Illicit Flows and Criminal Things offers a new perspective on illegal transnational linkages, international relations, and the transnational. The contributors argue for a nuanced approach that recognizes the difference between "organized" crime and the thousands of illicit acts that take place across national borders every day. They distinguish between the illegal (prohibited by law) and the illicit (socially perceived as unacceptable), which are historically changeable and contested. Detailed case studies of arms smuggling, illegal transnational migration, the global diamond trade, borderland practices, and the transnational consumption of drugs take us to Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and North America. They allow us to understand how states, borders, and the language of law enforcement produce criminality, and how people and goods which are labeled "illegal" move across regulatory spaces.
Author(s): Edited by Willem van Schendel and Itty Abraham
Year: 2005
Language: English
Pages: 280
Cover......Page 1
Contents......Page 6
Acknowledgments......Page 8
Introduction: The Making of Illicitness......Page 12
1. Spaces of Engagement: How Borderlands, Illicit Flows, andTerritorial States Interlock......Page 49
2. The Rumor of Trafficking: Border Controls, IllegalMigration, and the Sovereignty of the Nation-State......Page 80
3. Talking Like a State: Drugs, Borders, and theLanguage of Control......Page 112
4. “Here, Even Legislators Chew Them”: Coca Leaves andIdentity Politics in Northern Argentina......Page 139
5. Seeing the State Like a Migrant: Why So ManyNon-criminals Break Immigration Laws......Page 164
6. Criminality and the Global Diamond Trade:A Methodological Case Study......Page 188
7. Small Arms, Cattle Raiding, and Borderlands:The Ilemi Triangle......Page 212
Consolidated Bibliography......Page 238
Contributors......Page 266
Index......Page 268
