Economic Crime and Neoliberal Modes of Government

BÉATRICE HIBOU
Economic Crime and Neoliberal Modes of
Government: The Example
of the Mediterranean
Everyone has heard about the problem of rubbish in Naples and Campania
since, in December 2008, Silvio Berlusconi declared a state of emergency in the
region, and handed the problem over to the army. As is well known, the
Camorra organizes the traffic of toxic wastes on open-air sites, organizes their
transportation from the whole of Italy or, indeed, Europe, and manages the quarries and the dumping operations, while household waste in the region simply
remains untreated. But can we be satisfied with this version of the story, which
depicts a wicked Mafia and a powerless state? Certainly not. For the 2008 crisis
was merely one episode in a much more complicated “vicious circle,” which
began in 1994 (at the latest) with the first declaration of a state of emergency in
the region, and the setting up of a commission dedicated to the question.1 At
the origin of the disaster there lay, on the one hand, an enterprise that does not
belong to the Camorra but is linked to the very “clean” and legitimate company
Fiat. The enterprise took quick and easy advantage of the emergency policies to
offer extremely dubious benefits and real industrial negligence. It proposed a
quite unviable technical project, deceiving the state as to its services; it selected
obsolete equipment, which made it necessary to resort to dumping; it was
forever behind schedule in setting up waste disposal factories; it resorted to
unscrupulous subcontracting. On the other hand, local managers and administrators who managed the extraordinary commission reinforced their powers and
extended their networks of friends and clients. As a result of the state of emergency, they accepted various exemptions such as the use of subcontracting or
the choice, in the course of the invitation to tender, of the enterprise which no
doubt offered the lowest level of services, but in a shorter time-frame, and they
used their extraordinary powers to evade the traditional circuits and mechanisms
of public management. The Camorra was in no way behind this situation: it
neither set up the operation nor oversaw it. By means of subcontracting and
invitations to tender for waste transportation and the management of dumping,
Address correspondence to Béatrice Hibou, CERI-Sciences Po-CNRS (UMR 7050)
1999-2011, 56 rue Jacob, 75006 Paris, France.
Journal of Social History vol. 45 no. 3 (2012), pp. 642–660
doi:10.1093/jsh/shr101
© The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected].
Economic Crime and Neoliberal Modes of Government
643
the Camorra was simply responding to a demand, taking advantage of an extra
opportunity to do business, and making the most of the historical inability of
public institutions to control the situation.
This is an excellent example of the thesis I wish to develop here. Starting
with an illusory representation of reality (an omnipotent Camorra at the root of
the evil), it shows that the condemnation of organized crime allows new state
interventions (such as the use of state emergency powers and the development
of public–private partnerships) and obscures mechanisms and practices (such as
subcontracting and badly managed invitations to tender) that are much more
problematic, albeit difficult to condemn precisely because they are part and
parcel of the neoliberal order. My aim, more specifically, is to show that the
denunciation of economic crime is part of this new order insofar as such a
denunciation helps the state to redeploy its interventions and enables simultaneous—but not necessarily compatible—configurations of neoliberalism to coexist,
if we understand the latter not just as an economic order (a phase of capitalism),
but also as a political order.
Since the 1980s, neoliberalism has been characterised by the end of the
welfare state in European countries, the establishment of structural adjustment
programs in developing countries, and the transition to a market economy in
the former socialist countries. There has also been a challenge to the economic
sovereignty of states, which seem reduced to impotence in the globalised economic scene. But beyond common appearances and received ideas on the
supremacy of markets, the rise of transnational actors, the supposed inefficiency
of states in regulating capitalism, and the domination of economic and financial
considerations, one can see the development of other forms and qualities of the
state and its regulatory capacities and changes in the relationship between economic and political arenas, between public and private, licit and illicit.
In this new order, far from becoming impotent, the state redeploys itself in
a new direction, starting with a critique of direct interventionism and operating
instead by “delegation,” or “government at a distance.” In other words, states
resort to partnerships with private bodies, renewing bureaucratization under the
guise of the “new public management” based on norms, discipline imposed by
rules, quantified evaluation, self-supervision, and so on. But this redeployment
also takes the form of a completely direct interventionism when it comes to
whatever is problematized in terms of security, thanks to the development of
mechanisms of surveillance in spaces both public and private. These discipline
people through continuous monitoring of their movements, evaluate their activities closely and in the greatest detail, and get subjects to supervise themselves
in accordance with the norms and regulations of the moment. Resorting to the
criminalization and reification of the figures of “evil” (the terrorist, the smuggler,
the mafia member, organised crime) becomes an opportunity to organise the
field of possible state interventions, the condition of new state actions, an
opportunity, thus, to strengthen political domination through intermediaries
and private actors.
Economic Crime as a Major Peril
Since the 1990s, economic crime has been the subject of a worldwide
alarmist discourse: the spread of criminal activities, it is claimed, imperils
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democracy, development and citizens' participation, and constitutes the main
danger facing contemporary globalization.2 Like big business, crime seems to
reinforce its power by its capacity to seal transnational alliances, and permits the
existence of ever larger unregulated spaces that are partly tolerated by individual
states and by the international system.3 It contributes, or so it is said, to transforming the state into an ordinary actor.4 In Europe, this discourse emphasizes
organized crime in trafficking and money-laundering, and it dubiously melds
together migration, terrorism, and economic crime. Gradually, a rhetoric of the
danger threatening Europe has evolved into a kind of siege mentality, an obsession by a union that defines itself as virtuous and has set itself up as a fortress.5
Danger is seen as coming both from the East—from the former socialist countries that have become destabilized since the fall of the Berlin Wall and are now
the prey of mafia groups—and from the South—in a skewed reformulation
of the European myth of the Mediterranean that highlights whatever is Other
(i.e., the Muslim) and rejected (drugs, illegal migrants, terrorism). European
intellectuals have named this “the pirate obsession,”6 in which drugs, organized
crime, dirty money, terrorism, environmental crime, and people-trafficking all
“pirate” the serene order of a puritanical Europe.
This discourse arouses unease. In order to construct an image of economic
crime as “the plague of the twenty-first century,” various elements have been
fused together, relations invented or exaggerated, figures extrapolated, relations
from cause to effect posited, all without any proof and without hypotheses or
doubts being clearly stated. Mafias and others criminals, even economic criminals, are reified and a strict division/separation between legal, licit, and legitimate actors and illegal, illicit, and illegitimate actors is defined. However, the
data on money laundering, fakes, drug trafficking, and contraband are by nature
estimates, few and far between, constructed largely by the security services
whose raison d'être consists precisely of drawing attention to this phenomenon.7
And as Eiko Siniawer reminds us in her article, we cannot simplify the relations
between state and criminal organizations: neither the first nor the second are
monolithic entities; other actors enter also the game, such as businessmen,
bankers, politicians, legal and accounting experts, and so on. Finally, the nature
of their relations is extremely complex and ambiguous, going from protection to
opposition, from alliance to conflict, from tolerance to intolerance, from delegation to containment in very fluid and unstable situations. We need to investigate how this happens, and why state actors, independent observers, and even
academic researchers fall into this trap and construct external dangers threatening states and society.
