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http://phg.sagepub.com/content/37/3/366The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1177/0309132512460906
2013 37: 366 originally published online 18 October 2012Prog Hum GeogrTim Hall
Geographies of the illicit: Globalization and organized crime
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Article
Geographies of the illicit:Globalization and organizedcrime
Tim HallUniversity of Gloucestershire, UK
AbstractThe paper notes a growing, diverse and yet somewhat partial and disparate interest among geographers in theillicit. Within this there has been little substantive interest in organized criminality despite it constituting arange of activities comparable in their significance to other aspects of the illicit that have attracted extensiveattention from geographers. This paper argues that the development of a geographical perspective onorganized crime is timely and seeks to map out connections with both the extant literatures of organizedcrime and those of human geography.
Keywordscriminal sovereignty, economic geography, geographical perspectives, globalization, illicit, organized crime
I Maps of the illicit
If the twentieth century was dominated by cold
wars . . . and the ‘war on terrorism’ has
become the prevailing preoccupation since
9/11, then the struggle against organized and
transnational crime will become a parallel
defining security theme of the twenty-first.
(Galeotti, 2005a: 1)
Geographers’ curiosity has led them to explore
many hidden aspects of the contemporary
world. We can recognize long-standing interests
in the illicit including an extensive geographies
of crime literature (Evans et al., 1992; Fyfe,
2001; McLaughlin, 2006), interest in informal
economies (Daniels, 2004; Leyshon et al.,
2003; Samers, 2005; Williams, 2004; 2006) and
contributions to cognate issues such as conflict,
geopolitical violence, terrorism, security and
intelligence (Ettlinger and Bosco, 2004; Flint,
2003; Gregory, 2004; Simons and Tucker,
2007). Beyond a shared interest in the illicit,
though, there is little to unify these literatures.
They are philosophically, epistemologically and
methodologically diverse and their primary
orientations are to their respective subdisci-
plines (broadly, social, economic and political
geography) rather than to the wider realm within
which their objects of study are located. Thus,
we are yet to see any substantive reflections
on the ‘geographies of the illicit’.
One aspect of the illicit that appears some-
what underrepresented within geographical lit-
eratures, and those of social science more
generally (Castells, 2000: 171; Dick, 2009), is
organized criminality. For example, the long-
standing geographies-of-crime literature has
Corresponding author:Tim Hall, University of Gloucestershire, Francis CloseHall, Swindon Road, Cheltenham GL50 4AZ, UK.Email: [email protected]
Progress in Human Geography37(3) 366–385
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been overwhelmingly concerned with crime at
the local scale (McLaughlin, 2006). It has said
little about those crimes that are more opaque
or operate at broader scales. Geographers of
crime, then, lag someway behind critical crim-
inologists in their discussions of organized
criminality as well as other ‘global’ crimes such
as state, corporate and environmental crime.
Further, within work on informal economies the
links with and distinctions from organized crim-
inality have only been briefly considered (see
Daniels, 2004; Samers, 2005). Similarly,
despite evidence of an enduring terrorism-
organized crime nexus (Glenny, 2008a; Lee,
2008; Madsen, 2009: 57–76), links between
terrorism and organized criminal groups
(OCGs) are, at best, a peripheral concern of
recent work.
Quantitatively it would seem that organized
crime is comparable to other aspects of the illicit
that have received greater attention from geo-
graphers. Estimates of the global extent of
informal economies suggest they constitute
14–16% of GDP in some advanced countries,
over 40% in transitional economies and as high
as 77% in some developing countries (Daniels,
2004: 506). This compares to recent estimates
of 15–20% of global GDP that has been attrib-
uted to organized criminality, with strong skews
towards transitional and developing countries
where its contributions to national income have
been measured at 40–50% or higher (Dijk,
2007; Dunn, 1997; Glenny, 2008a). Further, it
has been argued by academics, policing, intelli-
gence and security agencies that transnational
organized crime represents a comparable threat
to that of terrorism (Carter, 1997: 146; Council
of Europe, 2001; Galeotti, 2005a: 1–2; Glenny,
2008b), although we should remember that law
enforcement agencies may present these threats
politically to some extent to secure resources
(Abraham and Schendel, 2005: 2; Hobbs,
1998: 139; Kleemans, 2008: 6; Lee, 2008:
336; Levi, 2002: 895; Woodiwiss, 2003:
21–22; Woodiwiss and Hobbs, 2009; Wright,
2006: 23). Furthermore, there is significant
overlap between organized criminality and
other illicit realms that geographers have
examined, such as prostitution (Hubbard,
1999), volume crime, for example through the
drugs trade (Rengert, 1996), and organized
retail theft, a significant source of terrorist
financing (Madsen, 2009: 57–61), and between
organized crime and informal economies, for
example in the cities of the South (Daniels,
2004; Weinstein, 2008). Mapped in this way,
organized crime can be seen as broadly com-
parable to and overlapping with volume crime,
informal economies and conflict, geopolitical
violence, terrorism and security.
There is a danger that discussing the illicit in
this way reifies it as a discrete ontological
realm. Rather, there is a wealth of literature tra-
cing the ways in which the licit and illicit are
intertwined within regions and through social,
economic and political practices (Castells,
2000; Hignett, 2005; Hill, 2005; Lintner,
2005; Nordstrom, 2007, 2009a: 75; Wilson,
2009), something we return to later. Thus the
illicit emerges as a presence, albeit largely unac-
knowledged, in many issues routinely analysed
by geographers. For example, we can plausibly
argue that licit economic activities constitute
only some of the dimensions of contemporary
globalization (Aas, 2007; Bhattacharyya,
2005; Brooks, 2012: 82; Glenny, 2008a; Nord-
strom, 2007; Abraham and Schendel, 2005;
Wilson, 2009; Zook, 2003: 1263). By limiting
the empirical foundations of geographical
research into contemporary globalization and
not acknowledging the presence of the illicit,
there is a danger of failing to capture globaliza-
tion in all of its complexities. Even recent
geographically informed examples of the ‘glo-
balization from below’ literature (see, for exam-
ple, Henry et al., 2002), which offer more
peopled, plural and relational readings of the
global economy than earlier, more abstract,
accounts, generally have little to say about illicit
activities. It is hence worth asking what are the
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implications, empirically certainly but theoreti-
cally/conceptually perhaps, of recognizing the
illicit as a trace within some substantive areas
of geographical inquiry. Weinstein (2008), in
an illuminating if rare case, for example,
focuses on the presence of OCGs, in the devel-
opment of Mumbai. Here, after arguing that
research into urban development has largely
failed to acknowledge the role of illicit and
informal actors and modes of governance, she
traces the symbiotic relationships between the
state and OCGs and the ways in which their
involvement shaped the regulatory context of
development in Mumbai (Weinstein, 2008). Put
simply, it would not be possible fully to under-
stand development here without recognizing the
role of OCGs. It is naive to imagine that this is
the only example. Indeed, Weinstein (2008:
25) also identifies a number of comparable
examples from other cities internationally
recorded across a diverse, multidisciplinary
literature.
