Routledge Handbook of Smuggling

The Routledge Handbook of Smuggling, Routledge, 2021
with co-editor Max Gallien, IDS

The Routledge Handbook of Smuggling offers a comprehensive survey of interdisciplinary research related to smuggling, reflecting on key themes, and charting current and future trends.

Divided into 6 parts and spanning over 30 chapters, the volume covers themes such as mobility, borders, violent conflict, and state politics, as well as looking at the smuggling of specific goods – from rice and gasoline to wildlife, weapons and cocaine. Chapters engage with some of the most contentious academic and policy debates of the twenty-first century, including the historical creation of borders, re-bordering, the criminalisation of migration, and the politics of selective toleration of smuggling. As it maps a field that contains unique methodological, ethical, and risk-related challenges, the book takes stock not only of the state of our shared knowledge, but also reflects on how this has been produced, pointing to blind spots and providing an informed vision of the future of the field.

Bringing together established and emerging scholars from around the world, the Routledge Handbook of Smuggling is an indispensable resource for students and researchers of conflict studies, borderland studies, criminology, political science, global development, anthropology, sociology and geography.

Table of Content

1 Studying smuggling Max Gallien and Florian Weigand

PART I Methods and approaches

2 Localising smuggling Gregor Dobler
3 Smuggling ideologies: Theory and reality in African clandestine economies Kate Meagher
4 Lorries and ledgers: Describing and mapping smuggling in the field Nikki Philline C. de la Rosa and Francisco J. Lara Jr.
5 Quantifying missing and hidden trade: An economic perspective Sami Bensassi and Jade Siu
6 Research in dangerous fields: Ethics, morals, and practices in the study of smuggling Thomas Hüsken

PART II Borderlands and their people
7 Making borders, closing frontiers and identifying smuggling: Comparative histories Paul Nugent
8 Borderlands, frontiers, and borders: Changing meanings and the intersection with smuggling practices Sergio Peña
9 Trading spaces: Afghan borderland brokers and the transformation of the margins Jonathan Goodhand, Jan Koehler, and Jasmine Bhatia
10 Scales of grey: The complex geography of transnational cross-border trade in the African Great Lakes region Timothy Raeymaekers
11 Smuggling as a legitimate activity? The OPEC Boys as social bandits in Northern Uganda Kristof Titeca
12 Tall tales and borderline cases: Narratives as meaningful contraband Mareike Schomerus and Lotje de Vries
13 Gender and smuggling Caroline E. Schuster

PART III Smuggling goods
14 Cocaine smuggling: Between geopolitics and domestic power struggles Angélica Durán-Martínez
15 Sharing the load: The distributive nature of the opium trade in, and from, Afghanistan David Mansfield
16 Arms trafficking Nicholas Marsh and Lauren Pinson
17 Reconciling competing policies for combatting wildlife trafficking and preventing zoonotic pandemics Vanda Felbab-Brown
18 Cigarette smuggling: Trends, taxes and big tobacco Max Gallien
19 Theft and smuggling of petroleum products Tim Eaton
20 Old routes, new rules: Smuggling rice in the porous borders of the Sulu, Celebes, and South China Sea Eddie L. Quitoriano
21 The intersections of smuggling flows Annette Idler

PART IV Smuggling and mobility
22 Humanitarian smuggling in a time of restricting and criminalizing mobility Ilse van Liempt
23 Migrant smuggling and the social organisation of cross-border mobility Luca Raineri
24 Human smuggling, gender and labour circulation in the Global South Priya Deshingkar
25 Human smuggling in the time of COVID-19: Lessons from a pandemic Lucia Bird Ruiz-Benitez de Lugo

PART V Smuggling and conflict
26 The illicit trade and conflict connection: Insights from US history Peter Andreas
27 Smuggling, survival, and civil war economies Aisha Ahmad
28 Checkpost chess: Exploring the relationship between insurgents and illicit trade Shalaka Thakur
29 Rebels, smugglers and (the pitfalls of) economic pacification David Brenner

PART VI Addressing smuggling
30 Blue frontiers: In pursuit of smugglers at sea Carina Bruwer
31 Communities and crime wars: Adaptation and resilience Matt Herbert, Tuesday Reitano, and Siria Gastelum Felix
32 The “war on smugglers” and the expansion of the border apparatus Lorena Gazzotti