Three types of research have influenced me as I defined this thesis and
attempted to support its claims. The first source is the literature showing that
criminal activities formed an integral part of the official economy and of contemporary neoliberalism.8 A second corpus comes from research suggesting that
there is an apparent paradox in neoliberalism: an unprecedented moralization of
economic and political life, a reification of the rule of law and of the legitimate
state and yet, simultaneously, the denunciation of the “persistence” of illegalities
at the very heart of states, and of the significant and increasing economic crimes
that pose a danger for society as a whole.9 My third source of inspiration is the
classical work of historical sociology, such as the pioneering work of Charles
Tilly on Europe,10 and that on current situations throughout the world. They
Economic Crime and Neoliberal Modes of Government
645
show that law and crime are part of the same history of state formation and that
crime is not the opposite of state legitimacy.11 Through the notions of risk, of
pervasive danger, and of security, the problematic of economic crime plays a
fundamental role in this redeployment in at least two ways. On the one hand, it
is implemented through the moral construction of what is criminal, illegal, or
illicit, and what is not.12 On the other hand, the definition of what is criminal,
illegal, and illicit stems from tensions, struggles, conflicts, and compromises—in
other words, from the exercise of power and domination.13 The stigmatization of
certain actors and activities is part of the political meaning of neoliberalism,
and the label “organized crime” plays a fundamental role in this exercise.14
My essay suggests, as does Eiko Siniawer's in a different context, that the
nature of relations between state and criminality, or rather, the way that the
state apprehends economic criminality, allows us better to grasp and understand
current modes of government. I posit that such construction of economic criminality conceals a basic reality of the current transformation of European states.
Far from being weakened by outside threats of organized crime, states are redeploying their powers via new modes of regulation and new relationships between
public and private, between licit and illicit.15 The construction of economic
crime and the stigmatization of alleged perpetrators stems from underlying power
conflicts, implicit negotiations and compromises of a developing neoliberalism
that is a political as well as an economic order. An analysis of illegal migrations,
money laundering, fakes, and trafficking, shows that the struggle against “organized crime” ultimately legitimizes renewed state intervention on a broad political
scale. By promoting neoliberal principles of deregulation, economic flexibility,
competition, profitability, and competitiveness at any price, and yet criminalizing some economic actors operating in this environment, states are assuming
ever greater political power over their populations.
The Criminalization of Illegal Migrations in the Mediterranean, or the
Rehabilitation of an Outdated Conception of Sovereignty in the Name
of a New Vision of the State
These days, the illegal character of migration in the Mediterranean is often
seen as the result of contradictory European policies of, on the one hand, liberalization, globalization, and the disappearance of borders and, on the other hand,
the controlling and closing of borders to the movements of persons. The closing
of borders to persons was decided on in Europe between the mid-1970s and the
end of the 1980s, at the very time when the opening of economic borders was
becoming a worldwide credo. It is commonly explained as a response to a sense
of insecurity: insecurity felt by a population demanding protection, but also insecurity among states fearing a loss of influence over economic flows and activities.
In this view, European legislation and directives express the public will and
effective control by state actors. This is a superficial explanation, but its persistence is intriguing considering that migrants continue to arrive without being
systematically prosecuted and expelled. Another element must be factored into
the equation: employers who use this workforce are not criminalised or even
harassed, and they thus foster a form of immigration whose very illegality serves
the neoliberal agenda.
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Journal of Social History
Spring 2012
Both shores of the Mediterranean are historically characterized by large
informal economies. However, the sheer extent of illegal migration cannot be
understood without an analysis of a complementary evolution in the European
productive sector, namely the drive to increase profitability by outsourcing
labor.16 This takes three main forms. The first and best known is the chain of
subcontracting, in which several levels of businesses hide behind the official subcontractor. The second, more important form is the use of temporary employment agencies, allowing sub-contracting businesses to offer an absolutely flexible
workforce in the quickest, most rough-and-ready way. Such companies typically
trim bonuses, deduct fees from the payslip; make fraudulent contributions to
national health and insurance, and, above all, leave contracts unsigned. This
last procedure is essential because it makes it easier to dismiss the worker at any
time and to legalize his or her situation a posteriori by making him or her sign a
contract for the actual duration of the job. Thus temporary work encourages outsourcing, and with it, the outsourcing of illegalities.17 Temporary assignments
carried out by companies providing transnational manpower are the most recent
form of outsourcing.18 Since the 1990s, “fake” companies from countries with
low wages and little social protection (Portugal first, and now the countries of
Eastern Europe) send their employees to other European countries. Having only
workers for export, the façade of such an apparently transnational company conceals the illegality of its contracts.19
While immigrants holding a false identification or none at all are obviously
the most vulnerable workers, subject to deportation at any time, legal immigrants are also affected because the border between legal and illegal is often
fuzzy. For example, in France, one-year permits do not ensure renewal, and in
Italy the status of unemployed immigrants is tolerated for only two years, after
which many of them become illegal.20 In almost all European countries, discretionary legalization can create permanent illegal immigrants by redefining the
status of the legal ones.21
There are at least four channels through which European legislation has
contributed to the profitable precariousness of migrant labor. Labor legislation
constitutes the first of these. Everywhere in Europe since the mid-1970s, various
laws have authorized the use of very short-term contracts. This promotes an
alternation between declared and undeclared work and facilitates the use of an
intermediate subcontracted and temporary labor force. Second, states accept
inconsistencies in the application of legal rules. Thus, illegal immigrants who
work in factories or on legal construction sites may pay taxes and even contribute to Social Security.22 Third, in spite of the principles of free movement
within the Union, Europeanization has resulted in increased monitoring of
non-European workers.23 States construct illegal immigrants by not allowing
commuting even though it is economically functional, thus creating a situation
in which entire populations live under the threat of expulsion.24 Finally, in collusion with employers, judiciaries indirectly promote illegal immigration through
their quasi-official acceptance of employer practices. The directors of temporary
employment agencies as well as the businesses that use them know that they
employ illegal immigrants, but can play the victim in case of an investigation.25
At most they pay a fine, but often courts simply discharge the case. In sum,
states' practices of impunity show that far from “losing control,”26 they collude
in creating illegal workers.
Economic Crime and Neoliberal Modes of Government
647
The discourse of criminalization has constructed a “danger” of illegal migration that renders an important work force invisible.27 They are statistically and
socially invisible, as are their working conditions. Yet they are criminalized by a
political emphasis on the role of organized crime and a purported link with terrorism.28 Such criminalization obscures the fact that it is a state-created discrepancy between the demand for labor and closed borders that creates opportunities
to be exploited by some actors who are then named criminal. The discrepancy
makes possible “reconciliation of the irreconcilable,”29 reconciling on the one
hand flexibility, competition, and competitiveness based in part on cheap, disciplined and illegal labour, and on the other hand, the management of security,
based on monitoring and disciplining the population. The criminalization
of illegal immigrants legitimizes coercive measures and allows the sovereignty of
the state to be exercised in a quite different way. It justifies the surveillance of
public and private spaces and repression by detention, expulsion, and raids even
in places that are symbols of protection, asylum and immunity, such as churches
and schools. Criminalization legitimizes discretionary interventions such as judicial decisions, evictions, and arbitrary and selective legalization.30 Powers of
control and exclusion are reinvented by delegation to private bodies like airlines, rail and maritime companies, private security firms, employers and third
countries.31 This extends surveillance but in so doing transforms the nature of
what is being pursued and what is not. Criminalization has resulted in a public/
private exercise of domination, perfectly reflecting the neoliberal world order by
its power to redefine the boundaries between the permissible, the tolerable and
the reprehensible.
