Strategic Choices of Migrants and Smugglers in the Central Mediterranean Sea

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how migrants and smugglers adapt their strategies in response to border enforcement changes along the Central Mediterranean route, revealing deterrence, diversion, and tactical adaptations through data-driven modeling.

Contribution

It introduces a strategic model of smuggler decision-making and combines incident and flow data to understand migration responses to enforcement policies.

Findings

Migration attempts declined after increased interceptions.

Some migrants diverted to alternative routes.

Smugglers adjusted tactics by changing boat sizes.

Abstract

The sea crossing from Libya to Italy is one of the world's most dangerous and politically contentious migration routes, and yet over half a million people have attempted the crossing since 2014. Leveraging data on aggregate migration flows and individual migration incidents, we estimate how migrants and smugglers have reacted to changes in border enforcement, namely the rise in interceptions by the Libyan Coast Guard starting in 2017 and the corresponding decrease in the probability of rescue at sea. We find support for a deterrence effect in which attempted crossings along the Central Mediterranean route declined, and a diversion effect in which some migrants substituted to the Western Mediterranean route. At the same time, smugglers adapted their tactics. Using a strategic model of the smuggler's choice of boat size, we estimate how smugglers trade off between the short-run payoffs to launching overcrowded boats and the long-run costs of making less successful crossing attempts under different levels of enforcement. Taken together, these analyses shed light on how the integration of incident- and flow-level datasets can inform ongoing migration policy debates and identify potential consequences of changing enforcement regimes.