Beyond Drugs, Smuggling and Trafficking

Violence, Victimization and Community Action in Mexico’s Criminal Landscape

Gabriella Sanchez, Sheldon X. Zhang

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367714970
• eBook ISBN: 9781000462968
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Graphic depictions of crime in Mexico abound in the global imagination, fueled not merely by media representations, but also by an abundant body of scholarship that reproduces grotesque, simplistic characterizations of Mexico's people, cities and towns as crime-ridden and almost inherently violent. These representations, however, often lack evidence and forgo important contextual analyses, not to mention fail to incorporate the perspectives of its actors in the research development process.

This collection of essays shows how community-based research efforts to examine practices like kidnapping, migrant smuggling, human trafficking, sex work and citizen-led forensics in Mexico can effectively correct methodological and conceptual gaps present in Mexico's dominant organized crime narrative, while providing effective mechanisms to inform academic and policy debates. This easy-to-read volume provides a much-needed re-assessment of Mexico's organized crime rhetoric, and also outlines a pathway for those interested in developing critical empirical research on illicit and criminalized practices.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Victims & Offenders.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Women’s Involvement in Migrant Kidnapping in Mexico: A Gender Perspective
• 2 Being a Sex Worker and Migrant in Times of Trafficking: Experiences from the Mexico (Chiapas)–Guatemala Border
• 3 Poverty, Aspirations, and Organized Crime Involvement among Adolescent Men in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico
• 4 Lists, Maps, and Bones: The Untold Journeys of Citizen-led Forensics in Mexico
• 5 In Their Own Words: Boys, Girls and Adolescents as Facilitators of Migrant Smuggling on the U.S.–Mexico Border
• 6 Victimization, Offending and Resistance in Mexico: Toward Critical Discourse and Grounded Methodologies in Organized Crime Research
• Epilogue
• Index