The Fight Against Money-Laundering, or the Exercise of Indirect Private
Government
Money-laundering is always the result of other crimes—tax evasion, fraud,
trafficking. Therefore, understanding the mechanisms by which laundering has
been constructed as the great danger of contemporary globalization helps us to
understand the fight against money laundering in political terms. According to
official discourse, financial globalization and the decline in regulation have
enabled the amount of dirty money in circulation to increase since the 1970s.
The control mechanisms of the financial system that were designed to cope with
this “evil” did not call into question the very principle of free movement of
capital; in any case, they were largely purely decorative, a mere façade, until the
early 2000s. Only recently has the denunciation of laundering taken organizational form. September 11 has played a crucial role in constructing a link
between money laundering and terrorism, the financing of criminal networks
and attacks on state security. The pretext of terrorism has been critical in giving
antilaundering a political dimension.
For years, laundering has been tolerated because it was partly constructed by
the dominant actors in the system: states, financial actors, and big businesses.
The offshore sector was simultaneously the product of, and an integral part of,
state systems. Tax and finance havens were to be found less on islands, even
though these were stigmatized, than in the major financial centres, legal spaces
created to attract financial flows and to optimize investments from the tax point
of view.32 The goal of large merchant banks has always been tax optimization,
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Journal of Social History
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or, in less polite terms, the more or less legal organization of tax evasion. In the
Mediterranean as elsewhere, states have played a major role in the construction
of offshore centres and havens following the familiar pattern of the couple vice/
virtue: Madeira and the Azores/Portugal and Great Britain; Cyprus/Greece;
Malta/the Mediterranean zone; Gibraltar/Spain; Andorra/France and Spain;
Monaco/France and Italy; Nador/Morocco; Benguardanne/Tunisia and Libya.
States have turned a blind eye to the creation of fictitious companies; they have
promoted offshore companies first in the name of development of ultraperipheral areas (1970s–1980s) and later of the core country's financial health
(1990s–2000s). States have amnestied banks behaving suspiciously (despite categorical inspection reports), and have even encouraged the practice of laundering
by allowing stocks and bonds to make anonymous investments that are
nondeclarable and nontaxable.33
But September 11 transformed the fight against laundering into a veritable
machine of bureaucratic interventionism.34 From that date on, a new emphasis
on traceability of capital flows has led to a public/private partnership that
empowers bankers, insurers, notaries, lawyers, estate agents, trust managers,
casino managers, and traders to oversee the ethics of their profession. Thus,
banks have actually transformed previous limitations of the fight against money
laundering into commercial and industrial opportunities.35 They have interpreted these rules in terms of the social responsibility of enterprise and offered
customers the best products for their needs. They have interpreted laundering in
terms of managing penal risks and risks to reputation.36 They have integrated
antilaundering mechanisms into a larger system for the continual surveillance of
operations. The security objective has been interpreted in terms of “auditability,” that is formal proofs of compliance with legal obligations.37 It has thus
been primarily a matter, for the banks, of reducing the uncertainties arising from
“operational risks.”38 In this context, “traceability” is fundamental; it makes it
possible to follow the flows, to retrace the sequence of transactions and to identify not crimes themselves but suspicious signs that might track the individual
criminal, terrorist or mafia member.39
One result has been the commodification and marketing of fear and security, through the dissemination of IT tools and norms set by commercial companies (mainly American) and implemented by specialized firms that promote kits
and software packages and by sellers of “lists”: lists of people (terrorists, “politically exposed persons,” persons involved in the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction), lists of types of behaviour, lists of relations to scrutinize. Thus, the
fight against money laundering is undergoing a process in which ethics is commercialized: ethics has become a trade, a market, a technique, and a profession,
of which the compliance officer is the emblematic figure.40 Thus, antilaundering
policy is not measured by a reduction in the circulation of dirty money or in the
number of detections of illegal flows or of sentences handed down, but by the
existence within financial institutions of mechanisms and procedures for monitoring. The objective is self-protection from professional and penal sanctions,
and from any damage to reputations.
The practices involved in the fight against laundering clearly show the
limits, not of the legal and illegal, but of the licit and the tolerable. Tax havens
and offshore centres are not harassed once they have adopted the antilaundering
kit. In other words, what is legal is what is visible in terms of procedures,
Economic Crime and Neoliberal Modes of Government
649
compliance with formal rules and the politics of blame avoidance.41 The transformation of antilaundering into the “management of illegalisms”42 is made possible by the leeway offered to bankers and business firms to select their targets
for scrutiny. This role of private actors in the concrete definition of crime not
only creates business opportunities; it also suggests their hegemonic ability to
decide which are the legitimate targets of state-imposed penalties.43 This is an
international domination, of course, but above all, it is a matter of internal domination: the ultimate targets are petty criminals and the most vulnerable population.44 In Europe, since September 11 informal funds transfers, migrants who
use cash, and Islamic charitable foundations, are carefully scrutinized.45 By and
large, criminal charges are diverted from the powerful and dominant actors of
globalization.
Thus, the denunciation of laundering and the claim of an urgent need to
detect it serve state action in a sector that symbolizes neoliberal globalization. If
direct intervention is no longer appropriate, the use of surveillance technologies
and lists, disciplinary measures, internalization of control and enforced collaboration reveal indirect modes of government passing mainly through private intermediaries but conforming to procedures and concerns defined largely by states.
The Fight Against Fakes, or the Justification of the New Bureaucratic
Control
Fakes are the third of those “plagues” deemed to pose a threat to the
Mediterranean economies. The official discourse highlights the dangers that
fake goods represent both for consumer safety and for society as a whole.46 The
recent significant surge in fakes, it seems, is detrimental to European companies,
who thus lose market shares and therefore jobs, and suffer deterioration in their
image and reputation. Morally speaking, it is claimed that faking is reprehensible
because it is based on the pillaging of property rights and the national heritage
by criminal, even terrorist organizations—a crime encouraged by the unconscious behaviour of consumers.
