Analysing the European Union's responses to organized crime through different securitization lenses

In the past 30 years, organized crime (OC) has shifted from being an issue of little, or no concern, to being considered one of the key security threats facing the European Union (EU), the economic and political fabric of its society and its citizens. The purpose of this article is to understand how OC has come to be understood as one of the major security threats in the EU, by applying different lenses of Securitization Theory (ST). More specifically, the research question guiding this article is whether applying different ST approaches can lead us to draw differing conclusions as to whether OC has been successfully securitized in the EU. Building on the recent literature that argues that this theoretical framework has branched out into different approaches, this article wishes to contrast two alternative views of how a security problem comes into being, in order to verify whether different approaches can lead to diverging conclusions regarding the same phenomenon. The purpose of this exercise is to contribute to the further development of ST by pointing out that the choice in approach bears direct consequences on reaching a conclusion regarding the successful character of a securitization process. Starting from a reflection on ST, the article proceeds with applying a “linguistic approach” to the case study, which it then contrasts with a “sociological approach”. The article proposes that although the application of a “linguistic approach” seems to indicate that OC has become securitized in the EU, it also overlooks a number of elements, which the “sociological approach” renders visible and which lead us to refute the initial conclusion.

Human Security and Crime in Latin America: The political Capital and Political Impact of Criminal Groups and Belligerents Involved in Illicit Economies

Organized crime and illegal economies generate multiple threats to states and societies. But although the negative effects of high levels of pervasive street and organized crime on human security are clear, the relationships between human security, crime, illicit economies, and law enforcement are highly complex. By sponsoring illicit economies in areas of state weakness where legal economic opportunities and public goods are seriously lacking, both belligerent and criminal groups frequently enhance some elements of human security of the marginalized populations who depend on illicit economies for basic livelihoods. Even criminal groups without a political ideology often have an important political impact on the lives of communities and on their allegiance to the State. Criminal groups also have political agendas. Both belligerent and criminal groups can develop political capital through their sponsorship of illicit economies. The extent of their political capital is dependent on several factors. Efforts to defeat belligerent groups by decreasing their financial flows through suppression of an illicit economy are rarely effective. Such measures, in turn, increase the political capital of anti-State groups. The effectiveness of anti-money laundering measures (AML) also remains low and is often highly contingent on specific vulnerabilities of the target. The design of AML measures has other effects, such as on the size of a country’s informal economy. Multifaceted anti-crime strategies that combine law enforcement approaches with targeted socio-economic policies and efforts to improve public goods provision, including access to justice, are likely to be more effective in suppressing crime than tough nailed-fist approaches. For anti-crime policies to be effective, they often require a substantial, but politically-difficult concentration of resources in target areas. In the absence of effective law enforcement capacity, legalization and decriminalization policies of illicit economies are unlikely on their own to substantially reduce levels of criminality or to eliminate organized crime. Effective police reform, for several decades largely elusive in Latin America, is one of the most urgently needed policy reforms in the region. Such efforts need to be coupled with fundamental judicial and correctional systems reforms. Yet, regional approaches cannot obliterate the so-called balloon effect. If demand persists, even under intense law enforcement pressures, illicit economies will relocate to areas of weakest law enforcement, but they will not be eliminated.

Regional aspects of Miami crime fiction

This thesis argues that forces of literary regionalism and postmodern culture are behind the explosion of crime fiction being written in and about South Florida by a growing number of resident authors. Research included four methods of investigation: 1. A critical reading of many of the novels that make up the sub-genre. 2. A study of the theories of regionalism, postmodernism and the genre of the crime fiction. 3. Interviews with a number of the authors and a prominent Miami book seller. 4. Sociological studies of Miami in terms of historical events and their cultural significance. Today's South Florida crime fiction authors cast their narratives in the old genre of the detective novel where characters are delineated according to traditional definitions of good and evil. Evil characters threaten established order. What makes South Florida crime fiction different from traditional detective fiction is its interest in the exotic, postmodern culture and setting of South Florida. Like the region, the villains are exotic and the order that they threaten is postmodern. There is less of an interest in attributing a larger social meaning to the heroes. Rather, there is an ontological interest in the playing out of good against evil in an almost mythical setting that magnifies economic, environmental and racial issues. There is a unique cultural diversity of the city due to the geographical location of Miami in relationship to Latin America and the Caribbean, and the political forces at work in the region. South Florida's subtropical climate, fragile ecosystem, and elements of frontier life in a cosmopolitan city work to support Miami crime fiction. The setting personifies the unpredictability and pastiche of a postmodern world and may call for a new definition for literature that relies on non-traditional regional characteristics.

