Transnational Criminology

Abstract

Trafficking is a form of transnational crime that involves the illicit movement of goods and people around the world. Such global criminal markets take a variety of forms, and this book reviews six of them: trafficking in drugs, humans, wildlife, diamonds, arms, and antiquities. While there is a healthy literature on many of these types of trafficking, there is relatively little written that systematically compares and contrasts them. In doing that, this book allows us to lift the viewpoint above the details of each individual type of trafficking, to think theoretically about what they have in common. The book therefore serves two purposes. First, it is a primer and review of the main points of what we currently know about how each trafficking market works: who the traffickers are, what routines and structures are involved, what harm is caused, and the main types of regulation and control that attempt to constrain trafficking. Second, the text sets out a social theory of transnational markets, constituted and illustrated throughout by the empirical data reviewed. That theory ties the criminal practices of traffickers into the wider social promotion of a business-like mindset. This allows individuals and groups to compartmentalise the emotional and moral implications of illegal entrepreneurial profit generation, so that harmful action is seen as ‘just business’. As such, trafficking is rationalised by participants as comparable to the perceived amoral economic calculations of conventional business.