Any serious analysis of these texts and factual research show the constructed
character of this discourse, which rests primarily on quantitative data whose
sources and construction are rarely made explicit, and that circulate as certainties, like the 10% of commerce that faking is said to represent in Europe or
200,000 jobs lost in Europe. However, these data are partly contradicted when
one and the same text claims that fake goods are increasing in the region while
showing a statistical decrease in seizures.47 The dangerous nature of faking is also
constructed from a few repeated examples, like Spain's adulterated cooking oil
in the 1980s, the Peugeot car bonnets marketed in 1999, a few toys put into circulation in England in the early 2000s, or various drugs from Africa. More
importantly, fakes cannot be reduced to pillage and theft. The diversity of fakes
is actually huge and involves very different logics. We can distinguish at least
five major groups:48 1) products that appear similar but are deliberately
nonidentical with the goods they simulate, such as the perfume Cannel No. 5 or
the brand Kalvin Klain; 2) products that use the same designs, colors, or labels
as famous products in order to create a family resemblance, such as the “bargain”
products of various well-known brands; 3) products that display some sign pretending an economic or legal relationship with a prestigious original; 4) outright
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imitation without the brand name of an exclusive model; 5) an actual fake, all
of whose external aspects mimic those of the copied product, including name
and brand. These multiple logics of the fake are a response to diverse economic
logics: one that seeks to save money by demanding cheaper and lower-quality
goods;49 one of mimicry, apprenticeship and late industrialization in a logic of
catching-up that does less to undermine property rights than to protect techniques and markets of more developed countries;50 a logic of market segmentation
and marketing techniques that allows the duplication and distribution of products through differentiated networks;51 and a logic of improvisation, with the
purchase of lots whose contents cannot be known with any precision.52 The
consequences are obviously not the same: they depend on the category of
“fakes” to which these goods belong, in terms of illegality and “crime,” either in
moral terms, or in economic and financial terms.
In all this, the close relationship between fakes and relocation is totally
obscured. In fact, the fakes come not only from Asia (China) and Eastern
Europe, but also from the Mediterranean, from its southern shores (Morocco,
Tunisia, Turkey) as well as from its northern shores (Italy, Spain, Portugal),
both of which include countries of delocalization on a vast scale. Most importantly, the companies that produce “fakes” are rarely specialized in falsification.
Most often, the same companies make “authentic” and “fake” things, producing
goods of different qualities. They sometimes do so intentionally by voluntarily
restricting the market and creating, more or less deliberately, secondary markets.
With the permission of the principals in foreign trade, they create a given
volume of production beyond the quota; or else they decide to produce different
goods of lesser quality for specific market segments—for example during sales
periods. They often do so in a way not provided for by the central purchasing
department: the latter can refuse, on the grounds of defective goods or damaged
packaging, certain lots that are then marketed by relocated workshops. Finally,
the “fake” may arise from the very logic of relocation and lower-cost purchases
in a race for profitability which sometimes fails to check on the origin and
quality of producers and intermediaries.53 So a fake is often less deliberately produced to mislead customers than to push profitability to its maximum.
Finally, the discourse of the dangers posed by fake goods charges “mafiatype” organized crime and even terrorist networks with producing and marketing
these without proof. One example:
Islamic extremists raised money for the attack on the World Trade Centre in
New York by selling fake T-shirts; one of the leaders of the gang of Vietnamese
origin Born to Kill has acknowledged that it earned more than 13 million
dollars by trading in fake watches; and it is estimated that, in the United
Kingdom, criminal networks handle 600 million pounds through the trade of
pirated DVDs—an activity that generates income for illegal immigrants. These
gangs also operate in other areas of illicit activities like drug trafficking or
people trafficking, pornography, illegal betting, or racketeering!54
While it is true that the Mafia and the Camorra in particular are involved
with fakes in Italy, or even in countries in which they invest and outsource,
such as Tunisia,55 this depends on very particular circumstances. More importantly, fakes are the province of relocated businesses and small entrepreneurs
who produce them on the margins of legality but who are not necessarily
Economic Crime and Neoliberal Modes of Government
651
members of criminal networks, although they may be forced to pay protection
when located in territories dominated by the mafia.56 Institutions involved in
the fight against fakes greatly overstate the role of organized crime in economic
offences by adopting a stereotypical, exaggerated and systematic definition of
what “organized crime” is.57 In fact, economic offences are also found in lawful
and legitimate business circles, legality is problematic given fluid, fuzzy, and
porous boundaries, alliances that change with circumstances, ill-defined careers,
and relationships often characterized by tolerance, complicity, hybridization, and
collusion—whether legal or not—between business and politics. In faking, as in
trafficking, targeting criminal organizations and perpetrators means finding
scapegoats on the cheap. It hides the true nature of these transgressions by
reducing the question to mere violations of rules.
The construction of a “plague” and the fight against faking has assumed
forms that are consistent with neoliberal modes of government like public/
private partnerships of enforcement. Norms, controls, authentification, and
sanctions are measures defined together with the “pillaged” companies who help
to set up technical and operational centres established for that purpose. An antifake “governance” is thus set up, aimed at sharing powers between the state and
all economic actors in the sector including producers, distributors and consumers. As with money laundering, it becomes a question of tracking suspicious
flows, patterns, or activities, monitoring and tracing transactions so as to detect
the criminal. Vigilance is handed over to peers and clients.58 What remains
unquestioned and untouched is the economic imperative of flexibility and competitiveness that sponsors the tendency to relocation in the search for low costs
of production. Also unquestioned are the implicit policies of protection by
norms and quality, at a time when traditional protectionist policies are being
delegitimized. These silences leave untouched a nonegalitarian economic order
in which the developed and industrialized countries always enjoy a comparative
advantage thanks to the rules they manage to impose on the international level.
Stigmatizing specific actors like organized crime (for example, the Camorra)
creates a myth of collective danger while removing suspicion from the instigators
of relocation and profitability, and enabling a covert form of protection through
indirect interventions in the markets.
The Fight Against Smuggling and Trafficking of Goods, or the Logic
of Secure Exchange
Finally, in the case of trafficking and smuggling the construction of danger
goes well beyond any real loss of revenue alone. In addition, arguments of security, morality, and legality are marshalled for a public staging of trafficking: “The
illegal sales of contraband tobacco, alcohol and beer contribute to a global
underground economy. In the tobacco sector alone, organized crime has become
the ‘fourth producer worldwide.’”59 From this base, it is asserted, criminal networks establish themselves permanently in the heart of a country and build
bridgeheads from which to organize other illicit trades, in particular, drugs.
The story is much more complex here, too: it mostly involves legitimate
and dominant actors in the global economic system—first and foremost, firms.
For example, tobacco companies have a significant interest in increasing the
market for cigarettes. Thus, they turn a blind eye to the practice of overselling,
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Journal of Social History
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exceeding the estimated consumption by a country. In a market dominated by a
very small number of actors, no criminal organizations have ever been
detected.60 Overall, on both sides of the Mediterranean, legitimate businesses
play an important role in smuggling by underestimating their imports, making
false statements, and “forgetting” to declare goods to customs.61 The majority of
goods that illegally enter do so through ports and actors identified as legal and
legitimate. The denunciation of organized crime ignores the involvement of
these enterprises and obscures the fact that free zones and free points are often
less tightly sealed than previously believed. Furthermore, relocated businesses
also engage in smuggling, as in the case of “fakes,” with or without the consent
of the entrepreneur and the principal.62 Here again, the official discourse of trafficking and smuggling is based on a false dichotomy of legal and illegal economic actors.