A Study of How Economic Attitudes Are Shaped by Environmental Shocks and Life Experiences

Social attitudes, attitudes toward financial risk and attitudes toward deferred gratification are thought to influence many important economic decisions over the life-course. In economic theory, these attitudes are key components in diverse models of behavior, including collective action, saving and investment decisions and occupational choice. The relevance of these attitudes have been confirmed empirically. Yet, the factors that influence them are not well understood. This research evaluates how these attitudes are affected by large disruptive events, namely, a natural disaster and a civil conflict, and also by an individual-specific life event, namely, having children.

By implementing rigorous empirical strategies drawing on rich longitudinal datasets, this research project advances our understanding of how life experiences shape these attitudes. Moreover, compelling evidence is provided that the observed changes in attitudes are likely to reflect changes in preferences given that they are not driven just by changes in financial circumstances. Therefore the findings of this research project also contribute to the discussion of whether preferences are really fixed, a usual assumption in economics.

In the first chapter, I study how altruistic and trusting attitudes are affected by exposure to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami as long as ten years after the disaster occurred. Establishing a causal relationship between natural disasters and attitudes presents several challenges as endogenous exposure and sample selection can confound the analysis. I take on these challenges by exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in exposure to the tsunami and by relying on a longitudinal dataset representative of the pre-tsunami population in two districts of Aceh, Indonesia. The sample is drawn from the Study of the Tsunami Aftermath and Recovery (STAR), a survey with data collected both before and after the disaster and especially designed to identify the impact of the tsunami. The altruistic and trusting attitudes of the respondents are measured by their behavior in the dictator and trust games. I find that witnessing closely the damage caused by the tsunami but without suffering severe economic damage oneself increases altruistic and trusting behavior, particularly towards individuals from tsunami affected communities. Having suffered severe economic damage has no impact on altruistic behavior but may have increased trusting behavior. These effects do not seem to be caused by the consequences of the tsunami on people’s financial situation. Instead they are consistent with how experiences of loss and solidarity may have shaped social attitudes by affecting empathy and perceptions of who is deserving of aid and trust.

In the second chapter, co-authored with Ryan Brown, Duncan Thomas and Andrea Velasquez, we investigate how attitudes toward financial risk are affected by elevated levels of insecurity and uncertainty brought on by the Mexican Drug War. To conduct our analysis, we pair the Mexican Family Life Survey (MxFLS), a rich longitudinal dataset ideally suited for our purposes, with a dataset on homicide rates at the month and municipality-level. The homicide rates capture well the overall crime environment created by the drug war. The MxFLS elicits risk attitudes by asking respondents to choose between hypothetical gambles with different payoffs. Our strategy to identify a causal effect has two key components. First, we implement an individual fixed effects strategy which allows us to control for all time-invariant heterogeneity. The remaining time variant heterogeneity is unlikely to be correlated with changes in the local crime environment given the well-documented political origins of the Mexican Drug War. We also show supporting evidence in this regard. The second component of our identification strategy is to use an intent-to-treat approach to shield our estimates from endogenous migration. Our findings indicate that exposure to greater local-area violent crime results in increased risk aversion. This effect is not driven by changes in financial circumstances, but may be explained instead by heightened fear of victimization. Nonetheless, we find that having greater economic resources mitigate the impact. This may be due to individuals with greater economic resources being able to avoid crime by affording better transportation or security at work.

The third chapter, co-authored with Duncan Thomas, evaluates whether attitudes toward deferred gratification change after having children. For this study we also exploit the MxFLS, which elicits attitudes toward deferred gratification (commonly known as time discounting) by asking individuals to choose between hypothetical payments at different points in time. We implement a difference-in-difference estimator to control for all time-invariant heterogeneity and show that our results are robust to the inclusion of time varying characteristics likely correlated with child birth. We find that becoming a mother increases time discounting especially in the first two years after childbirth and in particular for those women without a spouse at home. Having additional children does not have an effect and the effect for men seems to go in the opposite direction. These heterogeneous effects suggest that child rearing may affect time discounting due to generated stress or not fully anticipated spending needs.

