Despite the central role of human smuggling in irregular migration, empirical research on the practice and its facilitators has been scant. Drawing from ethnographic observations and data present in court cases, this essay explores the roles of women at providing human smuggling services in Phoenix, Arizona, which by the turn of the twenty-first century became one of the US main hubs for irregular migration. While frequently overlooked within the mainstream rhetoric of smuggling dominated by male-centred narratives of exploitation, victimisation and violence, women play fundamental roles in the facilitation of irregular migration. They recruit customers, negotiate fees and payment plans; withdraw smuggling payments from banks and wire transfer stores, care for migrants and drive or guide groups of border crossers through the desert. This essay argues, in line with recent anthropological scholarship on precarious forms of labour present under globalisation, that the facilitation of irregular migration constitutes for its participants a valid, legitimate form of labour. Smuggling actors are neither predators nor victimisers, but rather ordinary people experiencing the tensions abundant in the precarity of contemporary, neoliberal life. © 2016 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

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participatory approach ethnography smuggling United States Phoenix Arizona womens status migration