States are also heavily involved in smuggling and trafficking. In this,
enclaves play an important role, as in the case of Ceuta and Melilla, Spanish
presidios on Moroccan soil. Free ports since 1863, their status actually has been
strengthened by emergency legislation and visa exemption for cross-border commuters from Tetuan and Nador.63 Ceuta receives about 10,000 Moroccans every
day without a visa.64 Tangier, an international city in the 1920s and then a free
port after independence, owed its development to the use of free zones in the
1970s and especially 1980/1990—a policy intensified today with the construction of Tangier Mediterranean, soon to be one of the largest trans-shipment and
dispersal ports in the western Mediterranean. Similarly, the Mediterranean ports
of Tunisia, Libya, and Algeria facilitate trafficking often with state collusion.65
Nor are the northern shores exempt, as in the case of Andorra and Gibraltar,
whose membership in the European Union does not require them to join its
customs territory,66 or in the case of free zones, preferential tax regimes or places
of bank secrecy in the British Islands, Luxembourg, or Switzerland.
Thus, in trafficking as in the case of fakes, the role of organized crime is
largely overestimated. Targeting and reifying this actor obscures other actors.
Other mechanisms make such trafficking possible: financial arrangements to
minimize taxes, passage through companies acting as fronts based in countries
with intensive bank secrecy, transit through tax havens or countries deemed to
have a low degree of judicial cooperation.67 Similarly, the fact that some ports
happen to be located in territories controlled in part by criminal organizations
(Naples, Gioia Tauro, Istanbul) does not mean that they organize and control
this traffic. Rather, what we see in Campania, Calabria, and Turkey is an
in-between situation whose status is difficult to determine: the borders between
legal and illegal, between official and “mafia member,” between “clean” and
“dirty,” are extremely unclear and are marked only when judicial action is
taken.68 Generally, economic actors, whoever they are, take advantage of these
borders. As Eiko Siniawer reminds us for the beginning of the twentieth
century, research into mafias shows that they are restructured according to the
globalization and internationalization of business, though they do not take the
place of states and legitimate actors. This research suggests that there is a subtle
interplay between actors that the stigmatization of “organized crime” or the
“mafia state” tends to conceal.69 In reality, the “grip” of the “mafias” differs
greatly from one country to another, from one history to another, from one
moment to another. Business ties appear much more fluid than a description in
Economic Crime and Neoliberal Modes of Government
653
terms of organized crime would suggest, and much weaker and more fleeting too,
committing people to little, and perpetually renegotiated.70
The regulation of shipping provides us with another illustration of this blinkered outlook. Through the interplay between merchant shipping, terminal port
operators, state and regional governments, this mode of transport has undergone
radical transformations over the past thirty years. Now a small number of transshipment hubs concentrate all the flows of merchandise transported in ever
bigger standardized containers. In this context, the Mediterranean Sea fulfils an
increasingly important role, representing 30% of merchant traffic and 25% of oil
traffic.71 Algeciras in Spain, Marsaxlokk in Malta, Gioia Tauro in Italy,
Damietta in Egypt, and soon Tangier Mediterranean in Morocco, are the main
ports. Distance is no longer expensive in a logic of competitiveness, concentration and speed-up. What matters are the physical possibilities and techniques
for massing.72 Competitiveness also requires reductions in costs achieved more
or less legally, through flags of convenience and tax evasion, and through
improved techniques of containerization.73 But this concentration makes it
physically impossible to control merchandise. There is in fact an “illusion of
inspection”:74 ports possess sophisticated machines, scanners, tools for inspection and control capable, in principle, of inspecting anything and everything.
However, it is impossible to monitor all goods systematically and concretely,
given the vast size of the flows and the speed constraints for routing, transshipment and delivery. Smuggling is thus facilitated, yet this concentration itself
is never questioned—nor is the extent to which the quality of control can be
assessed.
On the other hand, the fight against trafficking focuses on the everincreasing sophistication of safety standards and techniques. A whole system of
authentication, of secure traceability, of well-protected unit markings, and of
the standardization and harmonization of legal rules is being implemented to
locate perpetrators of crimes. Yet “technology is more than a tool for authentication. It is a judicial tool capable of providing the evidence that is indispensible
for the fight against new profiles conducive to crimes.”75 As with the “perils”
analyzed above, such intervention is delegated to private actors like companies
that market protection systems and automated monitoring, companies that
manage port terminals, security firms, ship-owners, and bankers. Such commodified security is exercised arbitrarily, alternating tolerance and prohibition.
Trafficking is generally known, accepted, and even tolerated until, at some
point, a one-off intervention creates an example, to show that the state knows
what is happening and is in control, and to put an overambitious actor back in
his place—a place that must remain marginal. The denunciation of criminals
can then enable wrongdoers to be stigmatized without the very architecture of
globalization, its mechanisms and its practices being called into question.
Economic Crime as Neoliberal Witches' Sabbath
The fundamental question is thus not one of legality or illegality, or even of
what is permissible and what is not, of the moral and the immoral—even if the
logic of moralization is often mobilized. Many types of behaviour are tolerated
while the most consensual moral principles are violated, and many activities are
not prosecuted when laws are violated. The fight against crime appears more
654
Journal of Social History
Spring 2012
like the province of the imaginaire, where fear reigns, and the search for scapegoats catalyzes this fear. It is also the province of a commitment to state action
in a context that actually limits such commitment. The image of the Sabbath in
sixteenth-century Italy helps us to deepen this analysis: like criminal organizations, terrorist groups and mafias today, the description of the sects of sorcerers
then was based less on real events than on social and moral representations and
on an imaginaire. 76 The denunciation of the witches' Sabbath was based on an
ideology that highlighted conspiracies and presumed occult powers willing and
able to do evil, thus transforming the present into a permanent threat. Complex
problems were condemned and exorcised by a single and relatively simple causal
relationship.77 The denunciation of an evil constructed in this way allowed the
political authorities to demonstrate their ability to protect people and respond
to security demands. Economic, political and social transformations and insecurities were thus transferred onto scapegoats; identifying these scapegoats
depended on current power relations.
The stereotypes by which the terrorist, the mafia member, the smuggler, or
organized crime as a whole are highlighted as primary economic lawbreakers
strangely echo the processes by which witches were identified. Denunciations
and acts of exorcism were not so much determined by dominant values and
ideas than they were legitimated by them ex post facto. 78 Today as well, reifying
figures of evil seems to succeed precisely because it allows state actors to pursue a
diffuse mission for security on a daily basis with a simplified and more predictable view of the world.79
Eiko Siniawer also shows in her article that the focus on “organized crime”
and the rhetoric of criminalization are classical ways of underestimating and
deliberately overlooking illegal practices of legitimate actors.80 The fight against
organized crime thus appears to be an aspect of power and sovereignty enabling
the exercise of modes of government compatible with neoliberal economic globalization. It appears as an interventionism that is not dictated from on high, by
the sole sovereign decision of the state—which might conflict with the principles of support for markets, competition, and profitability—but that rather
advances by “delegation” to the highest and lowest levels, through the partnership between private and public actors, through consumers, competitors, and
company hierarchies, and finally through the ability to quit the national territory altogether thanks to consensual norms and morality more than of law
itself.81 These interventions, always business-friendly, are a mixture of incentives
and directives, of self-supervision and peer pressure, of control by subordinates
and control by clients (as in the well-known case of whistleblowing), of threats
to reputation (as in the technique of naming and shaming), of the mobilization
of morality (according to the puritanical imaginaire of globalization), of listing
(which requires much less evidence than would a court sentence), and of risk
prevention (which tends to eliminate the act in favour of an essentialization of
the terrorist, the gang, the mafia member, the criminal state, and the smuggler).