While geographers have not ignored orga-
nized crime, it is yet to emerge as a substantive
research area within any of its subdisciplines.
There is a range of work by geographers that
touches upon organized criminality. Both
Rengert (1996) and Allen (2005) have produced
geographical analyses of the production, distri-
bution and consumption of illegal drugs. This
is significant in that they apply geographical
models traditionally applied to licit markets to
those of the illegal drug trade. It is disappointing
that this work has not been picked up in any
wider geographical project. Rengert’s work, for
example, is primarily cited in the criminological
literature, while Allen’s remains almost uncited
to date by geographers (though see Pereira,
2010). Further, Brown and Cloke (2004, 2007)
have called for geographers to engage with
financial corruption and illegal financial flows
as vital elements of a neoliberal global econ-
omy, but ones largely omitted from geogra-
phers’ accounts. This is complemented by
Swain et al.’s (2010) work on the ‘corruption
industry’ in the rise of neoliberalism in post-
soviet space and Brooks (2012) exploration of
corruption in the used car trade between Japan
and Mozambique. The latter highlights how
neoliberal discourses obfuscate corrupt prac-
tices in what is seen as a ‘development success’.
These are rare examples of economic geography
engaging with organized criminality as a series
of industries comparable in size to many in the
licit economy. Recognizing this, Hall (2010a,
2010b, 2012) has sought to forge a space for the
discussion of organized criminality within the
context of geography generally and economic
geography specifically.
The few other examples of geography’s
engagement with organized criminality include:
Hastings’ (2009) analysis of the relationship
between the sophistication of maritime piracy
attacks and levels of state failure; and a session
on the opium poppy, organized by Allison
Brown of the University of Massachusetts, at
the 2010 meeting of the Association of Ameri-
can Geographers. In addition, there are isolated
examples of work within migration research
that have focused on forced migration and traf-
ficking linked to organized criminality (see
Manzo, 2005; Samers, 2010). Finally, Craig
Martin’s (2010) ongoing PhD research into the
visibility of shipping lanes includes discussions
of Somali piracy.
So, in sum, we have an extensive, if uneven,
interest among geographers in the illicit gener-
ally and a diverse but patchy interest in orga-
nized criminality specifically. It is nonetheless
possible to trace an enduring, uneven and often
implicit interest in the spatial dimensions of
organized crime (see Hall, 2012). However,
we have only recently seen the beginnings of
any attempt explicitly to articulate a geographi-
cal perspective on organized crime (Hall,
2010a, 2010b, 2012) and to consider its implica-
tions for the extant literatures of organized
crime and for the subdisciplinary literatures of
human geography. This review builds on these
beginnings and addresses its implications with
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specific reference to the literatures of geography
and spatialized readings of contemporary
globalization.
II Definitions and discourses oforganized crime
Organized crime often attracts powerful ima-
gery frequently at odds with a more complex yet
parochial empirical reality (Hobbs, 1998). This
is true for both cultural discourses and attempts
to produce definitions of organized crime,
which has long been acknowledged as a con-
tested concept eluding easy definition (Levi,
2002; Madsen, 2009; Maltz, 1976; Wright,
2006). Despite this acknowledgement, a num-
ber of definitions have emerged within the crim-
inological literature and from official sources
that have sought to identify ‘essential’ (Levi,
2002: 880) structural or behavioural character-
istics. For example, Albanese argues that orga-
nized crime is ‘a continuing criminal
enterprise that rationally works to profit from
illicit activities that are often in great public
demand. Its continuing existence is maintained
through the use of force, threats, monopoly con-
trol, and/or the corruption of public officials’
(Albanese, 2005: 10; see also Calderoni, 2011;
Madsen, 2009; Wright, 2006: 2–14).
However, attempts to define organized crime
in this way have provoked critical reactions
from scholars who have raised empirical, epis-
temic, ideological and ontological concerns.
Organized crime is an empirically complex,
diverse phenomenon. It has been argued that
there is greater diversity within organized crime
than between organized crime and other forms
of crime, raising the question of the validity of
the term (Levi, 2002: 887). Organized crime is
also dependent upon numerous connections to
and overlaps with licit society, for example
through the laundering of money through appar-
ently licit businesses and financial institutions.
Further, the identities of actors, and indeed
activities, connected to organized crime are
only rarely categorically criminal (Nordstrom,
2007). Thus delimiting boundaries between the
criminal and non-criminal is problematic
empirically and ontologically (Aas, 2007; Abra-
ham and Schendel, 2005; Bhattacharyya, 2005;
Glenny, 2008a; Wilson, 2009). While acknowl-
edging that the concept has been subject to a
degree of discursive ‘Americanization’, we can
also recognize international differences in defi-
nitions of organized crime (Woodiwiss, 2003;
Woodiwiss and Hobbs, 2009). Further, orga-
nized crime has been examined from a number
of different epistemic and official perspectives,
all of which emphasize different aspects. While
some conceptualize organized crime as a set of
illicit economic activities (Carter, 1997; Dick,
2009; Ruggerio, 2009; Smith, 1980), others see
it more in terms of social organization (Albini,
1971; Ianni and Ianni, 1972; Lombardo,
1997). These differences are reflected in the dif-
ferential emphasis on the ‘essential characteris-
tics’ that underpin various definitions of
organized crime.
Some scholars, in their critiques, have recog-
nized the rhetorical power of definitions within
policy and legislation. It has been argued, for
example, that prevailing definitions perpetuate
a series of ‘false discontinuities’ (Reuter and
Rubinstein, 1978; Smith, 1980, in Levi, 2002:
881) which provide discursive mappings of nor-
mality and organized criminality. These are pre-
dicated on the location of the latter as external to
‘normal’ society, either through versions of an
‘alien conspiracy thesis’ or the deployment of
cold war or gangster narratives (Hobbs, 1998,
2001; Madsen, 2009; Woodiwiss and Hobbs,
2009) which suppress suggestions of contact
and interdependencies between these two
realms. Alternatively, ‘false discontinuities’ are
maintained through definitions and official
discourses that identify sets of ‘essential charac-
teristics’ derived wholly from the activities and
characteristics of ‘illicit’ actors, while over-
looking empirically similar, and potentially
more serious, activities carried out by
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apparently ‘licit’ actors, including corporate
crime, state crime and the more opaque aspects
of business and state practice (Aas, 2007; Cribb,
2009; Nordstrom, 2007, 2009a: 80; Smith,
1980; Tilly, 1985).
