Research & Graduate Schoolhttps://dspace.mic.ul.ie/handle/10395/26752024-03-28T08:54:48Z2024-03-28T08:54:48ZRule-breaking, inequality and globalization: the trans-nationalization of Irish criminal gangshttps://dspace.mic.ul.ie/handle/10395/28662019-04-18T02:01:07Z2016-01-01T00:00:00ZRule-breaking, inequality and globalization: the trans-nationalization of Irish criminal gangs
This article seeks to situate the emergence of transnational criminal gang networks in Ireland within broader debates about the impact of globalization on Irish society (Coulter and Coleman 2003; Kuhling and Keohane 2007; Donovan and Murphy 2013). As a result of attempts to integrate the Irish economy into global capitalism, the number of jobs available to unskilled and semi-skilled workers in poor urban neighborhoods has reduced since the 1960s. The poverty and misery experienced in these communities as a result of social exclusion has been further exacerbated by those operating on the so-called dark side of globalization (Whitaker 2002). These are members of trans-national gang networks who sell drugs, recruit foot-soldiers and use these neighborhoods as bases for their drugs distribution networks (Hourigan 2011). The article focuses on the impact which this dual negative experience of globalization has had on these communities and devotes specific attention to the emergence of a core leadership strata within these criminal gang networks who are comfortable operating both inside and outside the Irish state. In 2002, Leslie Sklair (2002) created a typology for what he described as the transnational capitalist class, a group who were key drivers of the process of globalization. The article concludes by examining the potential to use this typology to understand the leadership strata of transnational criminal gang networks which have emerged from Ireland.
Rule-breaking, inequality and globalization: the trans-nationalization of Irish criminal gangs.
2016-01-01T00:00:00ZLandmark High Court judgment on suspended sentences shows urgent need for government (Pre-published version)https://dspace.mic.ul.ie/handle/10395/28652019-04-17T02:01:25Z2016-01-01T00:00:00ZLandmark High Court judgment on suspended sentences shows urgent need for government (Pre-published version)
Newspaper article in 'Irish Independent' 20th April 2016.
2016-01-01T00:00:00ZHeritage, crime and inequality: understanding Limerick in the post-Celtic Tiger context (Pre-published version)https://dspace.mic.ul.ie/handle/10395/28642019-04-17T02:01:23Z2011-01-01T00:00:00ZHeritage, crime and inequality: understanding Limerick in the post-Celtic Tiger context (Pre-published version)
Debates about social exclusion are central to heritage, because heritage spaces are not blank canvasses. They are spaces where people live and work and when those residents are deeply disadvantaged, their poverty presents specific challenges to heritage development. In Limerick, the most prominent heritage site in the city, King John’s Castle is located in an area adjacent to one of the most deprived electoral districts in the Irish state (St. Mary’s Park). This part of Limerick city also features the strong presence of some of the city’s most notorious criminal gangs.
Heritage, crime and inequality: understanding Limerick in the post-Celtic Tiger context.
2011-01-01T00:00:00ZDemocratic breakdown, inequality and populism in the 21st Century: line-cutters, ladder-pullers and unreachable elites (Pre-published version)https://dspace.mic.ul.ie/handle/10395/28632019-04-17T02:01:05Z2018-01-01T00:00:00ZDemocratic breakdown, inequality and populism in the 21st Century: line-cutters, ladder-pullers and unreachable elites (Pre-published version)
When I began my current research project, which examines as one of its components the underlying causes of contemporary populism, I started with the conviction that both deepening inequality and democratic deficits generated by decades of neo-liberal economic policy were contributing to the current populist surge on the left and the right. The United States and the United Kingdom, where the recent populist surge has been most pronounced, were the first societies where neo-liberal economic policy was applied for a sustained period on a grand scale (Harvey 2005). The history of neo-liberal thought demonstrates that those who developed these ideas were uneasy with democracy and felt it should be limited. Secondly, they recognised that deepening inequality would be an inevitable outcome of the application of their ideas and were willing to live with the societal consequences of that inequality (Dardot and Laval, 2013). In teaching graduate courses on globalization, I often make the distinction between social science understandings of globalization which focus on connectedness – of people, money, media, ideas – and neo-liberal globalization – a specific economic and political project which has been enacted quite deliberately by governments and trans-national institutions influenced by think-tanks and universities since the 1970s. I think both forms of globalization have created sets of pressures which have contributed to the populist surge which we are witnessing.
Democratic breakdown, inequality and populism in the 21st Century: line-cutters, ladder-pullers and unreachable elites.
2018-01-01T00:00:00Z