politically charged gesture—an interruption in a system where mobility is monetized and care is criminalized.
In sum, Mohammad's account foregrounds a moral imaginary in which facilitators are rendered intelligible as solidarity actors, whose selective and minimally compensated assistance marks a partial rejection of the coercive economy that defines much of the irregular migration experience. Yet, this same imaginary is haunted by fragility—material, legal, and symbolic. By anchoring facilitators within a discourse of ethical exception, the narrative elevates their moral status while subtly acknowledging the constraints that keep such figures marginal and contested.
In the following excerpt, Katarina, an Italian cultural mediator, offers a more explicit meta-commentary on this system. Her account frames facilitators not just as helpers, but as actors who disrupt the migration economy by carving out an alternative, however precarious, to the extractive logic of for-profit mobility.
Excerpt 5: “They provide a service that organized criminals charge thousands of euros for”
I can assure you that this goes beyond charity or volunteering for a greater humanitarian cause. These people are incredibly courageous, and they take risks—not just from the police, obviously. In the end, even though they only work with a few people and focus on specific cases, they provide a service that organized criminals charge thousands of euros for. So, in a way, they don’t create real competition since they help so few people, but they introduce a different idea—that these poor migrants can move without paying or for very little. And traffickers go crazy when they hear that this is happening, that this even exists.
The analysis can be structured around the concepts of anchoring and objectification. Anchoring is visible in the way facilitators are distinguished from both organized criminals and humanitarian volunteers. Katarina emphasizes that their actions are neither institutionalized nor financially motivated, situating them in a moral and practical middle ground (Poppi 2025c). Objectification occurs as she presents concrete comparisons: Facilitators provide services that smugglers typically monetize, but without demanding equivalent payment. This representation translates an abstract value-based distinction into economic terms.
One central theme in this account is the idea of ideological disruption. Even though facilitators assist only a small number of migrants, they introduce the possibility that mobility can occur without the exchange of significant financial resources. Katarina suggests that this challenges the premise on which the smuggling economy is built—namely, that mobility must be purchased at a high price. In political economy terms, she articulates what Andersson (2014) calls a “moral price point,” which undercuts cartelized fee structures (Campana 2020; Tinti and Reitano 2016). Facilitators do not represent a logistical threat to smugglers, but their presence introduces a form of “competition by example,” demonstrating that cost barriers are socially constructed rather than inevitable.
This symbolic disruption has implications for how border economies function. Katarina notes that traffickers react with hostility when facilitators provide mobility assistance at little or no cost. This response indicates the perceived threat to the legitimacy of smuggling operations, not because facilitators move large numbers of people, but because they challenge the narrative that borders can only be crossed through payment. This reinforces findings in border criminology that emphasize how ideological leakage, rather than operational volume, can destabilize authority structures within informal markets (Andersson 2014; Maher 2018).
Her account also reflects on facilitators’ limited capacity. She acknowledges that their work does not constitute direct competition for smugglers due to its small scale. Instead, their impact lies in shaping alternative perceptions of what migration can look like. By doing so, facilitators generate a counter-narrative to the commodification of mobility, aligning with research on how grassroots actions can subvert dominant bordering practices (Walters 2015; Pallister-Wilkins 2015).
In summary, Katarina frames facilitators not as passive humanitarians but as actors who create tension within the migration economy through symbolic and ideological disruption. Through anchoring and objectification, her account situates facilitators as non-commercial, selective actors whose assistance challenges both the moral and financial assumptions embedded in smuggling networks (see Vergnano 2020; Poppi 2025c). While their operational capacity remains limited, their presence invites a broader reconsideration of how mobility is facilitated, priced, and represented along the Balkan Route. Following this, Sahid, a migrant from Afghanistan, provides a starkly different perspective. His account highlights the hostility of human smugglers toward facilitators, recounting how a friend was threatened simply for attempting to contact them. His narrative reveals the risks faced not only by those who assist migrants but also by those seeking their help, underscoring how facilitators operate under both legal and extralegal pressures within the broader migration landscape.
Excerpt 6: “I know there are people who help for very little money”
A friend of mine was seriously threatened—do you know why? Just because someone we know tried to get in touch with these [cross-border facilitators]. He had no money, so what was he supposed to do? And just for asking, just for saying, “I don’t have money, what can you do? I know there are people who help for very little money, do you know them?”—just for that, they almost killed him!