We therefore have, rather than unproble-
matic definitions of organized crime, elements
of wider discursive formations that have
shaped the criminalization and policing of var-
ious actors and practices. These have drawn
sustained criticism from scholars who locate
practices typically defined as organized crime
as part of the economic mainstream rather than
seeing them only as the actions of miscreants:
transnational organized crime is not [to be]
exclusively identified with the illegal activities
of notorious large criminal syndicates. Rather
. . . transnational crime may well transcend
conventional activities and mingle with entre-
preneurial and, at times, governmental
deviance. (Ruggiero, 2009: 119)
This paper aims to address the lacuna in geo-
graphical work around organized crime. It does
this while recognizing the difficulties of neatly
defining and delimiting exactly what constitutes
organized crime. It has sympathy with those
scholars who see the distinctions between what
are conventionally defined as organized crime
and many of the opaque practices of businesses
and states as ones of degree rather than type.
However, for the sake of analytical focus, it
examines activities that are typically, and within
official discourses, included within typologies
of organized criminality (Albanese, 2005: 10).
This is because it is argued that they form an
empirically significant set of economic activi-
ties that are largely overlooked in geographical
discussions of the contemporary global econ-
omy. This can be seen as part of an emergent
effort by geographers to make visible opaque
economic activities of all kinds, including those
of businesses and states (Brown and Cloke,
2007; Cook, 2012).
III A global overview
The activities of OCGs form extensive, integral
elements of the global economy. Although there
is debate about the significance of organized
crime (Madsen, 2009: 81–82), most estimates
claim that it constitutes roughly 15–20% of glo-
bal economic activity (Galeotti, 2005a: 1; see
also Bhattacharyya, 2005; Glenny, 2008a;
Napoleoni, 2003; Nordstrom, 2009a: 75, 2010:
163). The production and distribution of illegal
drugs represents 50–70% of the income of
OCGs (Galeotti, 2005a: 1; Glenny, 2008a:
262) and is equivalent to 8% of world trade,
similar in size to the textile industry (Moynagh
and Worsley, 2008: 176). The illegal movement
of people across international borders repre-
sents the most rapidly growing source of income
for OCGs (Madsen, 2009). This includes the
smuggling of people who pay agents to trans-
port them and the forced trafficking of people
who are deceived, coerced or kidnapped,
although the distinctions are often complex,
shifting and difficult to locate precisely (West-
marland, 2010: 112–113). Illegal flows of
people move predominantly from the global
South and are underpinned by combinations of
worsening global asymmetries, social and polit-
ical unrest, cultural traditions of fostering,
migration and remittance that are exploited by
smugglers and traffickers, the hardening of
international borders and great public demand
in the North (Aas, 2007: 36; Bhattacharyya,
2005: 159, 174; Madsen, 2009: 43; Manzo,
2005; Passas, 2001; Scott-Clark and Levy,
2008). While the sexual exploitation of women
and children for profit has tended to dominate
academic discussion of smuggled and trafficked
individuals (Westmarland, 2010: 113), they
actually fulfil a wide range of labour functions
across many legal and illegal sectors. Globally,
it is estimated that four million people are
moved illegally each year across international
borders generating revenues of US$10 billion
(Galeotti, 2005a: 3; Madsen, 2009: 45; Wright,
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2006: 98), although some estimates are consid-
erably higher.
While media and cultural discourses tend to
be disproportionately drawn to a small number
of ‘rock star’ trades (Nordstrom, 2011: 12), such
as those in drugs and people, OCGs are involved
in a host of other illegal activities. These include
extensive trades in licit commodities. For exam-
ple, cigarette trafficking, to avoid duty or
exploit tax differentials, is a significant source
of income for OCGs. Between 1996 and 2003
cigarette trafficking cost the British treasury
£15 billion in lost revenue (Hornsby and Hobbs,
2007: 553; Nordstrom, 2007: 23). Further, it
played a major role in financing the Balkans
conflict, an event of global geopolitical signifi-
cance (Glenny, 2008a). The complicity of cigar-
ette manufacturers in this trade is widely
acknowledged (Glenny, 2008a; Hornsby and
Hobbs, 2007: 553; Madsen, 2009). Other
notable activities of OCGs include weapons
trafficking, trade in counterfeit goods (which
alone accounts for roughly 7% of world trade,
two-thirds of which originates in China:
Glenny, 2008a; Phillips, 2005), trafficking of a
multitude of other licit and illicit goods, as well
as the provision and control of illicit services
including prostitution and gambling, cyber-
crime, environmental crimes, maritime piracy,
robbery, extortion, art crime and corruption
(Aas, 2007; Albanese, 2005; Castells, 2000:
177–183; Glenny, 2011; Madsen, 2009; Neal,
2010; Walters, 2010).
All OCGs depend upon money laundering,
the passing of illicit finance via circuitous
routes through the licit economy, to create the
illusion of licit income. Money laundering and
other illicit financial flows are significant in
their global extent and play important roles in
the maintenance of the global financial system
generally (Brown and Cloke, 2007: 319;
Deneault, 2007; Dick, 2009; Hampton and Levi,
1999; Madsen, 2009). Estimating the global
extent of laundered finance is difficult given its
aim is to obfuscate illicit origins. While some
estimates suggest that it could represent 10%of global GDP (Naı́m, 2005, in Nordstrom,
2007: 169), more sceptical assessments suggest
figures of between 2% and 5% (Levi, 2002: 879;
Reuter and Truman, 2004). Money laundering is
not merely a ‘paper’ crime but has significant
material consequences and has been implicated
in national economic crises such as the crash of
the RSA Rand in 2001 (Nordstrom, 2007: 168).
Organized crime undoubtedly makes signifi-
cant contributions to regional development,
particularly in parts of the global South lacking
access to alternative routes (Bhattacharyya,
2005: 118; Dijk, 2007: 50; Goodhand, 2009;
Lee, 2008: 345; Nordstrom, 2007, 2010: 175,
2011: 11). However, others have argued, citing
violence, state capture and the diversion of
resources from the legitimate economy, that the
net developmental impacts of organized crime
are inevitably negative (Bhattacharyya, 2005:
96; Dijk, 2007: 51–53; Glenny, 2008a: 291).
Given this lack of consensus, there is scope for
greater assessment of the roles of organized
crime within regional development and its
complex relationships to state-making and
development outcomes (Madsen, 2009; Passas,
2001; Weinstein, 2008; Wright, 2006: 144).
