Ever since the Golden Venture ran aground in New York in 1993, smuggled migrants from central Fujian have captured the fears and imagination of the public and politicians in North America. The incidents in Dover in 2000 and Morecambe Bay in 2004 ignited similar fears in Western Europe. Would this be the start of the siege of the developed world by the billions of people in the third world so desperate that they would resort to any measure to reach the honeypots of the West, living off the spoils of the welfare state or stealing scarce employment opportunities from the local population? The Chinese were hardly the only ones penetrating the crumbling fortresses of the developed world, nor were human smuggling and exploitative employment of migrants new phenomena. Yet the audacity and cruelty of the smugglers and employers exposed during these incidents resonated strongly with deeply rooted Western stereotypes of China (the awakening giant) and Chinese culture (the cruel Chinaman), making smuggled Fujianese the paradigm of all that is dangerous and evil about the “new migration” supposedly swamping the developed world.

Several studies already have been written on the realities rather than the mythology of Fujianese illegal migration, including early books by Peter Kwong (1995) and Ko-lin Chin (1999) and later work by Melvin Soudijn (2006) and this reviewer and his co-authors (2004). Sheldon Zhang's book is the latest addition to this small but growing body of work. The main contribution of Chinese Human Smuggling Organizations is the exclusive focus on the smugglers (or “snakeheads”) rather than the migrants. Zhang mainly draws on the results of a project conducted jointly with Ko-lin Chin between 1999 and 2001 that yielded 129 interviews conducted in New York, Los Angeles and Fujian. Zhang himself continued to work on human smuggling in the years that followed and he is able to document at least some of the changes that have taken place up to 2006. Zhang's book confirms (and gives a much more detailed account of) what we already know: snakeheads are not members of mafia-like well-organized criminal organizations but are opportunistic entrepreneurs providing specific services (for instance, client recruitment, exit, documentation, transport, reception, payment enforcement) in temporary alliances with several other smugglers. Quite often, smugglers are highly regarded by migrants and their communities, providing a valuable service, at considerable financial and personal risk, that at worst is considered a victimless crime. In addition, the book gives valuable information on the relationship between snakeheads and organized crime, and with the authorities and individual officials in migrants' areas of origin. A final substantial chapter homes in on the specific role of women in the human smuggling business, a very welcome contribution on a topic about which little has been written.

This book's strength is the insights into the world that Fujianese human smugglers have created and inhabit. As such, it is required reading for everyone working professionally on or with Chinese migrants. I cared less for the few attempts at theorizing smuggling operations (such as “the dyadic cartwheel network”) that add little to what essentially is a descriptive account. I was also somewhat disappointed that the author did not try to embed the specifics of Fujianese human smuggling in the larger picture of Chinese international migration, let alone the even broader trends in international migration. However, as a study of what still is the most important case of the new Chinese migration, this book is both meticulously researched and responsibly written. It will become the standard source of information on the topic, an achievement on which the author should be congratulated.