Abstract
In the early 1990s Greece accepted a large number of immigrants from a variety of contexts. Since then ‘organised criminality’ has become an important aspect of the immigration nexus in the country, and ethnicity has been viewed as an extremely important-if not the primary–explanatory variable. Simultaneously, there has been very little empirical research on ‘organised crime’ in Greece in general and ‘organised crime’ and ethnicity in particular. The purpose of this article, which is based on previous research that the author has conducted on three illegal markets in Greece (a. migrant smuggling business, b. the cigarette black market, and c. the market of stolen cars and car parts), is to show the extent to which these illegal markets are controlled by foreign nationals, and establish whether there is such thing as an ‘alien conspiracy’ in the particular country.
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Notes
This is the number of foreigners as opposed to immigrants from specific countries that are subjected to criminalising processes (e.g. non EU Europeans such as Albanians). The term foreigners includes individuals who are immigrants and non-immigrant foreigners who, for instance, come from European Union member states.
Despite the fact that what is perceived as ‘organised crime’ does not only involve illegal markets (see, for instance, [59]).
In 2007 the Ministry of Public Order was merged with the Ministry for the Interior.
According to Law 2928 on ‘Organised Crime’, which was introduced in 2001 and was heavily influenced by international efforts to ‘combat organised crime’ such as the UN Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime, a ‘criminal organisation’ is a structured and with continuous action group comprising of three or more members.
I owe this point to Klaus von Lampe.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Frank Bovenkerk, Klaus von Lampe, Georgios Papanicolaou, Nikos Passas and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and constructive feedback on earlier drafts of this article. The research on the trafficking of stolen cars and car parts in Greece was supported by a University Research Fund (URF) from the University of Teesside.
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Antonopoulos, G.A. ‘Are the ‘others’ coming?’: Evidence on ‘alien conspiracy’ from three illegal markets in Greece. Crime Law Soc Change 52, 475–493 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-009-9204-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-009-9204-2