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Anna Sergi, "How to Recognize the Mafia Abroad: Critical Notes on ‘ndrangheta Mobility" (Policy Press, 2025)
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- [00:00]
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- [01:01]
Marshall Poe
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- [02:07]
Podcast Host (possibly Miranda Melcher)
Hello and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Professor Anna Sarge about her book titled how to Recognize the Mafia Abroad, published by Bristol University Press in 2025. Now, this is a really interesting book because, well, the Mafia is quite often interesting to examine and discuss, but obviously is usually talked about in the context of Italy, of southern Italy, often specifically. But there are things abroad that might look like the Mafia, either the Italian Mafia abroad or things kind of like it. And yet we don't always sort of notice that, right. We might call things like transnational criminal networks and then the Mafia, as if they're completely separate sort of items of study or things like that. And yet this book helps us understand like actually there are more connections and similarities literally that we can recognize.
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Professor Anna Sarge
Right.
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Podcast Host (possibly Miranda Melcher)
As the title says. So we're going to be talking about some kind of some big picture topics in this sphere and I think also some details too to get a better sense of kind of what we are talking about and what we can see when we're examining the Mafia, not just in southern Italy. So clearly a lot to discuss. Anna, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast to tell us about your book.
- [03:24]
Professor Anna Sarge
Thank you, Miranda, for having me. It's a pleasure.
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Podcast Host (possibly Miranda Melcher)
Could you start us off please by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book?
- [03:33]
Professor Anna Sarge
Yes. Okay. So I'm now a professor of sociology of Law in deviance at the University of Bologna in Italy, where I arrived four months ago. Before that I was for over 15 years in the UK at the University of Essex and I moved around quite a bit with my research. Thankfully, that's what you see in the book, all the distilled part of my research. But I originally come from Calabria, which is a region in the deep down of Italy, basically in the deep south of Italy, and is unfortunately well known for hosting one of the most, I would say, famous mafia type groups, Mafia type organizations today, which is the honor society, the Ndrangheta. And you obviously the book is a lot, contains a lot about the Ndrangheta. The Ndrangheta has been my object of study for, I would say, all my life without knowing it. And then when I started knowing it, meaning that I started knowing that I was studying it, I was already, you know, moving through my PhD and everything else. So I think this book more generally my research is 80% research passion and 20% a small little activist than me that wants to do something good for the region I come from, which I love very deeply.
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Podcast Host (possibly Miranda Melcher)
It's always nice to hear about the motivations for book projects. They often do have that kind of combination of the academic, professional curiosity side and often also the personal too. So thank you for giving us that foundation to the project. Thinking of some other sort of key foundations to enable us to discuss the book in more detail. Can you tell us about the idea of mafia ubiquity and why that's an important concept and framework for us to understand?
- [05:27]
Professor Anna Sarge
So this concept, mafia ubiquity, started because I was frustrated with the current analytical tools at our disposal. When we look at organized crime mobility and the way in which criminal networks appear everywhere, basically doing things interconnected, as we all do, basically chatting on WhatsApp or any other encrypted platform to move, I don't know, cocaine or to do any other type of trafficking, and at the same time having their lives, you know, they are. They have families, they have their fathers, usually they are someone's sons or someone's uncle. So they have to juggle physical travel as well and together with concerns about secrecy and concerns about visibility that they have to go through. So in a way, because I was not happy with the way in which mafia mobility studies, or more generally, organized crime mobility studies were approaching this, I decided to think again and reframe the concept of mafia ubiquity to basically shift from