By Jennifer Cearns and Charles Beach

Contraband Cultures presents narratives, representations, practices and imaginaries of smuggling and extra-legal or informal circulation practices, across and between the Latin American region (including the Caribbean) and its diasporas. Countering a fetishizing and hegemonic imaginary (typically stemming from the Global North) of smuggling activity in Latin America as chaotic, lawless, violent and somehow ‘exotic’, this book reframes such activities through the lenses of kinship, political movements, economic exchange and resistance to capitalist state hegemony. The volume comprises a broad range of chapters from scholars across the social sciences and humanities, using various methodological techniques, theoretical traditions and analytic approaches to explore the efficacy and valence of ‘smuggling’ or ‘contraband’ as a lens onto modes of personhood, materiality, statehood and political (dis)connection across Latin America. This material is presented through a combination of historic documentation and contemporary ethnographic research across the region to highlight the genesis and development of these cultural practices whilst grounding them in the capitalist and colonial refashioning of the entire region from the sixteenth century to the present day.

London: UCL Press, 2024. 294p.

By Karamoja–Turkana and the Community Research Team 

Ipoln the Karamoja and Turkana border regions of Uganda and Kenya, there is widespread violence including armed robbery, rape, and human rights abuses, yet community complaints about failures of governance remain largely unaddressed. This Policy Briefing highlights how different insecurities reinforce one another in ways exacerbated by the international border. It stresses the need for fulfilment of the two governments’ commitments to cross-border solutions, and suggests that international policy actors can help communities gain leverage with governments towards building trustworthy and effective peace and security institutions.

IDS Policy Briefing 214,

Brighton, UK: Institute of Development Studies, 2023. 4p.

Sergi, Anna

Attention to the Calabrian mafia, the ‘ndrangheta, has been increasing across law enforcement authorities around the world. This paper aims at bringing forward a theoretical and operational conversation on how to best approach, from a policing perspective, what is a complex clan-based criminality able to operate simultaneously in different states. The paper will therefore formulate a preliminary framework for strategies focusing on the policing of mafia dynasties. It will do so by identifying how ‘ndrangheta clans can be studied as family dynasties, including in their assessment also the factors of family life (familiness) that can facilitate or obstruct the dynasty’s success. By looking at ‘ndrangheta clans as family dynasties, we can inform a framework that cuts through the most common policing aims and strategies against organised crime, as shared by states involved in current anti-mafia efforts.

‘Ndrangheta Dynasties: A Conceptual and Operational Framework for the Cross-Border Policing of the Calabrian Mafia. Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, 15 (2). (2021) pp. 1522-1536.

By Max Gallien and Florian Weigand

Although  smuggling is  commonly  assumed to happen  in remote and difficult-to-access borderlands, in reality, smuggling is most prevalent in areas that states tightly control, including formal border crossings. To understand this puzzle, this article explores the relationship between states and smugglers at international borders. Based on extensive empirical research in various borderlands in North Africa and Southeast Asia, it argues that different kinds of smugglers prefer different types of relationships with the state. The article outlines six ideal types of such relationships. It contends that these types of relationships are the dominant factor in how different smuggling networks choose routes along a border. The findings have implications for our understanding of smuggling and policies that aim at addressing smuggling, especially regarding the effects of border fortifications and corruption prevention. bordFor over 400 kilometers, the border between Tunisia and Libya stretches across deserts, lakes, and mountains. The border provides a source of income for one of the largest smuggling economies in North Africa, with trading in everything from gasoline, fabrics, and electronics to cigarettes and narcotics. Its length and terrain make the border difficult to control for both Tunisian and Libyan security forces, and offer plenty of opportunities for the thousands of smugglers who cross the border everyday to stay undetected or leverage their superior knowledge of the terrain in high-speed car chases with soldiers and customs officers. And yet, most of these smugglers have chosen two particular points in the border to conduct their business: the formal border crossings as Ras Jedir and Dhiba. In fact, differ-ent smuggling networks prefer different routes: while those trading in mobile phones, bananas, or alcohol have typically preferred to play cat and Mouse.

SECURITY STUDIES, 2021, VOL. 30, NO. 1, 79–106