Jeremy Harding

“This is a book that was written in the late 90s about the people coming to Europe at that time and the people who were transporting those refugees at that time…There’s a very elegiac passage where he talks about the ethics of smuggling. He takes on the idea that traffickers or smugglers are evil or the cause of migration as Western governments like to present them. He has this very beautiful piece of analysis where he says, ‘Human traffickers are simply vectors of the contempt which exists at the two poles of the asylum seeker’s journey; they take their cue from the attitudes of warlords and dictators, on the one hand, and, on the other, of wealthy states whose citizens have learned to think of generosity as a vice.” Read more...

The best books on Refugees

Patrick Kingsley, Journalist