Undoubtedly, contemporary globalization is
having a transformative effect on the under-
world (Galeotti, 2005a: 6), creating both
specific opportunities and more general condi-
tions favourable to OCGs, which in turn are
making the underworld a more plural, interna-
tional terrain (Aas, 2007; Abraham and Schen-
del, 2005; Bhattacharyya, 2005; Madsen,
2009; Passas, 2001; Weinstein, 2008). Principal
among these conditions are tensions between
liberalization and regulation of a globalized
economy. A lack of effective regulatory
oversight has made activities such as trafficking
and money laundering easier for OCGs (Bhatta-
charyya, 2005; Brown and Cloke, 2007; Levi,
2002; Nordstrom, 2007; Strange, 1998).
Further, many empirical outcomes of contem-
porary globalization produce conditions
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favourable to OCGs. For example, the intensifi-
cation of social and economic inequalities
reinforces terrains of difference that OCGs can
exploit through, for example, drug production
and people smuggling and trafficking (Aas,
2007: 18). For Passas (2001), these ‘crimino-
genic asymmetries’ underpin major illicit flows
that run predominantly from the global South.
Others point to the persistence of failed and
transitional states and the role of Northern inter-
vention in sustaining these (Goodhand, 2009),
increases in cross-border trade, the expansion
of internet commerce, a massive oversupply of
labour in cities of the South, providing a poten-
tial pool of labour for OCGs, an increase in
demand for illicit products and services in the
global North and the hegemony of statism
within law enforcement responses, all as sus-
taining the ongoing expansion of organized
criminal activity (Glenny, 2008a: 30; Moynagh
and Worsley, 2008: 179–181; Wright, 2006).
However, it is not all one-way traffic. The liber-
alization and globalization of the Indian econ-
omy, for example, actually led to a decline in
the demand for products and services of OCGs,
formerly illicit goods now being more readily
available. This caused many Indian OCGs to
become more embedded within processes such
as urban development (Weinstein, 2008).
IV Licit/illicit spaces
The difficulties of separating the licit and illicit,
empirically and ontologically, within a variety
of contexts are axiomatic within the critical lit-
eratures on organized crime (Aas, 2007: 125;
Bhattacharyya, 2005: 63–64; Nordstrom,
2007; Wilson, 2009; Wright, 2006: 52). Some
writers, arguing that the illicit is an inherent
quality of seemingly licit political and eco-
nomic systems, have drawn on Tilly (1985) and
Smith (1980) who have proposed, respectively,
not categorical distinctions between licit and
illicitness, but continuums of state practice and
war making, which encompass organized
criminality, and enterprises that span the licit/
illicit spectrum (Wilson, 2009: 44; Wright,
2006: 56). Others recognize the importance of
specific historical moments, arguing that, while
illicit actors clearly benefit from developments
within licit political and economic systems,
they have also played key facilitating roles
in their development (Aas, 2007: 12, 123;
Bhattacharyya, 2005: 74). Some authors have
explored the roles of organized crime within
major historical-political processes. Woodiwiss
(2001) has scrutinized the relationship between
organized crime and the formation of modern
America, highlighting both confrontation and
collaboration between government and OCGs.
Elsewhere, Bhattacharyya (2005: 119) has dis-
cussed the role of surpluses from the illegal
drugs trade in the rise of capitalism historically.
Aas (2007: 11) also highlights recent develop-
ments, including the roles of organized crimin-
ality in weakening state sovereignty and
deregulating national economies through the
privatization of state assets in transitional
economies.
The literature is also replete with examples of
licit actors benefiting from organized criminal-
ity (Schendel, 2005: 60–61; Weinstein, 2008).
These include ‘instrumental benefits from the
drug trade for many legitimate businesses and
state interests’ (Bhattacharyya, 2005: 99), links
between illicit activities such as drug dealing,
counterfeiting and money laundering and the
licit economy in cities of the South (Daniels,
2004: 506–507), benefits to financial institu-
tions from illicit financial flows (Brown and
Cloke, 2007; Madsen, 2009: 110) and benefits
of people smuggling to market economies (Aas,
2007: 40). In such circumstances, and coupled
with significant consumer demand, we may see
public and even (tacit) state toleration of
organized crime (Bhattacharyya, 2005: 98;
Hornsby and Hobbs, 2007). For example, the
financial benefits of people smuggling and traf-
ficking to Fujian province in China have led to it
receiving the tacit approval of provincial
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government (Glenny, 2008a: 366–367). Thus,
while these activities are formally illicit, under
certain circumstances they may be viewed as
socially licit (Abraham and Schendel, 2005;
Nordstrom, 2010: 173). These examples per-
haps hint at a more fundamental distinction
between law and policing, whereby some activ-
ities, although formally illegal, are routinely
overlooked by governments and law enforce-
ment agencies. This ambiguity is at the heart
of Carolyn Nordstrom’s exploration of the
centrality of the ‘extra-legal’ to economic and
state practices:
Countries may formally decry extra-legal
practices, and some may be genuine in their
denunciations. But in terms of a nation’s sheer
monetary bottom line, such activities bring in
cash that girds the viability of the state. These
activities can yield hundreds of millions of dol-
lars yearly for a single country. (Nordstrom,
2010: 173)
There is a spatial contingency to ambiguities
around the licit/illicit divide. In spaces that elude
the sovereign gaze of the state or across which it
is uncertain or contested, the formal distinctions
between licit and illicitness become problematic,
even meaningless. These include offshore finan-
cial centres (OFCs) (Deneault, 2007: 265; Hamp-
ton and Levi, 1999: 647), transborder economies
and trade routes over which the state has
struggled to extend its sovereignty (Abraham and
Schendel, 2005; Nordstrom, 2007: 21–24; Wil-
son, 2009) and parts of the global South where
the rejection of Northern models of economic
development, legal statutes and cultural norms
through acts such as drugs production and arms
manufacture is seen as a form of resistance
(Aning, 2007; Bhattacharyya, 2005: 120). How-
ever, Cameron’s (2008) work on fiscal geogra-
phies reminds us that the contingencies of the
state are more fundamental and are observable
even within its most central processes.
These ontological uncertainties are com-
pounded within instances of ‘criminal
sovereignty’, ambiguous practices of actors
from both sides of the licit/illicit designation
(Cribb, 2009: 8). Examples include OCGs tak-
ing on some of the functions and characteristics
of states. This has been observed in many
geographical contexts and historical periods,
often where the institutions of the state and the
rule of law are weak or where there is public
ambivalence towards the state (Brophy, 2008;
Costa and Schulmeister, 2007; Cribb, 2009;
Goodhand, 2009; Hastings, 2009; Hesse, 2011;
Wilson, 2009). In some cases there are long-
standing interrelationships between OCGs and
the political institutions of regions where, at
times, OCGs enjoy a semi-legitimate status, as
in the case of the Yakuza of Japan (Glenny,
2008a, 2008b; Hill, 2005; Paoli, 2005; Wein-
stein, 2008; Wilson, 2009). While these rela-
tionships are typically painted in terms of
corruption and the penetration of the state, this
overlooks the roles that OCGs can play as proxy
agents of governance, often extending informal
governance into realms that states find hard to
reach such as borderlands, prison systems and
the underworld generally (Galeotti, 2005b;
Glenny, 2008a; Goodhand, 2009; Ruggiero,
2009). This suggests a political pluralism
that has largely eluded western political theory
(Wilson, 2009: 17–19).
