The Causes of Illicit Trade

Why does illicit trade emerge, expand, and persist? This volume argues that the answer cannot be found in any single cause, actor, or level of analysis. Rather, illicit trade emerges through causal configurations in which motivations, opportunities, relationships, institutions, infrastructures, and broader structural conditions interact across different contexts. Adopting an interdisciplinary, comparative, and causal approach, the volume examines these processes across micro, meso, and macro levels, connecting individual motivations and social relations with organisational networks, markets, legal and technological infrastructures, political conditions, conflict, migration governance, financial systems, and environmental pressures. It shows how illicit trade becomes attractive, possible, organised, scalable, tolerated, and resilient. A central contribution of the volume is to distinguish the different functions that factors perform within causal processes. Some cause illicit trade by generating demand, incentives, pressures, or opportunities; others enable it by making illicit practices possible, scalable, or durable; still others facilitate it by reducing risk, concealing activities, or connecting actors. These roles are context-dependent, and illicit trade is frequently embedded in licit markets, institutions, infrastructures, and social relations. Bringing together perspectives from law, criminology, economics, sociology, political science, international relations, migration studies, technology studies, environmental studies, and finance, the volume offers an integrated framework for scholars, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to understand why illicit trade persists. This is the second volume of the GLITSS trilogy, a four-year collaborative endeavour involving nearly 300 researchers from 48 countries under the COST Action Globalization, Illicit Trade, Security and Sustainability (GLITSS).