This can be analyzed through the processes of anchoring and objectification. Anchoring occurs as human smugglers react with violence to the mere inquiry about facilitators, signaling that such figures challenge their claim to exclusivity over mobility routes. The response is not only economic but deeply territorial, reinforcing the need to maintain dominance through fear and repression (Campana 2020; Triandafyllidou and Palumbo 2023). Objectification is evident in the concrete expression of this power struggle: A threat of physical violence, not for defection, but simply for asking a question. This example moves beyond abstract contestation to demonstrate how violence functions as a regulatory tool in ungoverned mobility markets.
A further key element in this account is the precarious position of those who cannot afford high smuggling fees. Sahid's friend represents a category of migrants structurally excluded from formal and informal mobility systems. The fact that facilitators are even known to exist becomes a source of hope—but also a source of risk. By offering minimal-cost assistance, facilitators become both a practical resource and a symbolic challenge to the logic of coercive monetization. Their existence disrupts not only financial expectations, but also the mechanisms through which smugglers preserve their status and influence (Poppi 2025c).
Sahid's narrative also underscores how violence and rumor operate as tools of market control. In the absence of formal enforcement, smugglers use threats to police access to knowledge. The act of seeking information becomes criminalized, and reputational violence is deployed as a preemptive measure. From a border-violence perspective, this case illustrates how coercion is privatized and deployed strategically to secure monopoly conditions. It reflects dynamics described in the literature on “outlaw governance,” where informal authorities sustain their position through extralegal enforcement mechanisms (Aas and Gundhus 2015; Maher 2018). What emerges is a form of tariff enforcement by intimidation: Even conversations about alternative actors are sanctioned, limiting migrants’ agency and suppressing the circulation of counter-narratives.
This case also expands the discussion on trust and information asymmetry in migration economies. Sahid's account suggests that control over mobility is not only enforced at the level of logistics or price, but also at the level of discourse. The ability to ask questions, explore options, or express need becomes politically charged. In this sense, the threat against his friend represents more than personal intimidation—it reflects the structural suppression of alternative imaginaries of movement.
In sum, Sahid's narrative reveals how facilitators—despite their limited capacity—represent a disruptive force within smuggling systems. Through anchoring and objectification, he frames them as figures whose presence challenges the monopolistic and coercive foundations of the migration economy. However, this challenge is met not with discursive debate, but with violence, reinforcing how irregular mobility is governed not only by price and passage, but by power, silence, and fear (see Aas and Gundhus 2015; Maher 2018; Campana 2020; Triandafyllidou and Palumbo 2023; Poppi 2025c).
The final example comes from Michele, an Italian acquaintance of two cross-border facilitators, who provides insight into why they operate on such a small scale. His account highlights the pragmatic and financial constraints they face, particularly their inability to engage in corruption, which increases their vulnerability to law enforcement.
Excerpt 7: “The reason they only work with a few ases”
The reason they only work with a few cases, at most a few trips a year, is that they not only have to minimize risks but also want to do things as well as possible. They told me that a big factor is that, having no financial resources, they can’t even bribe the police if they get caught—something many professionals do if necessary, or at least try to. In fact, they told me that the police actually hope to catch them, because if they catch a professional, they get money out of it, whereas with them [cross-border facilitators], that's not possible. Many of those who get caught are precisely them, because they don’t pay.
This dynamic can be examined through the concepts of anchoring and objectification. Michele anchors facilitators as structurally disadvantaged actors, set apart from smugglers not just by motivation, but by the absence of economic leverage. His framing constructs a clear dichotomy: Professional smugglers possess the resources to mitigate risks through informal payments, while facilitators are unable to do so, rendering them more visible and vulnerable. Objectification emerges in the depiction of law enforcement as economically incentivized—arresting professional smugglers brings financial return, while arresting facilitators offers no material gain. This portrayal reveals a transactional logic within policing practices, where legality is not enforced uniformly, but filtered through profitability (see Kim and Tajima 2022).