Finally, despite their normative influence
over definitions of criminality (Ruggiero,
2009: 122; Tombs and Whyte, 2010: 154), the
literature records many instances of states and
corporations behaving in ways that are empiri-
cally similar to OCGs or that are formally
criminal. These include state and corporate
crime (Dick, 2009; Hornsby and Hobbs, 2007;
Lee, 2008; Madsen, 2009; Perl, 2005; Ruggiero,
2009; Tombs and Whyte, 2010; Wright, 2006),
identified connections between states, corpora-
tions and organized crime or their direct invol-
vement in it (Bhattacharyya, 2005: 112; Dick,
2009: 110; Glenny, 2008a: 16, 37, 99; Nord-
strom, 2009b: 77–79, 2011: 11; Ruggiero,
2009: 119), and the widespread use of the
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opacity inherent in the global economy by cor-
porations to reach markets, to avoid duty or to
evade regulatory gazes. For example, it is
thought that one-fifth of goods transported by
licit corporations goes undeclared (Nordstrom,
2007: 172). While such criminality tends to be
‘systematically screened out’ by the criminal
justice system and underreported in the media
(Tombs and Whyte, 2010: 154), it is beginning
to be viewed increasingly as forms of organized
crime (Ruggiero, 1996, in Wright, 2006: 66).
These complex ambiguities around licit and illi-
citness illustrate the fallacy of seeing organized
crime as restricted to a discrete ontological
realm beyond ‘normal’ society (Woodiwiss,
2003). Rather, it is, in numerous ways, part of
the economic, social and political mainstream
(Brown and Cloke, 2007: 305, 318; Cribb,
2009; Lavezzi, 2008: 218; Nordstrom, 2007:
52–53, 2009a: 80; Scalia, 2010; Wilson, 2009;
Wright, 2006: 54), highlighting the importance
of geographers including it in their mappings
of the processes of contemporary globalization.
V Space, scale, networks andorganized crime
Explorations of the geographies of organized
crime, its distribution across space and concen-
tration within regions, are at best implicit and
patchy aspects of the literature (see Carter,
1997; Hignett, 2005; Siegel, 2003). A substan-
tial proportion of this literature comprises
regional case studies (see Galeotti, 2005c, and
the journal Global Crime, for example).
Typically, these draw upon the endogenous
characteristics of regions in constructing their
explanatory frameworks (see Hall, 2010b: 8)
and rarely allude to the international and
comparative in their discussions. This is some-
thing yet to emerge within the literature, but see
Hall (2010b) for a rudimentary analysis. Such
case studies tend to stress the specific and con-
tingent rather than contributing, explicitly at
least, to the construction of general explanations
for the patterns they observe. Further, such
regional analysis appears somewhat out of step
with calls for relational methodologies more
appropriate for a global age and networked phe-
nomena such as transnational organized crime
(Aas, 2007; Law and Urry, 2004).
By contrast, some authors have constructed
explanations at the transnational or global scale.
Passas (2001: 23), for example, has identified
structural inequalities at the global scale ‘in the
spheres of politics, culture, the economy and the
law’ as underpinning numerous illegal flows run-
ning from the South to the North. These ‘crim-
inogenic asymmetries’ echo the economic and
regulatory asymmetries routinely exploited by
licit corporations. Elsewhere, Castells’ (2000)
account of organized crime within Russia’s chao-
tic transition to capitalism rests predominantly on
structural factors such as institutional and regula-
tory failures and their exploitation. Interestingly,
his account of the Colombian cocaine industry is
more attuned to local factors and contingencies,
although this has also been criticized for its ten-
dency to see greater structural coherence than
actually exists empirically (Kenney, 2007).
Reactions to this work have been mixed and have
included both critique and a counter-current of
empirical work that has undercut the transna-
tional rhetoric within some literature. Much crit-
icism of structural, transnational accounts
revolves around a supposed lack of ‘nuance to
local conditions and historic contexts’ (Aas,
2007: 125). This has gone beyond issues of reso-
lution though to question the meaningfulness of
analysis constructed at the transnational scale.
As the analytical magnification is increased, the
structural certainties within these accounts seem
to dissolve. What emerges in their stead is a
series of ‘micro-practices and associations that
‘‘while often illegal in a formal sense, are not dri-
ven by a structural logic of organization and uni-
fied purpose’’ (Abraham and Schendel, 2005: 4)’
(Aas, 2007: 125).
The empirical richness and conceptual pur-
chase revealed at the local scale are most
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apparent in the work of Dick Hobbs (1998,
2004; Hobbs and Dunnighan, 1998). Hobbs pro-
vides detailed ethnographies of organized crime
as it is played out within specific locales in the
UK, charting variations in the nature, organiza-
tion and activities of OCGs and linking them to
the varying socio-economic contexts within
which they are located. He cites factors such
as the social make-up of neighbourhoods and
their tendencies for either stability or transience,
local housing policy and the organization of the
formal economy as key influences on the nature
of OCGs within specific localities. He argues:
It is at the local level that organized crime
manifests itself as a tangible process of activ-
ity. However, research indicates that there also
exist enormous variations in local crime
groups . . . we found it possible to draw close
parallels between local patterns of immigra-
tion and emigration, local employment and
subsequent work and leisure cultures with var-
iations in organized crime groups. (Hobbs,
1998: 140)
This highlights a degree of nuance absent from
much organized crime literature. Despite the
innovation of Hobbs’ work, it is disappointing
to see that this perspective has yet to take a sig-
nificant hold within the empirical literatures of
organized crime resulting in any downward
shift in their scales of analysis.
Capturing multiscalar processes such as glo-
balization through any single scale of analysis
is an enduring issue within the social sciences.
Economic geography has recently been replete
with discussion questioning the efficacy of
single-scale approaches, mirroring wider dis-
cussions across the social sciences. However,
these debates seem to have gained relatively
little purchase within the literatures of crimin-
ology generally and organized crime specifi-
cally. A set of approaches labelled network
ontologies, seeking to transcend the scalar-
bind within which much social science
research finds itself, have been at the heart of
these recent debates (Boggs and Rantisi,
2003; Dicken et al., 2001; Murdoch, 1997,
1998; Sheppard, 2002; Wai-chung Yeung,
2005). Network ontologies ask us to think of
space not as a Euclidian phenomenon but as a
networked one, recognizing that processes in
space unfold not necessarily or exclusively as
a result of local conditions but rather through
networked interactions with distant places
(Henry et al., 2002; Sheppard: 2002: 319).