By obscuring the collusion between crime, business, and politics favored by
the privatization of the state, the process of criminalization is seen to be the very
expression of a “cheap mode of government,”82 specific to neoliberalism, combining the dream of self-regulation, discretionary bureaucratic intervention, and
moralization. The neoliberal state through its public–private redeployment does
not surrender its power but reshapes it by defining new fields and overall news
Economic Crime and Neoliberal Modes of Government
655
modalities of interventions. As examples of illegal migrations, money laundering, fakes and trafficking have shown, this redeployment doesn't result only from
voluntarism by an omnipotent and omniscient state. It is, in reality, the fruit of
a permanent interaction, the fruit of tensions, conflicts, negotiations and
arrangements between various actors, public and private actors, economic and
political actors. The role that state and state agents play in it is fundamental:
they criticize former practices, try to make state sovereignty felt and develop new
interventions. However, these are shaped by economic forces and private actors
with which they interact, so state interventions have to model themselves on
the neoliberal political economy: I have shown that the fight against economic
criminality passes less and less through public administrations such as police and
justice, and more and more by the application of rules, standards and procedures
that are simultaneously defined by state actors and by private actors. This neoliberal art of government becomes incarnate in a “framework policy” that opens
the way to an “active governmentality” required for all society to conform to
principles of enterprise, competition and market.83 This redefinition both transforms and is the expression of the ways political domination is exercised:
through intermediaries, mostly economic ones, and so through mechanisms that
are less direct, less institutional, and less police oriented.
Endnotes
1. G. Gribaudi, “Il ciclo vizioso dei rifiuti campani,” Il Mulino, 435 (2008): 17–35.
2. M. Naim, Illicit. How Smugglers, Traffickers and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global
Economy (New York, 2005); R. W. Baker, Capitalism's Achilles Heel. Dirty Money and
How to Renew the Free-Market System (Hoboken, 2005); M. Glenny, McMafia. Crime
without Frontiers (London, 2008); Politique internationale, special issue “Contrefaçon, fraude
alimentaire et contrebande: les fléaux du XXIème siècle,” 124 (2009).
3. M. Castells, The Information Age. Economy, Society and Culture. Vol. 3: The End of
Millennium (London and New York, 1998); D. Conway and N. Heynen, eds.
Globalization's Contradictions. Geographies of Discipline, Destruction and Transformation
(London, 2006) and especially D. Conway, “Globalization of labor. Increasing complexity, more unruly,” 79–94 and C. Allen, “Unruly spaces. Globalization and transnational
criminal economies,” 95–105.
4. S. Strange, The Retreat of the State. The Diffusion of Power in the World Economy
(Cambridge, 2006); R. B. Hall and T. Biersteker, eds., Emergence of Private Authority in
Global Governance (Cambridge, 2000).
5. For a critical analysis, Critique internationale, special issue on “Les faces cachées du partenariat euro-méditerranéen” 18 (2003): 114–178.
6. See the French journal Esprit 356 (July 2009): 104–192, and especially O. Abel,
“L'océan, le puritain, le pirate,” A. Garapon, “L'imaginaire pirate de la mondialisation,”
and O. Mongin, “De la piraterie protestante aux piratages contemporains.”
7. J. McC. Heyman, ed., States and Illegal Practices (Oxford & New York, 1999); W. van
Schendel and I. Abraham, “Introduction. The making of illicitness,” in W. van Schendel
and I. Abraham, eds., Illicit Flows and Criminal Things. States, Borders and the Other Side of
Globalization (Bloomington, 2005): 1–37; B. Dillman, “Introduction. Shining light on
the shadows: the political economy of illicit transactions in the Mediterranean,”
Mediterranean Politics, special volume on “Crime, Corruption and the Shadow Economy
656
Journal of Social History
Spring 2012
in the Mediterranean” 12 (2007): 123–139; J. L. Briquet and G. Favarel-Garrigues, eds,
Milieux criminels et pouvoir politique. Les ressorts illicites de l'Etat (Paris, 2008)—
translated as Organized Crime and States. The Hidden Face of Politics (Basingstoke, 2010).
8. See for example M. Péraldi, ed., Cabas et containers. Activités marchandes informelles et
réseaux migrants transfrontaliers (Paris, 2001); B. Hibou, “The ‘social capital’ of the State,
or the ruse of economic intelligence” in Bayart, Ellis, Hibou, The Criminalisation of the
State in Africa and “L'intégration européenne du Portugal et de la Grèce: le rôle des
marges” in S. Mappa, ed., La coopération internationale face au libéralisme (Paris, 2003):
87–134; R. Naylor, Wages of Crime. Black Markets, Illegal Finance, and the Underworld
Economy (Ithaca, 2002); A. Lowenhaupt Tsing, Friction. An Ethnography of Global
Connection (Princeton and Oxford, 2005); J. F. Bayart, Le gouvernement du monde (Paris,
2006—English translation Global Subject, London, 2008); F. Adelkhah and J. F. Bayart,
Voyages du développement. Emigration, commerce, exil (Paris, 2007); G. Favarel-Garrigues,
T. Godefroy and P. Lascoumes, Les sentinelles de l'argent sale. Les banques aux prises avec
l'antiblanchiment (Paris, 2009); G. Gribaudi, ed., Traffici Criminali. Camorra, Mafie e Reti
Internazionali dell'illegalità (Torino, 2009).
9. Heyman, ed., States and Illegal Practices; Bayart, Global Subjects; Briquet and Favarel,
Organized Crime and States; P. Dardot and C. Laval, La nouvelle raison du monde. Essai sur
la société néolibérale (Paris, 2009).
10. C. Tilly, ed., The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, 1975)
and “War making and state making as organized crime” in P. B. Evans, D. Rueschmeyer,
and T. Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge, 1985).
11. J.F. Bayart, S. Ellis, B. Hibou, The Criminalisation of the State in Africa (London,
1998); Heyman ed. States and Illegal Practices; B. Hibou, “L'historicité de la construction
européenne: le secteur bancaire en Grèce et au Portugal,” Les Etudes du CERI, 85–86,
April (2002) and “L'intégration européenne du Portugal et de la Grèce … ”; B. Hibou
and M. Tozy, “Une lecture d'anthropologie politique de la corruption au Maroc: fondement historique d'une prise de liberté avec le droit,” Revue Tiers Monde (January–March
2000), 23–47; G. Gribaudi, Mediatori. Antropologia del potere democristiano nel Mezzogiorno
(Torino, 1980).
