Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: Africa has long been portrayed in international policy discourse as an epicentre of security problems, which increasingly include that of transnational organized crime (hereafter: TOC) such as drug trafficking or migrant smuggling (Duffield 2013).According to this view, security and development in Africa are undermined by the conflict and violence fuelled by organized crime.Consequently, the imperative invoked by UN Sustainable Development Goal 16.4.to "combat all forms of organized crime" is understood to contribute to peace, security and development throughout the Global South (Blaustein et al. 2018).As straightforward and intuitive as this may seem, empirical studies from around the world have called this imperative and its basic assumption into question.It has been well-documented that 'wars on crime' are mostly ineffective and often harmful to local communities, economies and everexpanding prison populations (Bowling 2011; Felbab-Brown 2009; Franz 2016), while illicit economies do not have a straight causal arrow to violence and conflict but can even have stabilizing and developmental effects in conflict and high-level violence contexts (Bhatia 2021; Vigh 2012; Raineri and Strazzari, this issue).Some of this documentation regarding the problematic repercussions of orthodox anti-TOC policies that ostensibly fight 'the bad' is decades old yet seems to have little effect on the direction of international policy reformulation.The 60 years long global war on drugs is a case in point.Against this background, this special issue contributes towards a more critical understanding of TOC and the fight against it.The special issue's primary analytical focus is the sociology, politics and economy of the production of data, categories, narratives and discourses as well as policies and measures concerning TOC in the African context.The papers unpack, discuss and problematise the accuracy of the data used by official agencies (International Organisations, states) on which the fight
Source: Trends in Organized Crime
Authors: Jörg Wiegratz, Eva Magdalena Stambøl
Institutions: University of Leeds, University of Oslo
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $2,990
OpenAlex ID: W4388535934