Counting Crime: an explanation of falling crime rates

The current crime decrease is defying traditional criminological theories such as those espoused by Bonger (1916) who researched the relationship between crime and economic conditions and stated that when unemployment rises so does crime. In both the USA and the UK crime has dropped dramatically while unemployment has risen. Both the USA and the UK have been in a deep recession since 2008 but the crime rate has decreased dramatically in both countries. Over the past 20 years it has halved in England and Wales. So how do we explain this phenomenon? Crime is down across the West but more so in Britain (see Figure 1). In England and Wales crime has decreased by 8% in a single year (2013). Vandalism is down by 14% and burglaries and vehicle crime by 11%. The murder rate in the UK is at its lowest since 1978; in 2013, 540 people were killed. Some less serious offences are vanishing too; antisocial behaviour has fallen from just under 4million incidents in 2007-08 to 2.4million. (The Economist 20/4/13). According to the most recent annual results from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), crime is at its lowest level since the survey began in 1981; the most recent annual figures from the survey, Latest figures from the CSEW show there were an estimated 7.3 million incidents of crime against households and resident adults (aged 16 and over) in England and Wales for the year ending March 2014. This represents a 14% decrease compared with the previous year’s survey, and is the lowest estimate since the survey began in 1981.

An Economic Approach to Motor Vehicle Theft

Motor vehicle theft costs dearly to the Australian economy. Conservative estimates have put the annual cost of this form of illegal activity at 654 million during 1996. A number of initiatives aimed at reducing the incidence and cost of car theft have been implemented in recent years, yet statistics indicate that car theft is on the increase. Several authors have proposed an integrated approach to the regulation of markets for stolen property. Understanding property crime as a market is central to identifying approaches to its control. This paper discusses an industry model of crime and develops it on Australian data. Our model is an adaptation of one originally proposed by Vandeale (1978). It considers a production sector that uses inputs from a market of illegal labour to generate a supply of illegal goods that are traded in a product market. These sectors interact with each other and with a criminal justice sector. The model is applied to the analysis of car theft in Queensland.

An analysis of state crime: negotiating multiple insecurities around the U.S. Mexico Border

This research looks into forms of state crime taking place around the U.S.-Mexico border. On the Mexican side of the border violent corruption and criminal activities stemming from state actors complicity with drug trafficking organisations has produced widespread violence and human casualty while forcing many to cross the border legally or illegally in fear for their lives. Upon their arrival on the U.S. side of the border, these individuals are treated as criminal suspects. They are held in immigration detention facilities, interrogated and categorised as inadmissible ‘economic migrants’ or ‘drug offenders’ only to be denied asylum status and deported to dangerous and violent zones in Mexico. These individuals have been persecuted and victimised by the state during the 2007-2012 counter narcotic operations on one side of the border while criminalised and punished by a categorizing anti-immigration regime on the other side of the border. This thesis examines this border crisis as injurious actions against border residents have been executed by the states under legal and illegal formats in violation of criminal law and human rights conventions. The ethnographic research uses data to develop a nuanced understanding of individuals’ experiences of state victimisation on both sides of the border. In contributing to state crime scholarship it presents a multidimensional theoretical lens by using organised crime theoretical models and critical criminology concepts to explain the role of the state in producing multiple insecurities that exclude citizens and non-citizens through criminalisation processes.

Clydebank in the inter-war years: a study in economic and social change

The main theme of this thesis is the social, economic and political response of a single community to economic dislocation in the interwar years. The community under consideration is Clydebank., The thesis is divided into several parts. Part I establishes the development of the burgh and considers the physical framework of the community, mainly in the years before 1919. The town's characteristics are examined in terms of population structure and development between the world wars. In the last part of this section there is a review of the economic structure of the burgh and changes occurring in it between 1919 and 1939. In Part II consideration is given to the actual extent and form of the unemployment affecting Clydebank at this time, and comparison is made with other communities and geographic/economic areas. Attention is then focussed more narrowly on the actual individuals suffering unemployment in the burgh during the 1930s, in an attempt to personalise the experience of the unemployed. Part III reviews central and local government responses to the situation in which Clydebank found itself oetween 1919 and 1939. Central government policies discussed include unemployment insurance, public works, the Special Areas legislation, assistance in the construction of the 534 "Queen Mary" and the direction of financial support to areas of particular need. Amongst local authority actions described are additional local support for the poor, public works, efforts to attract new industry to the town, attempts to deal with the housing problem which was particularly acute at times of high unemployment and measures to maintain health standards in the community. In Part IV the responses of the community to unemployment and government policies are detailed. The burgh's commercial sector is surveyed as are developments in leisure provision, religion, temperance and crime, and local politics. A number of individual responses are also given consideration such as migration, commuting, changes in birth and marriage rates and suicide.