Reconsidering Transnational Organized Crime in the Shadow of Globalization: the Case of Human Smuggling across the Mediterranean

This chapter addresses the debate on the links existing between globalization and serious forms of organised crime operating transnationally, and attempts to reframe it from a sociological perspective within a wider discussion of crimes of globalization. As emphasised by most discussions of the topic, transnational criminals have experienced the same benefits, costs and risks of doing business that derive from greater integration . However, the criminogenic potential of globalization and related policies has displayed its effects not only by strengthening and/or enlarging existing criminal opportunities, promptly exploited by organised crime networks. It has also facilitated the emergence of new fields of criminal business. The international consensus around highly repressive approaches in the field of migration – which nourish one of the most worrying fields of criminal exploitation managed by networks operating transnationally, i.e. migrant smuggling – has undoubtedly represented an unprecedented opportunity for certain criminal groups to widen and strengthen their sphere of operations both in the Northern and in the Southern world. The consequences have been dramatic, and collateral costs for society at large have been high. Thus, the pages which follow will attempt to consider one specific sector of transnational organized crime activity - what has been called the penumbra of globalization - focussing on specific unintended and/or unforeseen consequences caused by these policies in terms of a proliferation of criminal organizations in the countries crossed by major trafficking routes, criminalization and consequent further victimization of migrants and, more crucially, the crisis of what constitutes citizenship in Europe.