the crime, basically, so the mobility of drugs, the mobility of cocaine trafficking, the mobility of criminal organizations to the person. So the ubiquitous, the ubiquity, let's say, of the person that is behind this trafficking, the mafioso type, or the organized criminal more generally. And this is how the mafia ubiquity in a way starts. Ubiquitous means to be at the same time in many different places, which is what we all are in a way. So this comes from digital studies, for sure. The understanding that in our interconnected world, we are consistently on different platforms, consistently in different places at the same time, even if we are differently there. And I wanted this research and this, let's say, contribution to the literature to be exactly that, to mirror that, to mirror the fact that even organized crime is not just mobile. They don't just move, they are ubiquitous. Sometimes they don't move at all. They stay at home and they arrange a number of different things at home. They have different needs, different ages, by the way, we know that we travel differently depending on what you know, which is our age. And the ubiquity allows me to consider all of these things at once, all of their mobility at once, but also their stability and also at the same time, their interconnectedness. So ubiquity is made of three different concepts that I'm sure we can talk about later as well. But just to give an overview and three different strands of research that mainly belongs to migration research, which is transnationalism. So the idea that we are all interconnected and criminal organizations exploit the transnationalization, let's say of, I don't know, illicit trade for example, but we are all. The second concept is the one of trans localism, which means that we are at the same time interconnected not just across nations, but across localities. So I am here at the moment in Bologna and I can connect to certain people who live, let's say in Melbourne. Victoria and I can connect with some, let's say family who lives in Germany in a specific location, say Dortmund in Germany. So this is not just about transnationalism, it's about trans localism. So it's about existing in different localities specifically. And these localities will change our identity. They will change the way we approach our work. We approach also our criminal work, if that's our line, let's say, of work. And the third concept that makes up the mafia ubiquity framework is another trans concept. It's the transculturation concept. And transculturation is the one that intrigued me the most, is basically the idea that we are all the product. I'm simplifying it. We are all the proglat or clashes of culture. And especially when we move and when we migrate. I've been a migrant for all my adult life. When we migrate we retain a little bit of our identity from home, but we constantly go on what non academically we can call an identity jet lag. So we move across different places and in different places we have different identities. These identities tend to clash. So one thing is to be, you know, a 17 year old girl in the south of Italy. That identity stays with me whenever I go back. I left when I was 18, I moved elsewhere. And that cultural clash has been living within me. So I apply this to organized crime as well. And all of this is basically the concept of mother ubiquity. I hope it made some sense.
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Podcast Host (possibly Miranda Melcher)
Yeah, obviously I'm not going to ask you to like read out all the level of detail as in the book, but I think that definitely gives us an overview of some of the key things to be thinking about here. And especially how those concepts that you've just described, as you so clearly illustrated, are not just applying to criminal activity. Like all of that could apply to kind of any of us. Which makes these questions of recognition really tricky. For example, from a law enforcement point of view, like if we're all doing all of these things, then how do you, as the title of the book suggests, recognize the Mafia abroad? So I want to get into kind of some of the ways that that can or has been done that you've analyzed in the book and been like, that kind of works, but maybe not as much as one would think. Like, let's complicate some of these things. Right? So, for instance, the first one to discuss, I think, is kind of the most obvious one, which is the idea of sort of ethnicity that, like, if you are from this particular bit of southern Italy where kind of quote, unquote, everyone is related to the Androngheta, then you must therefore also be like that. Even just saying that out loud sounds like an overgeneralization. Is there anything at all around ethnicity, or should that just be kind of never even on the table?
