Mafias on the Move: How Organized Crime Conquers New Territories. By Federico Varese (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011, 278pp. 24.99 hb)

Abstract

When migrating, whether willingly or forcefully, members of organized criminal groups may find propitious new environments in which to continue or expand their activities. On the other hand, they may not, as the social and institutional conditions they encounter make it hard for them to open branches in distant territories. This book describes how the Italian mafia moved to the North of Italy and evaluates the outcomes of the move, how the same organization expanded its presence in New York but failed to establish outposts in Argentina. Success and failure also connote Russian organized crime, unable to penetrate Rome but capable of infiltrating markets in Hungary. Federico Varese also recounts the story of the triads from Taiwan and Hong Kong and their attempts to branch out to the mainland. The stories, all well narrated, aim to demonstrate that the presence of mafiosi in a new territory is not enough for their criminal reproduction abroad, as a particular combination of factors must be in place. For instance, they may be hampered by aggressive competitors in loco, or be boosted by the sudden emergence of new markets. ‘To the degree that the state is not able to govern new markets, the possibility of mafia emergence or entrenchment from abroad is strong’ (p. 8). The explanatory framework used here, of course, reiterates the analysis produced by the author in previous work—a framework that, as far as I am aware, gained particular purchase in the 1970s, with the work of Mary McIntosh. She noted that organized crime is informed by a particular relationship between offenders and victims. For example, the victims of extortion rackets often fail to report the offenders, less because they are terrified than because they see the extortionist, in that context, as more powerful than the state and more adept at distributing resources and opportunities. Following on from this tradition, in the 1990s, authors such as Diego Gambetta focused on specific forms of organized crime as a service-providing organization. Among the goods provided, trust and protection were singled out as paramount, with private entrepreneurs, namely organized criminals, servicing economic actors who would otherwise be unable to interact safely. Further definitional fine-tuning led to views of organized crime as a provider of extralegal governance, an unorthodox supplier of criminal protection to the underworld as well as the upper world.