12. P. Hillyard, J. Sim, S. Tombs and D. Whyte, “Leaving a ‘stain on the silence’.
Contemporary criminology and the politics of dissent,” British Journal of Criminology 44
(2004): 369–390; Schendel and Abraham, “Introduction. The making of illicitness”;
Briquet and Favarel, Organized Crime and States.
13. This comes directly from the seminal and now classical works of historical sociologists
such as Marx, Weber, Tilly, or Foucault.
14. Bayart, Ellis, Hibou, The Criminalisation of the State in Africa; R. Coleman, Reclaiming
the Streets. Surveillance, Social Control and the City (Collompton, 2004); R. Coleman,
S. Tombs and D. Whyte, “Capital, crime control and statecraft in the entrepreneurial
city,” Urban Studies 42 (13) (December 2005), 2511–2530; Bayart, Global Subjects;
O. Vallée, La police morale de l'anticorruption. Cameroun, Nigeria (Paris, 2010);
G. Favarel-Garrigues, La police des moeurs économiques. De l'URSS à la Russie (1965–
1995) (Paris, 2007); Briquet and Favarel, Organized Crime and States; Gribaudi, Traffici
Criminali; Favarel-Garrigues, Godefroy, and Lascoumes, Les sentinelles de l'argent sale.
15. B. Hibou, “Retrait ou redéploiement de l'Etat?,” Critique internationale 1, October
(1998): 151–168; B. Hibou, ed., La Privatisation des Etats, (Paris, 1999).
16. For all these transformations, among many others, J. P. Garson and M. El Mouhoud,
“Sous-traitance et désalarisation formelle de la main d'œuvre dans le BTP,” Notes de
l'IRES 19 (1989), 36–47; A. Pupier, “La fausse sous-traitance dans le bâtiment et les
Economic Crime and Neoliberal Modes of Government
657
travaux publics,” Sociétés contemporaines 10 (1992): 153–170; T. Coutrot, L'entreprise
néolibérale, nouvelle utopie capitaliste (Paris, 1998); L. Boltanski and E. Chiapello, Le
nouvel esprit du capitalisme, (Paris, 1999), English translation as The New Spirit of
Capitalism (London, 2006); J. P. Durand, La chaîne invisible. Travailler aujourd'hui: flux
tendu et servitude volontaire (Paris, 2004).
17. For a beautiful sociological and anthropological analysis of outsourcing, subcontracting and temping agencies, see N. Jounin, “L'illégalité sous-traitée? Les conséquences du
recours à des employeurs intermédiaires dans le secteur du bâtiment,” Droit social 1
(2007): 38–45 and Chantier interdit au public. Enquête parmi les travailleurs du bâtiment
(Paris, 2008).
18. M.I. Baganha “A cada Sul o seu Norte. Dinâmicas migratorias em Portugal” in B. de
Sousa Santos ed Globalização. Fatalidade ou Utopia (Porto, 2001); Hibou, “L'intégration
européenne de la Grèce et du Portugal”; A. Math and A. Spire, Vers une immigration permanente de travailleurs temporaires. Du mode 4 de l'AGCS aux différents régimes migratoires
de travailleurs détachés, IRES, document de travail, n° 04.060 (2006).
19. Jounin, Chantier interdit au public.
20. M. Math and A. Spire, “Des travailleurs jetables,” Plein droit 61 (June 2004):
F. Quassoli, “Migrants in the Italian underground economy,” International Journal of
Urban and Regional Research, 23 (1999): 212–231.
21. M. Samson, “Travailleurs de l'ombre. Les obscures filières de l'économie française,”
in S. Beaud, J. Confavreux and J. Lindgaard, eds., La France invisible (Paris, 2006),
427–442; Math and Spire, Vers une immigration permanente; Jounin, Chantier interdit au
public.
22. C. Fouteau, “Expulsables. Comment vivre sans papiers en France quand on est en
règle dans son pays,” in Beaud, Confavreux and Lindgaard, La France invisible, 141–154.
23. V. Guiraudon, “Third country nationals and European law: obstacles to rights' expansion,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 24 (October 1998): 657–674; special issue
of Cultures et Conflits (49) on “La mise à l'écart des étrangers: la logique et les effets du
visa schengen” (Spring 2003); D. Bigo and E. Guild, Controlling Frontiers. Free Movement
into and Within Europe (Aldeshot, 2005); E. Balibar, Nous, citoyens d'Europe? Les
frontières, l'Etat, le peuple (Paris, 2001).
24. Fouteau, “Expulsables … ”; T. Deltombe and J. Lindgaard, “Expulsés. Quand il n'est
pas possible de refaire sa vie ‘au pays’ après avoir été expulsé de France,” in Beaud,
Confavreux, and Lindgaard, La France invisible, 155–165.
25. Jounin, Chantier interdit au public.
26. In reference to S. Sassen, Losing Control: sovereignty in an age of globalization
(New York, 1996).
27. Beaud, Confavreux and Lindgaard, La France invisible.
28. For a deconstruction of this discourse, B. Hibou, “Le Partenariat en réanimation
bureaucratique,” Critique internationale 18, (January 2003), 117–128; O. Lamloum,
“L'enjeu de l'islamisme au coeur du processus de Barcelone,” Critique internationale, 18
January (2003), 129-142; M. Péraldi, “Aventuriers du nouveau capitalisme marchand.
Essai d'anthropologie de l'éthique mercantile” in Adelkhah and Bayart, Voyages du
développement; A. Içduygu, “The politics of irregular migratory flows in the Mediterranean
Basin: economy, mobility and ‘illegality’,” Mediterranean Politics 12 (July 2007): 141–161.
29. V. Pereira, L'Etat portugais et les Portugais en France de 1957 à 1974, PhD thesis in
history from Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris (2007).
658
Journal of Social History
Spring 2012
30. See the special issue of the French journal Cultures et Conflits, 68, “Circulations et
archipels d'exception” (Winter 2007), 7-146.
31. G. Lahav, “Immigration and the state: the devolution and privatisation of immigration control in the European Union,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 24 (October
1998): 675–694.
32. R. Naylor, Wages of Crime. Black Markets, Illegal Finance, and the Underworld Economy
(Ithaca, 2002); R. Palan, The Offhore World. Sovereign Markets, Virtual Places, and Nomad
Millionaires (Ithaca, 2003); T. Godefroy and P. Lascoumes, Le capitalisme clandestin.
L'illusoire régulation des places off shore (Paris, 2004); C. Chavagneux and R. Palan, Les
Paradis fiscaux (Paris, 2006).
33. B. Hibou, “Les enjeux de l'ouverture au Maroc: dissidence économique et contrôle
politique,” Les Etudes du CERI 15, (April 1996) and “L'intégration européenne de la
Grèce et du Portugal … ”; D. McMurray, In and Out of Morocco. Smuggling and
Migration in a Frontier Boomtown (Minneapolis, 2001); H. Meddeb, Contrebande et
réseaux marchands informels en Tunisie, Paris, FASOPO, Working Paper (February
2009).
