This book provides a contemporary overview of migrant smuggling and trafficking in Southern Europe, focusing on Spain, Italy and Greece. It considers how criminal players increase such activity and investigates institutional and structural constraints to legal migration in Southern Europe.

Migrant workers satisfy the need for a cheap workforce to sustain Southern Europe's economy, and laws to counter irregular migration alter smuggling routes and expose migrants to forms of exploitation upon reaching their destination. Revealing institutional, economic and criminal factors, the book explains the persistence of migrant smuggling and trafficking.