ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the impact of globalisation on problems and policing, looking at organised crime through the lens of international securitisation. The chapter traces the reordering of international security priorities following the Cold War and the development of an international security agenda around crime, including successive campaigns and global prohibition regimes against drugs, money laundering, and transnational organised crime. This includes an historical review of United Nations (UN) drug conventions aligned with the expanding constellation of agencies involved in the governance of transnational crimes, such as those under the auspices of the UN. It is shown how metaphors of war (on drugs, on terror, on transnational organised crime) are coupled with the increasing militarisation of policing, and the escalation of organised crime from a domestic crime problem to a threat to international security. It concludes with an examination of sovereign borders as a specific site of securitisation with consideration of shifting (in)securities to “organised immigration crime.”