34. Favarel-Garrigues, Godefroy and Lascoumes, Les sentinelles de l'argent sale.
35. Ibid; Vallée, La police morale de l'anticorruption.
36. C. Hood, “What happens when transparency meets blame-avoidance,” Public
Management Review 9 (2007): 191–210.
37. M. Power, The Audit Society. Rituals of Verification (Oxford 1997).
38. M. Power, The Risk Management of Everything. Rethinking the Politics of Uncertainty
(London, 2004).
39. Favarel-Garrigues, Godefroy and Lascoumes, Les sentinelles de l'argent sale; Garapon,
“L'imaginaire pirate de la mondialisation.”
40. Favarel-Garrigues, Godefroy and Lascoumes, Les sentinelles de l'argent sale.
41. Hood, What happens when transparency meets blame-avoidance; Favarel-Garrigues,
Godefroy and Lascoumes, Les sentinelles de l'argent sale.
42. M. Foucault, Surveiller et punir. Naissance de la prison (Paris, 1975); P. Lascoumes,
Elites irrégulières. Essai sur la délinquance d'affaires (Paris, 1997).
43. Coleman, Tombs and Whyte, “Capital, crime control and statecraft in the entrepreneurial city.”
44. Coleman, Reclaiming the Streets.
45. Favarel-Garrigues, Godefroy and Lascoumes, Les sentinelles de l'argent sale.
46. Commission européenne, Livre vert relatif à la lutte contre la contrefaçon, (Brussels,
1998); European Commission, Smuggling, Counterfeiting and Piracy. The Rising Tide of
Contreband and Organized Crime in Europe (January 2001) on the website: www.reacteu.
org; Ministère des Finances, Lutter contre la nouvelle délinquance économique: les
contrefaçons, Notes bleues de Bercy, Paris, 16–31 May (1995); Ministère des Finances, Le
plan d'action 2003–2004 du Comité national anti-contrefaçon, Notes bleues de Bercy,
Paris (2003); J. L. Zecri, “Les contrefaçons: un fléau financier à l'échelle mondiale,”
Humanisme et entreprise 284 (October 2007), 54–92.
47. See for example Ministère des Finances, Le plan d'action 2003–2004 du Comité
national anti-contrefaçon.
Economic Crime and Neoliberal Modes of Government
659
48. S. Casillo, “L'irresistibile ascesa dell'industria del falso in Italia,” Il Mulino 37 anno
XLVII, (July–August 1998), 696–710.
49. J. Guyer, Marginal Gains. Monetary Transactions in Atlantic Africa (Chicago, 2004).
50. P. Delval, “Faux-semblants et vrais crimes: risques majeurs pour les consommateurs,”
Politique internationale 124 (Summer 2009), 45–64. And for historical comparison,
P. Minard, La fortune du Colbertisme. Etat et industrie dans la France des Lumières (Paris,
1998); C. Poni, “Mode et innovation. Stratégies des marchands en soie de Lyon, 18e
siècle,” Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine 45 (July–September 1998): 589–625.
51. Casillo, “L'irresistibile ascesa dell'industria del falso”; Guyer, Marginal Gains.
52. M. Péraldi, “Economies criminelles et mondes des affaires à Tanger,” Cultures et
Conflits 68, (Winter 2007), 111–125.
53. For all these processes, R. Saviano, Gomorrah (Farrar, 2007); Delval, “Faux-semblants
et vrais crimes; V. Manry, “‘Etre en affaire’. Compétences relationnelles, éthique de la
performance et ordre social au marché des Puces,” in Péraldi, Cabas et containers, 279–
314.
54. R. Romulo, “Mesurer le commerce illicite pour mieux le combattre,” Politique internationale 124 (Summer 2009): 21–22.
55. Casillo, “L'irresistibile ascesa dell'industria del falso; Saviano, Gomorrah; A. Dal Lago
and S. Palidda, “L'immigration et la politique d'immigration en Italie,” in E. Bribosia et
A. Rea eds, Les nouvelles migrations, un enjeu européen (Bruxelles, 2002), 183–206;
L. d'Alessandro, “Città e criminalità: il comercio come chiave interpretativa” in
Gribaudi, Traffici criminali, 334-469.
56. C. Schmoll, “Cosmopolitisme au quotidien et circulations commerciales à Naples,”
Cahiers de la Méditerranée 66 (2003), available from http://cdlm.revues.org/index138.html;
Saviano, Gomorrah; R. Sciarrone, “Mafia and Civil Society. Economico-criminal
Collusion and Territorial Control in Calabria,” in Briquet and Favarel-Garrigues,
Organized Crime and States, 173–196.
57. J. L. Briquet, Mafia, justice et politique en Italie. L'affaire Andreotti dans la crise de la
République, 1992–2004 (Paris, 2007); Briquet and Favarel, Organized Crime and States;
Gribaudi, Traffici criminali.
58. For a description of these measures, Ministère des Finances, Le plan d'action 2003–
2004 du Comité national anti-contrefaçon; Delval, “Faux-semblants et vrais crimes.”
59. M. Amon and P. Amon, “L'innovation contre les trafics illicites: un enjeu
stratégiques,” Politique internationale 124 (Summer 2009), 32–33.
60. R. S. Frey, “The international traffic in tobacco,” Third World Quarterly 18 (2)
(1997), 303–319; E.T. Kellett-Bowman, “Le trafic de cigarettes dans l'Union
européenne,” Regard européen (July 1997), 43–50; N. Guarino, “Sigarette di contrabbando: il traffico illecito di tabacchi a Napoli dal doppoguerra agli anni novanta” in
Gribaudi, Traffici criminali, 90–111.
61. Hibou, “Les enjeux de l'ouverture au Maroc …”; McMurray, In and Out of Morocco;
Péraldi, Cabas et containers; C. Nordstrom, Global Outlaws. Crime, Money, and Power in
the Contemporary World (Berkeley, 2007).
62. Péraldi, “Economies criminelles et mondes d'affaire à Tanger”; Elbaz, Contrebande et
réseaux marchands informels en Tunisie.
63. A. Berramdane, “Le statut des enclaves espagnoles de Ceuta et Melilla dans l'Union
européenne,” Revue du droit de l'Union européenne 2 (2008): 237–260.
660
Journal of Social History
Spring 2012
64. Péraldi, “Economies criminelles et mondes d'affaire à Tanger.”
65. O. Pliez ed, La nouvelle Libye. Sociétés, espaces et géopolitique au lendemain de l'embargo
(Paris, 2004) and “Salloum, une bourgade bédouine sur la route de la mondialisation,”
Espace géographique 38 (January–March 2009), 31-42; J. P. Bras, “Le Maghreb dans la
‘guerre contre le terrorisme’. Enjeux juridiques et politiques des législations antiterroristes,” Année du Maghreb (2005–2006), 447–467; B. Hibou, La force de l'obéissance.
Economie politique de la répression en Tunisie (Paris, 2006)—translated as The Force of
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