Improving and sharing knowledge on the Internet’s role in the human smuggling and trafficking process

This report addresses this gap by investigating the role of the Internet and digital technologies in the processes of human smuggling and trafficking in the United Kingdom (UK). The research presented here consists in an extensive examination of how the Internet and digital technologies facilitates i. the (a) recruitment and (b) transportation/entry phases of people smuggling towards and/or into the UK, and; ii. the (a) recruitment (b) transportation and (c) exploitation phases of the trafficking process in the UK sex and labour markets. Our research relies primarily on a UK-based virtual ethnography to acquire primary data, conducted between November 2015 and February 2017. As a research method, virtual ethnography extends the ethnographic field and situated observation from the examination of face-to-face researcher-informant interactions. Furthermore, the research has involved an “off-line” component, namely, 16 semistructured interviews that took place with a variety of key actors in the UK, including non-governmental organisation representatives (NGOs), law enforcement agents (LEAs), smugglers, and experts on cybercrime and/or human trafficking and smuggling.