Criminal Entanglements. A new ethnographic approach to transnational organised crime.

Project Information

CRIMTANG

Grant agreement ID: 725194

DOI

10.3030/725194

Project closed

EC signature date 15 September 2017

Start date 1 February 2018

End date 31 January 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 999 909,00

EU contribution

€ 1 999 909,00

Coordinated by

KOBENHAVNS UNIVERSITET
Denmark

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - CRIMTANG (Criminal Entanglements.A new ethnographic approach to transnational organised crime.)

Reporting period: 2022-08-01 to 2024-01-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

According to the UNODC, ‘transnational organised crime’ (TOC) is estimated to generate 1.5 per cent of global GDP. That is more than six times the amount of official development assistance, and the equivalent of 7 per cent of global trade. In short, TOC is both big business and a big problem – the smuggling of people and drugs are the fastest growing criminal enterprises in the world. However, despite the magnitude of the problem, our knowledge of TOC remains fragmented and partial. We may have an idea of its scope and numerous assessments of its seriousness, yet the way that TOC is anchored in social flows and formations remains sparsely explored. By researching the underlying social and cultural logics of such criminalised flows, through a field-based ethnographic approach, CRIMTANG has managed to illuminate dynamics at play and gain an insight into the lives and social environments of the people and groups involved.

Rather than looking at such criminalised flows from on high, or chasing an insight into the issue in national registers and institutional regimes, CRIMTANG has approach them in a bottom-up manner that follows such movements across continents and countries all the way to the streets and social settings in which transnational organised crime is inevitably entangled. This has generated unique insights into a critical contemporary issue as well as granted us the possibility to rethinking academic approaches to the issue.

Theoretically, CRIMTANG has explored the way legal and illegal formations interact and intersect across time and space. This has entailed developing an analytical framework enabling us to look at the way political developments impact criminal flows and vice versa; the way social networks and formations interact; and the manner in which people move in and out of such formations and flows. Our analytical approach has remained attentive to the ways such flows operate between orders, in border and grey zones.

Methodologically, CRIMTANG has furthered the field of ethnographic criminology. Working through an inductive, bottom up approach it has substantiated its theories via first-hand empirical insights and ethnographic evidence. Exploring the methodological potentials and challenges of such an approach, under the auspices of ‘the Centre for Global Criminology’, it has organised a range of conferences, symposia, and workshops connecting scholars and research environments in relation to this exiting line of research.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Selected publications

Korsby, Trine and Henrik Vigh. 2024. “Our Other Others: On perpetration, morality, and ethnographic unease” (In press): Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Jerne, Christina. 2024. The imitation game: The political economy of countering the mafias. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Sausdal, David. 2023. Globalizing local policing: An ethnography of change and concern among Danish detectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Moretti, Alessandro. 2023. The Rise and Rise of Illegal Ticket Touting: An ethnography of deviant entrepreneurship. London: Routledge. ISBN 9780367767860. https://doi-org.ep.fjernadgang.kb.dk/10.4324/9781003168553

Richter, Line, and Henrik Vigh. 2022. “Tangier Heat: On Migrant Vulnerability and Social Thermology”. Ethnography 0(0) E-pub ahead of print.

Emmanuel, Nikolas, and Satoshi Sasaki. 2019. "Patterns of Economic Aid and Peace Processes in Africa." Soka University Peace Research Journal 32/33, Spring: 145-160. https://doi.org/10.2979/africonfpeacrevi.5.2.1

Sausdal, David, and Henrik Vigh. 2019. "Anthropological Criminology 2.0: Ethnographies of Global Crime and Criminalization." Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 85: 1-14. https://doi.org/10.3167/fcl.2019.850101


Selected events (2018-2024)

Symposium/special issue launch: Special issue launch/seminar “Transnational Street Business: Migrants in the Informal Urban Economy” at Dept. of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, in October 2023.The subsequent workshop furthered our knowledge of informal trade in goods, people, and drugs.

Conference: Together with the ERC-advanced research project GANGS, CRIMTANG organised an international conference in Gilleleje, June 19-21. The conference was entitled, “Crime and Punishment: policing borders and urban segregation” and brought scholars together to probe the issue interaction between gangs and policing in urban settings.

Conference was held in Marseille, 23-24 September 2021, entitled “Fieldwork in a Fishbowl”. The conference had the attendance of international and local scholars renowned in the field of ethnography and anthropology.

Conference: CRIMTANG hosted a conference in Altafulla, Spain, September 26-28, 2019, entitled “Toward an Anthropological Zemiology: Workshop on social harm and suffering”

Conference: CRIMTANG hosted the international conference “Interzone” in Tangier, Morocco, September 2018, with leading local and international experts as well as the project’s scientific and ethics boards.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

CRIMTANG's research has resulted in a range of interdisciplinary publications proposing alternative advances to global criminology within anthropology, criminology, economics, political science and their intersection. It has furthermore managed to institutionalise its research perspective within the University of Copenhagen, through establishing the Centre for Global Criminology. CRIMTANG also resulted in the opening of the Copenhagen Criminological Observatory. The Observatory connects CRIMTANG to stakeholders and actors within the field of transnational criminal flows more broadly. While the centre links CRIMTANG to the surrounding research environment and a broad range of international scholars and research institutions within the field, the Observatory has been able to serve as a knowledge hub connecting to international bodies such as the UNODC, Europol and Interpol as well as to a broad range of regional stakeholders ranging from government institutions to legal bodies, forensic departments, social workers, and drug user groups. Finally, the Criminological Academy was set up to support students and younger scholars working within CRIMTANG’s research area. Doing ethnographic criminology and researching transnational criminalised flows can be challenging and the academy aims at generating undergrowth and serving as a support structure for young scholars in relation to ethical, methodological, and theoretical questions that may arise from their studies of such movements.

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