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Attempts to theorize the relationship between the informal and the illegal sectors of the economy. States that there are significant behavioural similarities. Proposes an emergent paradigm based on dual labour market theory to explain the similarites and differences in order to guide future research in each area. Applies the theory to the production and marketing of crack cocaine and shows how the model helps us to understand issues of exploitation and risk makagement within the drug market.

The question of “taking sides” has received a lot of attention within qualitative criminology. Much of this has focused on the moral-philosophical or value-laden aspects of taking sides, following Becker's 1967 essay “whose side are we on”. However, the question of taking sides also has methodological implications, especially for qualitative researchers who wish to study multiple sides of a criminological problem, such as the perspectives of offenders and law enforcement around a particular illegal activity.

This paper considers some of the practical, ethical and analytical challenges of studying illegal markets from opposing sides – the market participants' perspective on one side and law enforcement on the other. It outlines the advantages of researching both sides: the improved validity and reliability that comes with exploring and trying to reconcile different perspectives and the potential this has for developing theory and policy. It then explores the challenges researchers may face when trying to engage with opposing sides in qualitative fieldwork.

The paper pays particular attention to some practical and ethical questions researchers may face in this situation: who to research first, whether to be open about researching both sides and whether researchers should ever share information they have received from one side with their participants from the other side.

The authors do not offer absolute answers to these questions. Rather, the authors aim to outline some of the factors researchers may need to consider when juggling qualitative research involving participants on both sides of the law.

With only a few exceptions, economic sociology scholarship remains almost silent about illegality and crime in the economy. The implicit premise in the literature on market sociology is that institutional structures and exchanges taking place in markets are law abiding in nature. As a consequence of this legality bias the study of morality in markets has so far only addressed commodities – like human organs, gambling, drugs, alcohol, or tobacco – whose legal status depends on broad social agreements and has excluded markets whose workings are dependent on formally legitimized institutions like property rights, trademark laws, or copyrights. Drawing on seven months of ethnographic research, this chapter addresses the phenomenon of emerging moral justifications in the context of a marketplace for counterfeit and sweatshop-produced garments. In line with Anteby’s proposal on a “practice-based view of moral markets,” it argues that despite the broad moral consensus around trademark laws and the absence of professionals who advocate for legalization, moral justifications views arise from rising aspirations in such illegal markets. The case expands existing understandings of morality and contestation in economic sociology literature and shows its relevance in the context of recent academic scholarship on perceptions of the future as a source of moral justification of market exchanges.

The conventional wisdom regarding economic crime analysis has so far mainly focused upon “structural” issues. The field has been analysed mostly under the organisational aspect (how criminals organisations are structured, how illicit activities they perform are organised). Attention has been paid to “methods” – more in terms of case‐studies and search of “models” than in terms of opportunities dynamics – rather than to the economic profile (what are the special features of markets, supply, demand, production and distribution of illicit goods and services). It seems useful to increase the analysis by opening the quest to economic and sociologic aspects. The paper is an attempt to introduce a wider conceptual framework for a complementary approach, and a proposal aimed at deepening some focal points.

Illegal economic activity is – not less than the legal one – a process of making choices among the alternatives available, for the aim of achieving a profit. It is therefore intrinsically an open, flexible activity, which may assume all the schemes and formulas that contingency suggests. In this perspective, the paper addresses observation and analysis towards detecting features and mechanisms of illegal economy market in a market approach, trying to give account thereby of structure and functioning processes of economic crime.

A crucial element resides in the possibility of gathering wider information on the structure and internal dynamics of grey economy. Grey markets may indeed provide supporting structures like optional channels, instruments, or professional expertise, which show fungible for different legal or illegal goals. The goal of preserving the system from the threatens of economic crime must be rooted in an adequate knowledge of the internal operational dynamics of the system itself. Equipping more proactive instruments becomes essential. There is a need for awareness of the trends taking place in the markets: their causes, the alternative option they may grant to illegal players, the probable choice these players will consequently make, and the final effect of such choice on the system. It is necessary to gain the capability to foresee, anticipate and influence behaviour changes.

The paper offers a contribution to more robust methodology for confronting systemic issues.

It is the expectation of Halal consumers that the meat they buy in retail shops and restaurants are ethically and legally reared and slaughtered in approved premises to protect animal welfare and public health. While this may be the case in multinational and well-established supermarkets due to due diligence on the part of retailers, there is evidence to suggest that some independent retail shops and ethnic restaurants in the UK partake in selling meat from illegally slaughtered animals. It is a crime that involves many players, but usually masterminded by rural entrepreneurs, including rogue farmers who supply the animals for illegal slaughter and further processing into smokies, or as part of the Islamic festival of Qurbani, in makeshift abattoirs. The purpose of this paper is to highlight illegal slaughter of sheep for the Halal market and how these impacts on food integrity and animal welfare.

