Abstract

This article takes up the critical discussion that has taken place at an international level by considering people smuggling as a crime. It focuses on clandestine transit migration of Cubans to Chile, associated with the trafficking of migrants, the latter understood as forced migration. From a collaborative ethnographic follow-up, the experience of clandestine transit migration is collected while reconstructing the motives, routes, the lack of a coyote figure, the abuses, the risks, the crossing of Chilean borders, and the denial of refuge. It is concluded that emphasizing the voluntariness of being smuggled contributes to the irregularization of migrants, which is why we consider it necessary to stop perceiving this phenomenon from a criminal perspective and consider the density social, cultural, political, and economic dimensions of people smuggling.