Although to date there are no substantive
explorations of the potentials of network ontolo-
gies within the empirical literatures of organized
crime, there are tentative suggestions of their
applicability (Hall, 2010b). Saviano, for exam-
ple, alludes to the networked nature of the global
criminal economy in his discussion of the Neapo-
litan Camorra OCG:
The Far East, as reporters like to call it. Far.
Extremely far. Practically unimaginable. Clos-
ing my eyes, I see kimonos, Marco Polo’s
beard, Bruce Lee kicking in midair. But in fact
this East is more closely linked to the port of
Naples than to any other place. There’s
nothing far about the East here. It should be
called the extremely near East, the least East.
Everything made in China is poured out here.
(Saviano, 2008: 4)
It would appear that dialogues between the
literatures of organized crime and those of
economic geography are now timely. They
demonstrate the potential to expand the empiri-
cal terrain of the latter and the conceptual and
methodological tool kit of the former.
VI An expanded economic terrain
Economic geographers have been at the fore-
front of attempts to produce spatialized readings
of the contemporary global economy. To date,
however, these have rested almost exclusively
on empirical foundations rooted in the licit
economy. This paper has argued that the econo-
mies within which OCGs are embedded are
neither ontologically nor empirically distinct
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to the licit economy but rather that there are con-
siderable overlaps and interconnections between
them. Acceptance of the global economy as this
somewhat expanded terrain raises, as yet largely
unexplored, questions about the abilities of pre-
vailing readings to speak across this terrain. It
is certainly not the case that geographers have
been blind to the diversity of spaces and their
economies within contemporary capitalism,
including those associated with illicit and crimi-
nal activities (see Hudson, 2005: 6). However,
this only emphasizes the unequal treatment
received by these spaces within geographical
research. Further, mapping geographical
research agendas across these spaces seems to
suggest a sense of their ontological separateness.
Relatively little research, for example, has been
located at the points where these spaces overlap.
How, then, might geographers approach the
study of the global economy as an expanded,
interconnected terrain and those aspects of it that
have received relatively little attention to date?
This section begins to explore this problematic.
It does so by outlining some key aspects (spatial-
ity, regulation, organization and flow) of eco-
nomic geographies as they apply to OCGs and
their activities. It provides a broad overview of
some key spatialities of the economies of orga-
nized crime, highlighting apparent differences
but also similarities across the licit/illicit conti-
nuum, and emphasizing issues that appear some-
what underplayed within geographical accounts
of the contemporary global economy. This is
intended as a first step in the scrutiny of prevail-
ing geographical models within the context of an
expanded, interconnected economic terrain and
in enlarging the empirical foundations of geogra-
phical research to encompass illicit economic
activities, such as those of OCGs, recognizing
their broader significance.
1 Spatiality
It is apparent that prevailing understandings of
the spatialities of the global economy refer
largely, or exclusively, to licit economic pro-
cesses. There exist to date few systematic
attempts by geographers to map its more
ambiguous or illicit dimensions. There is some
evidence of significant overlap between these
various types of economic process, for example,
China’s role as a centre of both licit and counter-
feit goods production (Chow, 2003; Phillips,
2005). However, we might suppose that there
are, equally, significant differences (Zook,
2003: 1277). Unexplored hypotheses include
explorations of the degrees of overlap and
divergence between licit and illicit economic
processes, and also the extent to which those
economic processes within which there is inher-
ent ambiguity align with the spatialities of licit
and/or illicit economic processes. If we wish our
understandings of the spatialities of the contem-
porary global economy to be reflective of its
wider dimensions, it is important to acknowl-
edge the partiality of existing models. For
example, while maps of the contemporary
global economy suggest that certain areas are
seemingly little touched by processes of
economic dynamism, many of these are signifi-
cant centres of criminal entrepreneurialism.
Indeed, it is often the very conditions that con-
demn these spaces to the periphery of the licit
economy that make them ideal locations for
organized criminal activity (Castells, 1996:
162, in Zook, 2003: 1263). Nordstrom has
argued that engaging with these alternative
spatialities may significantly affect the ways
in which ‘maps’ of the world economy are
understood:
What would the world map look like if extra-
legal networks . . . were charted in addition
to the boundaries of formally recognized
states? Would the whirls and eddies marking
the centres of economic gravity in the world
– and the attendant political power – produce
a far different constellation of identities,
nations and regions than that familiar from
textbooks? Would the hierarchy of national
economies, now ranked by GDP, look
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significantly different, with some of the haves
trading places with have-nots? (Nordstrom,
2011: 13)
2 Regulation
The question of regulation, or rather the eva-
sion of regulation, seems to be a key factor
driving the spatialities of a host of liminal and
illicit economic activities (Zook, 2003). Illicit
economic activities, generally, and certainly
those of OCGs, depend upon the ability to
evade the gazes of the state and international
law enforcement agencies. This is achieved in
many ways by creating or utilizing spaces
beyond these gazes. These include coca or
poppy fields in remote regions or those where
state sovereignty is absent, uncertain or con-
tested (Aas, 2007; Bhattacharyya, 2005; Cas-
tells, 2000; Nordstrom, 2007), shipping
containers whose volume overwhelms the abil-
ity of ports to meet inspection targets (Glenny,
2008a: 389; Nordstrom, 2007: 160–161), flats,
houses, warehouses, laboratories and industrial
units used to store trafficked goods or produce
illegal drugs (Glenny, 2008a; Hornsby and
Hobbs, 2007; Saviano, 2008), OFCs (Brown
and Cloke, 2007; Deneault, 2007; Hampton
and Levi, 1999; Hudson, 2000; Roberts,
1995) and even differential spaces within the
fiscal and regulatory geographies of states
(Cameron, 2008: 1151; Unger and Rawlings,
2008). However, the exploitation of this opa-
city is not restricted to criminal entrepreneurs.
Rather, it is exploited by both licit and illicit
actors alike. OFCs, for example, are vital com-
ponents of the wider global financial architec-
ture (Brown and Cloke, 2007; Deneault, 2007;
Hampton and Levi, 1999; Roberts, 1995),
within which 18% of global GDP equivalent
is held in offshore funds (Dick, 2009: 98) and
through which 40% of world trade in goods and
65% in hard currency passes (Nordstrom,
2007: 65; 172). Further, it is wrong to think
of this opacity as only the product of the
actions of a handful of rogue island micro-
states. Rather, the creation of financial instru-
ments offering banking privacy lies at the heart
of global financial development and the pursuit
of mobile capital:
even larger industrialized OECD countries
started to create ‘islands’ of relaxed regulation
within their own jurisdictions to attract glob-
ally mobile capital, regardless of its origins.
