Sergi -The 'Ndrangheta Down Under: Constructing the Italian Mafia in Australia (original) (raw)
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The 'Ndrangheta Down Under: Constructing the Italian Mafia in Australia
2019
In the past decades, the Australian 'ndrangheta has been object of media attention, academic inquiry and growing policing concern. In Australia, however, the phenomenon is not new. Next to contemporary manifestations of mafia clans and activities, there is an historical 'ndrangheta, with families and networks in specific areas of the country. Their activities peaked between the 1950s and the 1970s and their reputation still persists and populates mafia narratives. This article will analyse historical archives broadly related to a nebulous idea of the Italian mafia in Australia. These archival sources contain both institutional documents (from police forces, intelligence services and law enforcement agencies) and, to a lower extent, media sources ranging from 1940s to 1980s. The analysis will show how Australian authorities observed, approached and attempted to fight the mafia phenomenon-and specifically that of Calabrian origin-very early and with mixed results. This article...
While attention to the 'ndrangheta, the Calabrian mafia, in Australia, has significantly increased in the past two decades, historical records referring to this peculiar manifestation of organised crime in the country date back almost a century. This research is situated in between studies on mafia mobility and studies on the nature of mafia-type organised crime in Italy and in Australia. Relying on archival research, fieldwork and focus groups with law enforcement agencies across most Australian jurisdictions, this paper will essentially argue that there is in Australia an ongoing criminal system that is made of ethnically hybrid criminal networks – predominantly made of, but not limited to, Calabrian ethnicity. Ethnic solidarity and traditional norms and values of the 'ndrangheta, embedded in Calabrian migrant culture, provide the roof to these networks' behaviours and organisation. This paper will discuss how the resilience of this mafia in Australia is linked to the capacity of 'ndrangheta clans to maintain different heads – to be polycephalous – all differently and equally important: their organisational head is stable and culturally homogeneous, their (mafia-type) behaviours are constant, flexible and rooted in ethnic solidarity, and their activities are very dynamic, but hybrid in their ethnic composition. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0004865818782573
The evolution of the Australian 'ndrangheta. An historical perspective.
This paper explores the phenomenon of the ‘ndrangheta – a criminal organisation from Calabria, South of Italy and allegedly the most powerful among the Italian mafias – through its migrating routes. In particular, by focusing on the peculiar case of Australia, the paper aims to show the overlapping of migrating flows with criminal colonisation, which has proven to be a strategy of this particular mafia. The paper uses the very thin literature on the subject alongside official reports and newspaper articles on migration and crime, mainly from Italian sources, to trace an historical journey on the migration of people from Calabria to Australia in various moments of the last century. The aim is to present the evolution and growth of Calabrian clans in Australia. The topic is largely unexplored and is still underreported among Australian institutions and scholars, which is why the paper chooses an historical approach to describe the principal paths in this very new field of research.
Mafia-type criminal groups belonging to, or originated from, the Calabrian ‘ndrangheta from Southern Italy, have been object of recent academic research and media attention in Australia. The Australian ‘ndrangheta, as qualified form of organised crime, poses new challenges for law enforcement in the country. This paper briefly looks at the strategies to fight organised crime in Australia, with specific focus on anti-association laws. By using a comparative approach, the paper will look at the criminalisation of mafias as qualified forms of organised crime in other two jurisdictions, Italy and the USA, to advocate for an effective mafia criminalisation in Australia. In conclusion, this paper will argue that, in order to also fight mafia phenomena, criminal law in Australia should focus on behaviours of organised crime groups rather than only on the criminalisation of proscribed associations and their illegal activities. Sergi, A. (2016) Countering the Australian ‘ndrangheta: The criminalisation of mafia behaviour in Australia between national and comparative criminal law, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, Published online before print June 13, 2016, doi: 10.1177/0004865816652367
ITALIAN MAFIAS TODAY: TERRITORY, BUSINESS, AND POLITICS
Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books a joint project of Rutgers School of Law and Rutgers School of Criminal Justice, 2021
'Still today Italian mafias are widely dismissed as ‘an Italian problem' despite vast evidence that these criminal groups have expanded well beyond Italy as their base for business.' Italian Mafias Today provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of the evolution of Italian organised crime as a multifaceted phenomenon through the contribution of different international experts.
Italian Organised Crime: Mafia Associations and Criminal Enterprises
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 1744057042000297954, 2010
The paper reviews the different forms of organised crime in Italy. To begin with, it focuses on the Sicilian Cosa Nostra and the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta, Italy's two largest and most powerful mafia associations. With their centuries-old histories, articulated structures, sophisticated ritual and symbolic apparatuses and claim to exercise a political dominion, these associations have few parallels in the world of organised crime. In its second section, the paper reviews other groups and networks that are-with varying degrees of justification-also routinely described as organised crime: these range from the Neapolitan Camorra to Apulian organised crime and the so-called new 'foreign mafie' and other criminal entrepreneurs. Whereas the new Italian and foreign players are likely to expand their activities on Italy's illegal markets, the future of Cosa Nostra and the 'Ndrangheta is more uncertain and largely depends on the decisions made by the public administrations.
The Italian antimafia authorities have warned Canadian law enforcement about the risks and the growing concerns for the infiltration of clans of the Calabrian mafia, known as ‘ndrangheta, in Eastern Canada3. The alarm linked to the rise of the ‘ndrangheta challenges the paradigms of traditional organized crime in Canada, because the ‘ndrangheta is presented as traditional but also innovative and more pervasive than other mafia-type groups. Through access to confidential investigations and interviews to key specialist law enforcement teams in Toronto and Montreal, this article investigates today’s institutional perception of mafia – the ‘ndrangheta in particular – in Canada when compared to Italian conceptualizations. I will argue that the changes in narratives in Canada can be read in relation to changes in the Italian identity in the country, moving towards regionalization and specialist knowledge of ethnic differences.
From Mafia to Organised Crime: A Comparative Analysis of Policing Models
Introduction chapter of the book http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319535678 https://books.google.com.au/books?id=m4otDwAAQBAJ&dq=From+Mafia+to+Organised+Crime:+A+Comparative+Analysis+of+Policing+Models&source=gbs\_navlinks\_s This book presents primary research conducted in Italy, USA, Australia and the UK on countering strategies and institutional perceptions of Italian mafias and local organized crime groups. Through interviews and interpretation of original documents, this study firstly demonstrates the interaction between institutional understanding of the criminal threats and historical events that have shaped these perceptions. Secondly, it combines analysis of policies and criminal law provisions to identify how policing models which combat mafia and organised crime activities are organized and constructed in each country within a comparative perspective. After presenting the similarities between the four differing policing models, Sergi pushes the comparison further by identifying both conceptual and procedural convergences and divergences across both the four models and within international frameworks. By looking at topics as varied as mafia mobility, money laundering, drug networks and gang violence, this book ultimately seeks to reconsider the conceptualizations of both mafia and organized crime from a socio-behavioural and cultural perspective.