Old and new actors in the Italian drug trade: ethnic succession or functional specialization?

The article analyses Italian and foreign organized crime involved in the drug market from two perspectives. The first, called “criminal succession”, assumes that the great presence of foreign criminal groups into this illegal market would represent a menace to the traditional hegemony exercised by Mafia-type associations in Italy. From a different perspective, defined as “functional specialisation”, the involvement of foreign criminal groups in the drug market could also be seen in terms of criminal “labour force” tending to follow the same mechanisms occurring in the general market at large, where immigrants fill low-paying jobs not requested by the local population. Through the analysis of data provided by the Italian Central Antidrug Bureau and recent court records the article tests these two perspectives.