For example, London and New York were
separated off from the mainstream British and
US economies where investors were offered
anonymous investment opportunities in the
bond and stock markets . . . These centres
shared one aspect in common: they partitioned
regulatory standards between domestic resi-
dent capital and non-resident international
capital where another set of rules applied.
(Unger and Rawlings, 2008: 348–349)
That this has made these and other similar
economies attractive destinations for laundering
illicit finance is well documented. In 2001,
for example, a French Parliamentary report
‘identified The City of London as a key centre
for money laundering and terrorist financing’
(Unger and Rawlings, 2008: 335). This suggests
an inherent opacity and regulatory complexity
within and across the global economy (Brown
and Cloke, 2007; Cook, 2012; Nordstrom,
2009a) which is exploited by both licit corpora-
tions and criminal entrepreneurs in empirically
similar ways (Madsen, 2009: 112; Wright,
2006). Thus, despite regulatory discourses stres-
sing transparency, it is equally this opacity that
appears to be characteristic of the global econ-
omy, but one that has gained little purchase
within geographical accounts of contemporary
globalization.
The issue of regulation is further complicated
by the movement and interconnection that char-
acterizes the contemporary global economy.
Social and economic goods moving along com-
modity chains typically pass through a variety
of regulatory spaces which fundamentally
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impacts on their formal legal and social status as
they do. Goods may slip in and out of legality
and licitness along their journeys from produc-
tion to market (Abraham and Schendel, 2005:
16). Further, Zook (2003: 1276) has shown how
industries such as the online adult industry can
evade regulatory censure through a form of
arbitrage by connecting different elements of
the industry across a range of spatially distribu-
ted regulatory spaces. Contents that might
contravene regulation in one jurisdiction can
be hosted in more welcoming regulatory envir-
onments in ways that do not affect their
consumption. This reflects the regulatory asym-
metries exploited by actors engaged in illicit
financial activities, most notably money laun-
dering. While regulatory environments, be they
legal or social, are territorially bound, the goods
they seek to regulate are increasingly mobile
and relational. Licit- and illicitness are not abso-
lute, fixed qualities. Rather, they are contingent
and provisional upon the interplay of regulation,
space, movement and connection.
3 Organization
The organizational forms of OCGs are, in part, a
reflection of the economic contexts of post-
Fordist globalization within which they operate.
That there is a strong correlation between condi-
tions in licit and illicit economies is now well
established (Calderoni, 2011; Hobbs, 1998;
Hobbs and Dunnighan, 1998; Lavezzi, 2008;
Scalia, 2010; Weinstein, 2008). However,
despite this correlation, there seem to be some
structural differences between the organization
of the licit and organized criminal economies.
While large multinational corporations are
recognized as key agents shaping the contempo-
rary licit global economy, they appear to have
few equivalent OCGs. OCGs tend to be small,
flexible, often unstable and horizontally net-
worked rather than hierarchical and monolithic
(Duyne, 1993; Glenny, 2008a; Hignett, 2005;
Hobbs, 1998, 2001; Hornsby and Hobbs,
2007; Kenney, 2007; Kleemans and van de
Bunt, 1999; Kupatadze, 2007; Levi, 2002:
907; Madsen, 2009). This is not to suggest a
sharp, clear divide between licit aspects of the
global economy characterized by the presence
of large multinational corporations and illicit
aspects which are driven by small, flexible
OCGs. As noted above, the divide between the
licit and illicit within contemporary globaliza-
tion is blurred, and it is clear that multinational
corporations are connected to illicit globaliza-
tions. Those large cartels that do exist tend to
be involved in extensive cross-border trafficking,
but seem to have relatively limited, often vulner-
able, spatial monopolies and rely on networking
with other OCGs internationally (Levi, 2002).
This suggests that the organizational models of
the global economy with which we are familiar
are not universal, and that there are distinctions
in the ways in which these economies are orga-
nized but that they are not entirely distinct. These
are discussions that have encroached little into
the literatures of economic geography.
The increasingly international terrain across
which OCGs operate has affected the bases
upon which they are organized. Broadly, terri-
tory and ethnicity are now less significant
foundations for the organization of criminal
activities (Galeotti, 2005a, 2005b; Hobbs,
1998, 2001, 2004; Kleemans and van de Bunt,
1999; Serious Organised Crime Agency,
2006). However, while geographical differ-
ences between gangs are declining (Nordstrom,
2007), they have not disappeared entirely. There
is evidence of enduring distinctions in the struc-
tures, organization, activities and cultures of
OCGs from different regions (Aning, 2007;
Davidson, 1997; Glenny, 2008a; Hastings,
2009; Hignett, 2005; Hobbs, 2004; Hobbs and
Dunnighan, 1998; Lintner, 2005; Lombardo,
1997; Scalia, 2010). Others have recognized
that, despite their international orientation, root-
edness within specific locales is still vital to the
identity and activities of OCGs (Castells, 2000:
183; Grascia, 2004; Hill, 2005; Kleemans and
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van de Bunt, 1999; Madsen, 2009; Scalia, 2010;
van de Bunt and Siegel, 2003: 4). However,
there has been little analysis of the significance
of these regional differences and their influence
on the nature of organized crime within regions.
While Albini et al. (1997: 154) have argued that
these differences are superficial and have little
tangible effect upon the shape of the organized
crime landscape, this stands in contrast to work
from economic geography which utilizes the
concept of regional and national business cul-
tures within its analysis of firm behaviour (see
Coe et al., 2007: 321–334). Clearly, this is an
issue to which a geographically informed anal-
ysis of organized crime could contribute.
4 Flow
A further aspect of contemporary economic pro-
cesses about which the literature has said little is
the relationships between economic flows and
the spaces through which they pass. For exam-
ple, while commodity chain analysis has spoken
of the organization of economic flows and their
‘local development outcomes in those areas
where the chain touches down’ (Bair and Ger-
effi, 2001, in Mackinnon and Cumbers, 2007:
150), it has been largely silent about those
spaces through which the chain passes. Despite
the prevalence of relational ontologies within
economic geography and calls across the social
sciences for post-statist perspectives (Aas,
2007; Law and Urry, 2004; Nordstrom, 2007;
Schendel, 2005), this is still something that has
produced little grounded analysis. However, the
flows associated with organized crime reveal
the fallacy of considering them as disembodied,
ontologically separate from their spaces. Schen-
del (2005: 58) is critical of prevailing represen-
tations of economic flows which tend to
overemphasize this sense of disembodiedness.
His work on transborder societies reveals eco-
nomic flows to be more embedded in the spaces
through which they pass than prevailing
accounts acknowledge:
Organizational studies of illegal flows rarely
provide details of how people cooperate to get
goods or persons to the borderland, across the
border and on to consumers . . . And yet, the
organization of illegal flows is known to take
on particular forms in borderlands and to adapt
to local and forever changing conditions there.