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Professor Anna Sarge
So ethnicity has been defined as a trap for organized crime studies. Because if you. I can just give you a small example here. If you think of the word mafia, chances are you're thinking about the Italian mafia. And when you're not thinking about the Italian mafia, by any chance, you are thinking of another ethnic mafia. So the word mafia is always an ethnic connotation alongside it. So it's Italian mafia, Albanian mafia, and Georgian mafia, Russian mafia. You name them. And this ethnic connotation has become a sort of deterministic attribution. So you are part of an Albanian mafia group. You are supposed to be Albanian. You speak the Albanian language. The same goes for the Italian, the same goes for the Russian. And these mafia ethnicities, in a way have shaped our. Not just our, but also law enforcement imageries for so long now, also thanks to, of course, cinema and Hollywood and our representation of them that is very difficult to disentangle from reality. So in a way, there is a difference to me, when you say that there is a mafia from Calabria that is called Nrangheta, than to say that the Nrangheta is the Calabrian mafia. Because if you say that the Nrangheta is a Calabrian mafia, then Calabrian means as a connotative meaning that in reality it doesn't actually have the fact that the mafia is born. This mafia is born in Calabria, of course, has some meaning in terms of cultural peculiarities, but it's not a deterministic fact linked to the people of Calabria. Of course, it's not that we have something in us that makes us more prone to mafiosity. If you can say that, you can definitely say that in Italian. I don't know if you can in English. So ethnicity trap when you travel abroad, these things tend to follow. We saw for decades what happened with Sicilians in the United States. And they were forever linked, even, you know, in a sort of. With some jokes, in a way, to mafias and to the reality of mafias, even when it was very obvious and very much proved that the Italian American mafia was not Sicilian at all anymore. And in that sense, the Calabrian mafia has the same issue. So if you are from certain villages, if you are from certain parts of the Calabrian region, and for some people, if you just are from Calabria and you are involved in organized crime or in crime, then you must be Narangheta or you must be Mafia. And that's wrong. And it is wrong because effectively it enriches the Ndrangheta. It gives an indirect advantage to the, to the actual Narangita. It amplifies its, how can I put it, its reputation, let's put it that way, in a way that the organization really doesn't. How can I put it? We really don't need to do that. Let's put it that way. So the ethnicity trap, it's problematic because it assumes that if you are from Calabria, if you are from certain villages, if you have a certain tsar name, then you must be connected to Andrangheta clan. Law enforcement works with this assumption even when they try not to. And it's very difficult not to. I mean, I sometimes fall into this trap myself when I look at some cases abroad. And so what I try to do is to try and say, okay, ethnicity can be important, but not as a self determining traits that a person might have, but as a mirror of the cultural peculiarities that ethnicities can bring. So if you can link the criminal activity to the abuses of those cultural peculiarities that come from Calabria, from certain villages, then I can give you that ethnicity might play a role. If not, ethnicity is just a card, one of the many cards that needs to be assessed with everything else to actually say, okay, this person is Narangheta and is also from Calabria, from this village, or this person is from this village and is from Calabria, he might be doing crime, but it is not Narangheta. So the issue of ethnicity is linked with the issue of membership, but it's also linked with the problematic issue of cultural manipulation.
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Podcast Host (possibly Miranda Melcher)
That's very helpful to untangle a bit because there are consequences beyond kind of even just the ones that you've mentioned already, right? The idea that from the outside there's kind of an over emphasis on certain things that can lead to law enforcement Sort of making the wrong decisions, for instance, or even, as you said in popular culture, kind of paintbrushes being far too broad for whole populations. But there's another consequence you discuss in the book, the radicalization of resentment. Can we talk about that and why it's a potential negative outcome of this trap you've described?
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Professor Anna Sarge
