Economic geography and organized crime: A critical review

This review argues that organized crime accounts for a significant proportion of global economic activity but despite this has yet to receive substantive attention from economic geographers. It argues that the study of organized crime would expand the empirical terrain of economic geography and produce more holistic, nuanced accounts of globalisation but also that economic geography has much to offer the existing literatures of organized crime. The paper briefly discusses the nature and extent of the global organized crime economy and then goes onto consider the relatively limited explorations of the spatialities of organized crime to date. It then explores the often blurred distinctions between licit and illicit economic practices before considering what empirical investigations of organized crime might add to our understanding of processes of contemporary globalisation. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.