Dirty Cities ― Towards a Political Economy of the Underground in Global Cities

Over the last three decades, the rapid growth of transport and telecommunications systems and the expansion of transnational diasporas have intensified links between the urban spaces of Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Increasing global mobility has fostered the development of 'informal' trading networks in which diaspora communities play a central role. As a consequence, the shadow economies of societies with vastly different levels of prosperity have begun to come into contact with one another. While the economic consequences of diaspora trading networks have been extensively explored over the past few decades, the impact of globalization on the economic underground has received much less attention. This volume elaborates on the definition of globalization, on its impact on illegal and illicit activities, and on the role of the 'Global City' as the intersection between the local and the global which allows for the empowerment of generally marginalized actors often through technological progress. The contributors explore the dark side of globalization, more specifically, the relations between globalization and the new dynamics of legal/illegal practices in urban settings of global cities.

Leila Simona Talani is Jean Monnet Chair in European Political Economy at King's College London, UK. She was previously at the University of Bath and at the London School of Economics, both in the UK. In 2001 she spent a year as Associate Expert on migration issues at the United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention in Cairo. She is the author of many books, including Globalization, Hegemony and the future of the City of London (2012), European Political Economy (2013), The Arab Spring in the Global Political Economy (2014), and From Egypt to Europe (2010).
Ramon Pacheco Pardo is a Lecturer in European and International Studies at King's College London, UK. His main areas of research include East Asian economic and security integration, EU-East Asia relations, and the economic and foreign policy of the EU. Recent publications have appeared in International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Asia Europe Journal and Journal of European Integration.
Alexander Clarkson is Lecturer in European and German Studies at King's College London, UK. His book Fragmented Fatherland: Immigration and Political Violence in Cold War Germany (2013) focuses on how mass immigration has helped to intertwine the domestic politics of labour-importing countries such as Germany with the internal conflicts of labour-exporting countries such as Algeria or the former Yugoslavia.