Facilitated but unauthorised return: the role of smugglers in return migration and clandestine border crossings between Malaysia and Indonesia

ABSTRACT

People smuggling is commonly associated with unidirectional movement, that is, procuring entrance from underpriviledged origin and transit countries to more desirable destinations that offer gainful employment and/or safety from human rights abuses. Yet, as we expose here, under certain circumstances migrants also make use of smugglers to return to their home countries. To examine this phenomenon more closely and explore why and under what conditions migrants seek out the services of smugglers in order to return from Malaysia to Indonesia, we have analysed 13 court verdicts and conducted eight interviews with law enforcement personnel responsible for arresting facilitators of unauthorised return migration (‘smugglers’). Our findings show that return smuggling results predominantly from the inadequacy of options for authorised return, which are costly, time-consuming and have punitive elements. Based on these findings we propose a theoretical clustering along four different modes of return. By disentangling the causes that triggered the evolution of facilitated but unauthorised returns we offer new insights into ongoing debates concerning return migration and ‘irregular’ migration. The multi-directional nature of smuggling services between Malaysia and Indonesia thus demands that we take a fresh look at the facilitation–authorisation nexus, particularly the modalities and infrastructures accessible for returning migrants.

KEYWORDS:

• People smuggling
• return migration
• law enforcement
• Indonesia
• Malaysia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Legal Decision No. 464/Pid.Sus/2020/PN.Btm with defendants Arzani alias Kuyuk and M. Imran alias Kakok 2020; Legal Decision No. 465/Pid.Sus/2020/PN.Btm with defendant Asep Nurjaman alias Jaman 2020.

2 Between 2015 and 2020 judges at the Batam District Court punished 19 defendants in 13 similar cases. Forty-six ‘smugglers’ were mentioned in the verdicts, the others being either actors on the most-wanted list (daftar pencarian orang) or not identified as perpetrators.

3 The government referred to the migrants as PMI ilegal dari Malaysia (illegal Indonesian migrant workers from Malaysia) in a live-streamed press conference from the Agency for Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers (Agency for Protection of Indonesian Migrant Workers (BP2MI) 2021). The Ministry of Manpower also refers to them this way in an internal report summarizing mass media reports (Ministry of Manpower 2021, 37).

4 This figure is derived from the addition of ‘irregular’ migrants granted amnesty after breaking immigration law so that they were able to leave Malaysia without first being punished and/or were ‘voluntarily repatriated’.

5 Wayne Palmer inspected the old facility again in Batam, our fieldwork location, as part of a research consultancy for the International Organization for Migration in April 2015. He visited the new facility in June 2016, which was also in Batam, finding that living conditions had improved.

6 Wayne Palmer observed this common delay during fieldwork in June 2016.

7 In 2016 a scandal erupted in Malaysia when it was revealed that smugglers had been sabotaging immigration computer systems since 2010, deliberately crashing them to allow people to bypass computerised checks, including facial recognition technology, and enter the country. Amongst those arrested were also two immigration officers (Corsi 2016).

8 Legal Decision No. 464/Pid.Sus/2020/PN.Btm with defendants Arzani alias Kuyuk and M. Imran alias Kakok 2020; Legal Decision No. 465/Pid.Sus/2020/PN.Btm with defendant Asep Nurjaman alias Jaman 2020.

9 These terms may differ substantively in their philosophical and policy meanings (for an in-depth discussion of voluntariness and assisted voluntary return, see Erdal and Oeppen 2022).

10 Broadly speaking, return migration is neither a new phenomenon nor an entirely unexpected movement; rather it is understood to be part of the migration cycle, which can be complete, incomplete or interrupted, depending heavily on the preceding conditions and reasons for migration in the first place (Xiang 2013; Oxfeld and Long 2004; Cassarino 2016; Battistella 2018).

11 For example, some EU-member states, such as Spain, particularly in times of economic downturn, are known to have run ‘voluntary’ return programmes for legal labour migrants with work permits. Such programmes incentivise labour migrants to leave their host country permanently (Amuedo-Dorantes and Pozo 2018; Kalir 2017).