Yes. So this is where organized crime studies to me, fail often to assess the peculiarities of the mafias. Because mafias are a type of organized crime. They are not the main type. I mean, there are very few mafias compared to how much, how many groups of organized crime there are. But they are some of the most peculiar because they are very resilient. And what makes mafias resilient is always the question that doesn't get answered. So we know, where is the Ndrangheta, how is the Ndrangheta, how does it work? But we don't know why there is the Ndrangheta most of the time. So this is the question that in a way I'm trying to start teasing out in this book, even if I don't have a definite answer just as yet, it's the next project. So the radicalization of resentment is basically a combination of a number of factors that are not common just to Calabrians. They are common to many areas of the world, especially the southern part of the world. In this sense, I have the colonial lens to Calabria because Calabria was a colonized land in many ways. That happens with a combination of different things. So on the one hand, the victimization that comes with being a colony in a way, and a colony in a big sense here, so of being essentially considered inferior to the rest of the country, in this case the north of Italy. And in the process of unification of Italy, there hasn't been this so called southern, whereby the south is lagging behind, the north has to subsidize the south. And the south is all made by mafiosi and by people who are lazy and don't want to work. So these both provoked exploitation of the south on the one end and victimization of it, and led to also a phenomenon which is victimhood or victimism, depending how you call it, which is a negative phenomenon whereby people kind of, we say in Italy, cry on themselves. They basically just try to make excuses for their lack of action and their lack of reactions to all the abuses that they feel that they have. So all of this is historical. We know this, it's been studied. It's there, it's in Calabria right now. It's part of the reasons why? Calabria has a million problems, but something else happens here which is the resentment. So all of this victimhood and victimization leads to resentment. A lot of resentment against the so called establishment, the state. The state is perceived very far. The state is perceived not caring about the south because it's never really cared about the South. Whether or not this is true is beyond the point here. The point is that many people in certain areas of Calabria feel that the state feel a lot of resentment towards the state. What the Nrangheta does as a cultural phenomenon, in this case as a phenomenon that embraces all the worst part of our cultural milieu is to attempt to radicalize this resentment. And in the attempt to radicalize this resentment, they act way more like what we would expect of terrorist groups or political violent groups than what we would expect from organized crime. We often say that mafias control territories, but what we actually mean by that culturally is oftentimes forgotten. What we mean is that these mafia groups share the resentment against the state with the overall population, but they push it to the point whereby nothing of the state can be accepted. And you basically the only way to resist is to in fact form or in a way create a coalition that resists to the oppression of the state and tries to overcome its barriers. Everything that the state does is a barrier. Paying taxes is a barrier. Participating in public democratic election, that's a barrier. A barrier to what? To yourself, safety and your self determining, determine, determination, determinism, in a way. So that's where things become really complicated. Because in this very, in this period basically of the world, resentment against the state, against the establishment, against politicians, is at an all time high. I mean, I'm not a political scientist, but I can read research and I can see it. So this radicalization of resentment that we see in, in Calabria is bound to make recruitment in the Nrangheta even more likely, to benefit indirectly the Ndrangheta as a. Not just as a criminal organization, but as a way of thinking, as a way of approaching life. But more importantly, and that's the part of the book that I really enjoyed in a way, in thinking about it, travels. So what I find particularly fundamental in my research doing them in Calabria, but also in Australia, in Canada, in Germany, is that it travels through those channels of ubiquity that I discussed about. So if someone in a small, small, tiny village in Calabria, 3,000 people, is radicalizing in that sense and joining the darker forces of the Narangita, chances are he's going to talk about, and we know he's going to talk about that. I mean, this is real cases that I'm talking about with his family, who is everywhere in the world. Calabrians have migrated literally everywhere. And this radicalization of resentment, these aptitude is going to travel across families, across diasporas, across communities. And that is how the Ndrangheta builds as well, or sneaks in into the, you know, into the cracks of. Of the Calabrian diaspora. So radicalization of resentment is something that really makes answers in a way or attempts to answer the why of the Mafia rather than the how and the who and the where.
- [23:18]
Podcast Host (possibly Miranda Melcher)
Such a key part there of how you've described the kind of way in which this feeling is transmitted. The word family came up a number of times, right? And especially when we're thinking about these ideas of what one feels and how it affects one's sort of attitude towards everything about sort of everyday life. Family is often such a huge part that influences people. So if we're moving away, obviously from the generalisation of kind of, if you are from this region, you must therefore be part of the Mafia, you've explained why that's very much a trap. But if we're thinking about this influence, especially through diasporic family connections, then is looking at things like surnames a useful tool or does that also have problems?
