Crimmigration and Human Trafficking: where are immigrants as victims and aggressors positioned?

Abstract

During this session, I will start reflecting upon migration movements on the world, framing statistics and defining concepts. I will go through ties who bind migrants with receiving countries, presenting new terminology to emergent realities such as Immigrants and euromigrants; visitors from EU countries and circulants from third countries. I will characterize the differentiation of inequalities that divides our world in North and South, though a migration perspective as well as on how migrants have been gradually and currently seen as criminals. In fact, and after a perspective how agreements in Europe allowed the creation of the space of Security, Liberty and Freedom, a consequence of the Schengen Treaty and its subsequent updates, we will focus on how migrants have been characterized in host countries as criminals and how they have been victims of the crimminalization of irregularity, mainly reflected on a crimmigration analysis. I will go then through a perspective on migrants as victims of crimes, taking a deep analysis on human trafficking victims who are or have been involved in migration processes. I will then go through the analysis of the Diretive 2012/29/UE and try to pick up the rights of victims of human trafficking who are already transposed to the Portuguese (and other countries’) legislations, finding lacks and presenting solutions to “law in books” and “law in action” in this field of supporting victims of crimes in Europe, taking from point of departure an European project.