Geopolitics and Organized Crime

Learning Objectives
The course aims to analyze the link between geopolitics and organized crime by exploring the relationship between space, power, and conflict. In the first part, the fundamental concepts will be defined through the interpretative frameworks of sociology and political geography, providing students with useful tools to critically interpret the current and profound crisis of the international order. The course will then identify the main geopolitical actors—obviously the State, but also other entities such as supranational organizations, corporations and finance, social movements, and terrorism—before focusing on organized crime and the mafia, interpreted as a peculiar form of power and a political actor.
In the central part of the course, several phenomena and processes will be examined—through historical examples and case studies—that clearly highlight the relationships between geopolitics and organized and mafia-type crime: the formation, consolidation, and disintegration of the State; wars; the environment and natural resources; legal and illegal trafficking; migration. The final part of the course includes an in-depth study of the Latin American context, with particular attention given to the Mexican case.

· Understanding the relationships between geopolitics and forms of organized and mafia-type crime.
· Knowledge of the key concepts of the course, such as space, power, conflict, sovereignty, territory, imaginaries, scale, and borders.
· Development of critical geopolitical analysis skills.