Harris Public Policy Research Used to Study Human Smuggling

Harris Public Policy Postdoctoral Researcher Kara Ross Camarena, former Research Assistant Jijun Wang, and Assistant Professor Austin L. Wright were featured in Bloomberg with research suggesting a significant effect of political and environmental risks on migrant flows.

"A recent University of Chicago study calculated that Italy's major, European Union-backed 2017 anti-smuggler operation that involved funding the Libyan coast guard reduced migrant arrivals by 343 per week in the second half of 2017—a time when between 5,000 and 12,000 of them arrived every month," article author Bershidsky wrote. "The same study pointed out that tougher border enforcement can actually incentivize smuggling, since migrants count on the smugglers to mitigate their risk."

Full coverage of the team's research available at Bloomberg.