New research explores how illicit economies connect conflict-affected borderlands with metropolitan centres, challenging the assumption that violence, poverty and environmental degradation result from isolation. It explores how flows of capital, commodities and people create unequal connections between margins and metropoles, shaping patterns of wealth, insecurity and development.

SOC ACE researchers will join leading experts at ECPR 2026 to examine how political, economic and social pressures are reshaping organised crime and responses to it.

Drawing on expertise from Tom Keatinge and Kinga Redlowska of the CFS, this commentary examines how sanctions can disrupt serious organised crime by targeting financial facilitators, logistics networks and other strategic enablers. It considers where sanctions can complement law enforcement and how effectiveness should be measured through disruption rather than designation numbers.