(Schendel, 2005: 51)
This points to a range of relationships beyond
the strictly rational/economic that are shaping
these flows and their emergent economic geo-
graphies. These include, as well as capitalist
relations within and between OCGs, feudal,
kinship, ethnic and clan reciprocities (Brooks,
2012: 83), which may themselves be trans-
formed in turn by these flows.
The most high-profile consequences of ille-
gal economic flows are the outbursts of violence
in regions such as northern Mexico and the
Balkans, key transit zones for the cigarette,
cocaine and heroin trades (Brophy, 2008;
Glenny, 2008a; Vulliamy, 2008). The literature
also records examples of illicit flows affecting
more subtle sociopolitical transformations
across space. For example, Bhattacharyya
(2005: 117–118) reflects on the grounded reali-
ties of the illicit globalizations of the drugs
trade. She discusses the transportation of heroin
from Afghanistan to Europe along the old ‘Silk
Road’ utilizing traditional forms of transport.
Here the transport of these commodities
becomes embedded in the lives of those in the
regions through which they (slowly) pass. She
argues:
this is the manner of a global integration that
touches a range of ordinary lives across non-
technological and barely developed localities
and provides employment for some of those
who have little access to other kinds of work
in the global economy. (Bhattacharyya, 2005:
117)
Goodhand’s (2009: 22) analysis of the Afghan
opium industry also reveals its need for quasi-
stable socio-economic infrastructure to sustain
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drug trafficking routes which has been instru-
mental in bringing forms of development and
state formation to the country’s peripheral
borderlands.
The complexities of the relationships
between flows and their spaces are revealed in
Nordstrom’s ethnographies of the global econ-
omy within which she travels the ‘pathways of
global crime’ (2007: XV, 2009a, 2009b, 2010,
2011). They reveal the trade route as a transfor-
mative force across space. She points out, for
example, that trade routes carve out areas of
‘de-facto governance’ (Nordstrom, 2007: 42)
particularly within regions with uneven or
uncertain state sovereignty. Others have argued
that the forms of governance emergent along
trade routes can imagine transborder units that
are more meaningful than those imposed
through the geographies of state boundaries
(Goodhand, 2009; Nordstrom, 2007; Schendel,
2005; Vulliamy, 2008). This ‘everyday transna-
tionality’ (Schendel, 2005: 55) is captured in
Vulliamy’s representation of the US-Mexico
border as a region he calls ‘Amexica’:
So the borderland is a country in its own right,
which belongs to both the US and Mexico, yet
neither. I call this country – 2,000 miles long
and about 100 miles wide, from the Pacific to
the Gulf – ‘Amexica’. And now, because of the
flood tide of narcotics running through it,
Amexica is a battlefield, still as charismatic
and irresistible as it is cruel and terrifying.
(Vulliamy, 2008: 28–29)
Illicit (and licit) trade routes then engender
their own political, as well as economic and
social, geographies which, in an increasingly
interconnected world, are worthy of greater
attention by geographers.
VII Conclusion
This review has suggested that discussions of
contemporary processes such as globalization,
regulation and economic liberalization which
admit only licit actors offer both empirically
and conceptually limited readings of these
processes. Much has been made within the liter-
ature, rightly, about the parallels between licit
and illicit actors under processes, such as these.
While this adds nuance and empirical reach to
discussions of these and other processes, it also
carries with it the danger of assuming that illicit
actors and their activities can be easily accom-
modated within existing models of the contem-
porary global economy and its processes.
However, as we have seen, parallels between
licit and illicit actors are not the whole story.
Despite the significant parallels outlined within
this and other work, licit and illicit economic
actors are not entirely reducible to this equiva-
lence. While there are undoubtedly strong paral-
lels between them, there also appear to be
important differences.
For example, while globalization and eco-
nomic liberalization are generally equated with
the expansion of economic opportunities, both
for licit and illicit actors, there might be
instances where they actually lead to declines
in demand for illicit goods and services. We
have seen in the Indian economy, where OCGs
circumvented economic restrictions through
smuggling illicit products such as alcohol, gold
and certain consumer goods, that following
liberalization such products became more freely
available, damaging the income streams of
many Indian OCGs (Weinstein, 2008: 25). This
example highlights the more general point that
licit and illicit actors may not necessarily
respond in the same ways to changing economic
and political contexts. Analysis that explicitly
considers the reactions of both licit and illicit
actors to these changing circumstances within
specific geographic contexts is rare, but offers
a potentially profitable avenue of future
research.
Even among illicit actors, it would seem that
there will be a range of responses to changing
economic circumstances. The responses of
OCGs to falling demand for their products and
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services, or changes within the economic and
political contexts within which they operate
more generally, will vary considerably accord-
ing to their histories, nature, structures and the
nature of these contexts. In some instances
OCGs may become more embedded within
state processes, such as urban development, as
has been observed in Mumbai, for example
(Weinstein, 2008). Elsewhere, where such
opportunities are not available or where groups
lack appropriate expertise or political connec-
tions, they may become more predatory and
increasingly involved in activities such as
cybercrime (Glenny, 2011).
As we have seen, the responses of OCGs to
changing economic and regulatory environ-
ments can be key drivers within development
trajectories across a range of geographical
contexts. Thus, these actors, the mixes of them
and their relationships to their political and
economic contexts, become the mediators of
wider economic processes and influence their
geographical patterning across space. These
factors will all shape differential outcomes both
among illicit actors and between licit and illicit
actors. This certainly suggests empirical limits
within existing geographical discussions of the
contemporary global economy, but also,
perhaps, the need to extend or rework them
conceptually to allow them to speak across this
expanded economic terrain. This is a task to
which scholars of organized crime and eco-
nomic and political geography can contribute.
To achieve this task, though, it is important that
organized crime does not remain ghettoized
within parochial conceptions of shadowy
underworlds.
Acknowledgements
The ideas in this paper have been in part devel-
oped within the undergraduate modules ‘Living
in a global world’, ‘Economic change and loca-
tion’ and ‘Global crime’. Many thanks to the stu-
dents on those modules for helping to articulate
the various ways in which we can speak of
organized crime in geographical terms. Aspects
of this paper have been presented at the workshop
‘Turbulent trade routes’ (CeMoRe, University of
Lancaster, November 2010), the Geographical
Association annual conference (University of Sur-
rey, April 2011) and in the session ‘Economic
geographical imaginations’ (RGS/IBG annual
conference, London, August 2011). Thanks to the
organizers and participants at those events for
your positive feedback. Finally, many thanks to
Rob Kitchin, the other editors of Progress in
Human Geography and the anonymous referees
for their encouragement and very constructive
comments on this paper.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any
funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-
for-profit sectors.
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