This paper examines the legality of slaughter in accordance with UK animal welfare and food safety legislations. The documentary research approach is adopted to examine available information on the activities of organised criminal gangs in the production of smokies and their possible involvement in Qurbani fraud.

This paper demonstrates the involvement of some rogue farmers who are facilitating the smokies trade and illegal slaughter of sheep during the Qurbani sacrifice. It is worth noting that while these illegal activities occur in the Halal sector, the perpetrators are not always Muslims. The processing of illegally slaughtered sheep takes place in unhygienic conditions which is of food safety, public health concern and may violate the religious rules around slaughter.

Illegal slaughter for the Muslim sacrifice of Qurbani is underreported, this paper aims to highlight the animal welfare and food safety aspects of this type of slaughter, in addition to those slaughtered for smokies production.

Extends the notion of informality into the area of illegality, looking at how illegal crack vendors in New York use informality to reduce and pass risk to others. Focuses on the techniques used to avoid detection and arrest and the methods of placing risk of imprisonment on smaller, lower‐income dealers. Suggests that this process of exploitation only makes sense when seen in the broader context of inequality in US society where some have nothing to lose by going to jail.

Internet use has changed the mechanics of drug dealing. Although this has spurred some initial academic interest in how markets and their users have been changing, the issue is still under-researched. The purpose of this paper is to understand how the organisation of the distribution of prescription drugs and other illegal drugs overlap in these online markets by analysing data gathered from observation of the Swedish Facebook drug market and its participants.

Data were gathered during three months of digital ethnography conducted among Swedish Facebook posters supplemented by 25 interviews with sellers (20) and buyers (5). Screenshots and interview data were coded by carrying out an NVivo-based content analysis. The analysis is based on descriptive statistics of drug types, co-occurrence with other drugs, group size and the demographic characteristics of sellers. Additionally, the interviewees’ descriptions of the marketplace and their drug dealing or buying activities were included in the analysis.

In total, 57 Swedish Facebook groups that sold illegal substances were located. The groups rarely specialised in specific drug types, but were convened around demographic factors, such as specific cities and locales. The sales of prescription drugs were part of the overall activity of groups selling other illegal drugs, but they were more often sold in separate Facebook posts, possibly by specialist sellers. Swedish Facebook sales primarily concerned alprazolam, tramadol, pregabalin and clonazepam, and were sold by both professional and amateur sellers.

This study reports findings from a Nordic comparative study on social media drug dealing, representing the first in-depth study of digitally mediated prescription drug dealing outside of cryptomarkets.

The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into the organisation of informal street selling in the capital of Belgium, its association with formal and illegal selling and the perceptions, choices and decisions of the sellers.

A qualitative approach (case study) was employed, including interviews, observations and document analyses.

The results point to different types of informal street selling, which are mainly executed by (illegal) migrants as a survival strategy. The case illustrates the different interrelations between the formal, informal and criminal economy. Notwithstanding the precarious situation of many informal sellers (informal), street selling is preserved by the government as a social safety net. Moreover, informal selling is neutralised by the suggestion that it is a better alternative than stealing or committing crimes which inflict physical harm and feelings of insecurity.

The results have limited generalisability, but are theoretically and methodologically important.

Implications for migration policy (e.g. more preventative actions in countries of origin, shorter procedures, development of migration regulations accounting for other policy domains, e.g. employment market).

The study fills a gap in the literature as there is limited empirical research on informal economy and Belgian informal street selling. Results are discussed in relation to international literature, thus overcoming a purely national perspective.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the potential of vulnerability studies of economic activities to study the relationship between organised crime and the economy and illustrate it by examples taken from a vulnerability study of the European waste management industry.

Based on both economical and criminological perspectives a scanning tool for assessing the vulnerability of economic sectors was developed and applied to a specific case.

Sector vulnerability studies belong to the wider family of criminal opportunity approaches, all of which aim to identify areas of current risk and future prevention. Sector vulnerability studies (vulnerability to organised crime and other risks) extend the range by bringing in economic sectors. Although starting from the analysis of the formal economy, sector vulnerability studies can provide insights concerning potential irregularities and opportunities for informal economies to flourish as well.

This paper addresses informal markets and the relationship between organised crime and the economy from a vulnerability perspective, focusing on the opportunities provided by licit economic activity. Although such opportunity approaches exist and have been applied to various cases before, there are only a few examples of its application to vulnerabilities to organised crime.

This paper examines what drives match-fixing in football and why some leagues collapse from corruption. Based on more than 220 interviews with players, referees, sports officials and law enforcement officers, the gambling industry and corrupters, three factors presented when high levels of match-fixing were observed: strong illegal gambling networks, high levels of relative exploitation of players, and perceived corrupt officials. Leagues collapsed if the public became aware of high-level corruption and an alternative market competitor was introduced.