Trends in Organized Crime

, Volume 16, Issue 4, pp 413–434 | Cite as

“Shifting the stuff wasn’t any bother”: Illicit enterprise, tobacco bootlegging and deconstructing the British government’s cigarette smuggling discourse

Article
First Online:

Abstract

This paper presents the results of interactions/interviews with an active tobacco bootlegger regarding his illicit entrepreneurial activity spanning his illegal career. This narrative is intended to portray a snapshot of a type of organised criminality within an illicit market place but seeks to add to the critical academic literature responding to State-led depictions of organised crime as an apocalyptic menace. The results of the fieldwork suggest that illicit market enterprise in this context is neither threatening nor predatory, is very ordinary and, crucially, is driven by insatiable consumer demand within local trading networks.

Keywords

Organised crime Illicit/illegal entrepreneur Illicit enterprise Tobacco smuggling Cigarette bootlegging 
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.University of SheffieldSheffieldUK

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