Drug Trafficking and Ethnic Minorities in Western Europe
| Author | Letizia Paoli,Peter Reuter |
| Date | 01 January 2008 |
| Published date | 01 January 2008 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1477370807084223 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
ARTICLES
Volume 5 (1): 13–37: 1477-3708
DOI: 10.1177/1477370807084223
Copyright © 2008 European Society of
Criminology and SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore
www.sagepublications.com
Drug Trafficking and Ethnic Minorities
in Western Europe
Letizia Paoli
Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium
Peter Reuter
University of Maryland, USA
ABSTRACT
Popular media as well as law enforcement agencies throughout Europe routinely
identify members of ethnic minorities, and recent migrants in particular, as
responsible for selling a large proportion of the illegal drugs that are consumed
in Europe. Examination of the existing and modest research literature, as well as
a careful reading of the official data, does indeed indicate that certain sectors of
the drug market are dominated by a small number of specific immigrant groups.
Turkish and Albanian ethnic groups largely control the importation, high-level
trafficking and open-air retailing of heroin; Colombian groups dominate the im-
portation of cocaine. However, there are other major sectors of the drug market,
notably those for cannabis and synthetic drugs, in which native populations seem
to be more important. We offer an explanation for this configuration in terms of
the advantages conferred on specific immigrant groups by tighter connections to
source and transhipment countries as well as by the lesser ability of police to gain
cooperation within those immigrants’ communities in the consuming countries.
KEY WORDS
Drug Trafficking / Drugs / Ethnic Minorities / Europe.
Introduction
Popular media as well as law enforcement agencies throughout Europe
routinely identify members of ethnic minorities, and recent migrants in
13-38 084223-EUC.qxd 27/11/07 10:02 AM Page 13
particular, as responsible for selling a large proportion of the illegal drugs that
are consumed in Europe. This claim has both political and analytical signifi-
cance. On the one hand, it provides a handy tool for nationalist parties, such
as those of Jean Le Pen and Pia Kjærsgaard, to attack immigration as a threat
to the welfare of Western Europe. On the other hand, if true, the claim poses
an interesting challenge to researchers to explain why some immigrant groups
are advantaged. The political has so far overshadowed the analytical signifi-
cance of the claim and has, at least in Europe, discouraged serious research
on the topic. As Frank Bovenkerk pointed out for the more general rela-
tionship between organized crime and ethnic minorities, the involvement of
ethnic minorities in drug trafficking is a ‘touchy subject’ (2001: 124). In
criminology, as in the liberal public sphere, the topic is usually avoided for
fear of reinforcing the cheap and distorted ethnic stereotypes popularized
by popular media. As Ruggiero and South put it, ‘the vilification, persecu-
tion and victimization of various ethnic groups for real or imagined associ-
ations with drugs has been a strong constant of drug control history, since
at least the late nineteenth century’ (1995: 110). However, the relationship
between ethnic minorities and crime (including drug trafficking but other
crimes as well) is too important to be left solely to moral entrepreneurs.
And that is why in this article we have set out to discuss the official and sci-
entific information so far available in Europe on ethnic minorities’ involve-
ment in drug trafficking.
In tackling this topic we are picking up on a small but venerable litera-
ture most famously associated with the work of Daniel Bell in the 1950s in
the United States. Bell (1953) was concerned with explaining the promi-
nent, perhaps even dominant, role of immigrant groups in American organ-
ized crime. He saw this as a response to blocked opportunity, a hypothesis
that has gained general acceptance without much formal testing. We also
make no claim to formal testing but suggest that the hypothesis probably
holds for drug trafficking in Western Europe. However, it turns out that
immigrants are prominent in only certain aspects of the drug trade and we
believe that we can offer an account for the distribution of their presence
that is broadly consistent with the Bell hypothesis and gives it somewhat
more nuance.
We also reflect a growing literature on crime and immigration (e.g.
Tonry 1997). It has often been noted, at least since the 1931 report of the
Wickersham Commission (National Commission on Law Observance and
Enforcement 1931) in the United States, that first-generation immigrants
have lower rates of serious criminal offending than the native-born popula-
tion. The corollary, with less certainty, has been that the children of immi-
grants have higher rates of crime than the native population. The collection
of essays in Tonry’s 1997 volume show that, with some important exceptions,
14 European Journal of Criminology 5(1)
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