Irina Molodikova
Research Fellow, Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy
Abstract: The smuggling of people across international borders is a global phenomenon, occurring on all continents and generating billions of dollars each year. Reactive policies of governments focusing on enforcement rather than sustainable and multi-faceted responses to smuggling phenomenon addressing root causes and factors en route. To what extent does smuggling affect migration processes in Eastern neighborhood of the EU? Neither media no politicians discuss the Eastern transit to the EU. The smuggling of people is a new phenomenon for Russia and countries of the former USSR (fSU) when they became included in the global system of population movements. The migrant smuggling business reacts dynamically as new opportunities and gaps open in the migration legislation. The presentation takes a comparative approach looking at data and research on migrant smuggling across former Soviet Union countries in direction to the EU.
Dr. Irina Molodikova (CEU) – graduate of Moscow State University (social geography department) in Russia and European University Center for Peace Studies (Austria); expert of Research Council of CIS countries and Baltic States on forced migration, expert of OSCE, UNESCO. From 2007 till 2015 was supervisor of Caucasus Initiative of Open Society Institute (Budapest), currently leads “Project on Migration and Security in the Post-Soviet Space“ at CEU. She is the author and editor of numerous books, articles and reports, such as 'Growing Up in the North Caucasus: Society, Family, Religion and Education', (with A.Watt) UK: Routledge, 2013; “Transit Migration in Europe” (Eds with F. Düvell and M. Collyer), 2014; Global review of migrant smuggling data and research: Volume II, IOM/UN, 2018, etc.