The narrative also speaks to risk management under structural constraint. Facilitators’ decision to limit their activity to a few selective cases per year is not only a precautionary measure, but a necessity born from resource scarcity. Their work is shaped by an acute awareness of risk, without the protections afforded by corruption or institutional shield. Unlike smugglers who scale operations for profit and can afford legal evasion, facilitators must carefully balance ethics and exposure. Their minimal scale is not a strategic inefficiency but a survival mechanism.
This also reflects broader concerns in border governance and corruption studies. Michele's account aligns with research showing how “bribe capital” mediates exposure to enforcement in high-mobility corridors (De Boer and Bosetti 2015; Reitano and Shaw 2014). Facilitators, by refusing or being unable to pay, cannot participate in informal protection economies. As such, vulnerability in the migration system extends beyond migrants—it encompasses those who assist them outside market logics. This dimension challenges the assumption that solidarity-based actors operate with relative impunity; in fact, their lack of integration into illicit economies increases their exposure to punishment (Aas and Gundhus 2015).
Michele's account thus illustrates how economic precarity intersects with legal vulnerability. Through anchoring and objectification, he constructs facilitators as morally distinct but structurally disadvantaged, operating at the margins of both legal protection and criminal immunity. His narrative challenges binary views that pit humanitarianism against criminality by showing how facilitators, despite their ethical stance, are punished not for wrongdoing, but for lacking the means to shield themselves from an uneven enforcement regime. As such, his testimony contributes to a deeper understanding of how control over mobility is exercised not only through violence or financial extraction, but also through selective exposure to enforcement, shaped by the distribution of economic resources and informal influence (see De Boer and Bosetti 2015; Kim and Tajima 2022; Reitano and Shaw 2014).
Challenging the Migration Economy: Cross-Border Facilitators, Human Smugglers, and the Struggle Over Legitimacy
This study has examined the emerging social representations of cross-border facilitators—an under-researched figure within irregular migration networks—based on qualitative interviews with migrants and individuals connected to facilitation practices. Using the theoretical lens of anchoring and objectification, it explored how these actors are represented in contrast to human smugglers, and how their presence generates competing interpretations of legitimacy, trust, and mobility. A key contribution lies in the combined use of social representations theory and narrative analysis. Rather than treating “facilitator” or “smuggler” as fixed categories, the study investigates how meaning is constructed and contested in lived accounts. Anchoring and objectification help trace how facilitators are made intelligible—linked to familiar figures like humanitarians or informants, and objectified through specific actions such as refusing payment or risking arrest. Narrative excerpts reveal how these representations are not merely imposed but actively negotiated by migrants and facilitators themselves. This dual framework foregrounds the symbolic and discursive dynamics through which illegality is experienced, resisted, and redefined. The findings suggest that actors described as “cross-border facilitators” diverge from conventional portrayals of migration intermediaries. Unlike professional smugglers, facilitators typically assist on a limited scale and with minimal or symbolic compensation. This challenges the assumption that facilitation must be embedded in commercial logics, and instead frames it as grounded in solidarity, ethical commitment, or necessity. However, their role remains ambivalent. Some narratives portray them as altruistic actors marginal to criminal networks, while others suggest that their assistance is selective—raising questions about access, informal hierarchies, and embeddedness in relational moral economies. A key finding is the hostility that facilitators encounter from human smugglers, who often depict them as dangerous, unprofessional, or even as informants. These narratives serve to delegitimize facilitators while reinforcing smugglers’ market authority. The symbolic and economic threat posed by facilitators provokes direct efforts at reputational suppression, as well as physical intimidation, especially when migrants express interest in low-cost alternatives. Such dynamics reveal how control over mobility is asserted not only through pricing and logistics, but also via symbolic boundary-policing and coercion. The study also highlights how facilitators face heightened legal risks compared to professional smugglers. Lacking the financial capital to bribe authorities or secure informal protection, they are more vulnerable to arrest—even when their involvement is limited or non-profit. Participants suggest that enforcement practices may be shaped less by objective threat and more by the absence of financial return from targeting facilitators. These observations challenge the idea that migration control is uniformly applied, and instead point to how economic considerations shape enforcement strategies within irregular migration regimes (Reitano and Shaw 2014; De Boer and Bosetti 2015; Kim and Tajima 2022). These findings contribute to scholarship that critiques binary categorizations of migration facilitation. Facilitators do not neatly align with dominant typologies of either criminal actors or humanitarian volunteers. Instead, they occupy a liminal and often unstable position: Their actions are criminalized, yet they are frequently driven by ethical or relational motives (see Poppi 2024a, 2024b). This analysis builds on existing literature that emphasizes the discursive construction of roles (Kyle and Liang 2001; Baird and van Liempt 2016), showing how categories like “helper” or “smuggler” are tactically invoked and resisted by actors embedded in precarious mobility systems. While the data suggest that facilitators navigate moral, social, and economic registers (Sanchez 2015; Poppi 2025c), this study does not aim to establish a new typology. Instead, it aligns with recent work interrogating the ambiguities of so-called humanitarian facilitation. Scholars such as Kook (2023) have shown that solidarity-based assistance often intersects with informal economies, selective practices, and exposure to criminalization. This study contributes to that literature by tracing how facilitators emerge through narrative positioning—negotiating claims to legitimacy within symbolic economies marked by inequality and suspicion. Rather than treating moral complexity as an interpretive outcome, the analysis shows how such complexity is actively constructed and mobilized in practice. It examines how both migrants and facilitators frame, defend, or contest the legitimacy of non-profit assistance, illuminating how meaning is made under conditions of risk and criminalization (see Khosravi 2010; Sanchez 2015; Achilli 2018). By centering migrants’ narratives, the analysis also reveals how representation becomes a field of struggle. Facilitators are not simply actors in mobility systems, but also symbolic figures contested through discourse—valorized by some as courageous disruptors, demonized by others as destabilizing threats. These representations matter: They influence trust, risk perception, and access to alternative forms of assistance—and when delegitimized or suppressed, may evolve into narrative forms marked by frustration or symbolic defiance (Poppi 2025b). They also show how legitimacy is not merely institutional, but narratively constructed and relationally transmitted. Methodologically, the use of narrative excerpts has enabled a grounded, fine-grained analysis of how legitimacy, morality, and risk are negotiated in context. Testimonies are treated not only as sources of information but as discursive acts through which speakers position themselves and others in complex symbolic fields. This approach contributes to the “narrative turn” in migration studies (Hammack and Pilecki 2012; De Fina 2023), demonstrating how migrants’ everyday storytelling produces situated knowledge that often challenges dominant frameworks of legality, criminality, and assistance. Rather than advancing a new conceptual category, this study situates facilitators within broader debates on informal economies, border governance, and moral resistance. Their practices disrupt dominant representations of smuggling as purely exploitative. They expose the contradictions embedded in state-led narratives of illegality, blurring lines between care and crime, altruism and necessity (Khosravi 2010; Van Schendel and Abraham 2005). Their selective, precarious support networks reflect how moral and economic logics intersect—and at times, collide—within criminalized migration landscapes. From a methodological-theoretical perspective, this study shows how combining social representations theory with narrative analysis offers a productive lens for investigating actors who resist fixed classification. It enables attention to both the symbolic infrastructures through which actors are interpreted, and the situated storytelling through which they contest those interpretations. In doing so, the study provides a flexible yet rigorous framework for examining emergent figures within the shifting ecologies of irregular migration. Future research should explore how facilitators respond to intensifying criminalization and evolving enforcement strategies. Are informal solidarity networks expanding, becoming more clandestine, or fragmenting under pressure? How do facilitators themselves narrate their practices—as acts of resistance, obligation, or survival? And what forms of legitimacy—relational, symbolic, legal—do they seek or reject in navigating these tensions? In sum, this study reveals that irregular migration is shaped not only by transactional systems and enforcement regimes, but also by contested moral economies, symbolic struggles, and shifting claims to legitimacy. Cross-border facilitators emerge not as fixed types, but as dynamic, narratively constructed actors who challenge the monopolization of mobility by state and market actors alike. Their practices underscore that the politics of mobility is never only about movement—it is also about meaning: About who gets to define, contest, and reimagine the ethical boundaries of border-crossing in an increasingly securitized world.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Ethics Statement
The author confirms that the study adhered to ethical guidelines, with informed consent obtained from all participants. Confidentiality was ensured through rigorous anonymization, and no identifying information is revealed in the article. Special precautions were taken to protect participants given the sensitive nature of the research, and ethical oversight was maintained throughout the study to safeguard their rights and well-being.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