- [24:00]
Professor Anna Sarge
So surname is one of, you know, it's one of my original questions because I have a mafia surname. So I, I had to start with myself and kind of like, okay, so I. I've lived on myself, the. Not just not the stigma necessarily, because thankfully, well, I'm a woman, so for once I can be in the mafia, but. But also because of different things that are different tools that I had also in my education to understand this. But if I look at my own surname and the way families in certain parts of Calabria work, we have very clanic structures. In fact, we talk about Narangheta having clans rather than just families. Clans means that you have five or six, let's say families really with the same surnames, all interconnected with one another. The surname remains the same, but there are five different branches or six different branches of the same family surname. So you end up having, I don't know, 100 people around your village or the next door village who have your same surname. So that means you will know, of course, some of them, you will have direct contacts with some of them, but chances are you won't know what your, I don't know, second cousin from mother side who lives in Australia has been doing, even if you are related. And if you really, really, really want to, you can approach them, but your life are completely separated. So that's the problem with clans, that they tend to create what we call an ascriptive link, a link that is deterministic. We are the same, we have the same surname, and we more or less are linked up to the fifth degree of kinship. However, kinship that is somehow manifested through surname is not the reason or a good way to look at mafias. Only, of course, there are families whose surname is crucial. We have dynasties, as I call them, of the Nrangheta, intergenerational families, whereby the son and the father and the grandfather and the grandson all share the same surname. And their surname therefore becomes currency. It becomes part of the way they present themselves into the life, let's say, of the underworld, wherever and whenever they decide to do it. However, there is also a problem with surnames. Of all the other people around, those few who do use the surname as mafia currency, who effectively are not members. They might not even know who is them, who are the members, and instead they appear, and I've seen it in police files, as potential suspects. So to me, because of the numbers, if let's say 100 people have the same surname and 10 of these people are mafia, the other 90 should be my priority. And in fact, that's not the way it is. The other 90 are considered to be, well, guilty until proven otherwise. And this is the problem effectively. More importantly, when we go abroad, there is such a confusion with surname that somehow is brought by historical analysis. So if someone with a surname, let's say Nirta, which is a very important mafia surname in Ndrangheta, is arrested in Portugal, you can bet whatever, that 10 minutes after their arrest, for whatever reason, there's gonna be an article detailing all the activities of the Nurta family since 1950s, and whether or not this guy is actually acting in the name of the family, there's no interest in finding that out. So the tsar name is a trap, because it leads an attentive analyst, but also law enforcement, to draw conclusions on the people and to draw conclusion on the families themselves, without understanding how families actually work in Calabrian culture. However, there is another problem here, that surnames sometimes are useful to determine not just potential membership, but to predict behavior. Some families, more than others, are culturally oriented. What that means is that they have their family ness. The way their family works in the underworld is heavily attached to a way of behavior. And this way of behavior is usually shown by certain dynasties, certain families, who more than others, have Defined what the Ndrangheta culture is. These are the most orthodox families. And when this sarnames appear in linked, of course, with other things that can confirm membership, including certain activities, certain behaviors, certain ways of, well, certain localities, for example, then you can use the sarname to predict and say, okay, what do we have here? Who do we have here? What kind of league are we in? Is it a league or is it, you know, newcomers league? And this, you know, this is important for law enforcement because they need to know who they're facing. Who do we have behind a. Cocaine trafficking is not inconsequential, not because of cocaine, but because of the quickness and the. Of the adaptation. If you take them out, if you take someone out, if you arrest someone, how quickly the group will regroup. That's something that a surname oftentimes helps you determine. So I did. I realized I probably didn't answer your question because it's.
- [29:59]
Podcast Host (possibly Miranda Melcher)
No, I think you did.
- [30:01]
Professor Anna Sarge
Right.
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Podcast Host (possibly Miranda Melcher)
And that's always the case. Right. When one properly investigates, there's. The answer is never 100% yes or 100% no. Right. It's nuanced. So thank you for taking us through that piece then. And it's that kind of end of that answer that I'd love to keep going on. The idea that one can effectively analyze membership and possible membership without falling into these traps. Right. The answer you're giving in the book is not just, hey, don't fall into these traps, it's also here's what to do instead. And you just gave us an example there of how analyzing surnames can sometimes be helpful if used in the right sorts of circumstances. What are some of the other ways that possible membership can be assessed or without falling into these traps?
- [30:46]
Professor Anna Sarge
Yeah, well, so the choice of this book was to explore the unexplored part of mafia studies, or partially unexplored, which is the cultural side. Of course, there is a problem at the beginning of this. Mafias are not always criminal, for, let's say, outside of Italy. Mafias in Italy are criminal organizations. They are seen as criminal organizations, even oftentimes in absence of an actual crime. This is not the case abroad. So abroad, oftentimes you basically need organized crime. You need these people to do something criminal, whether it's cocaine trafficking, which the Ndrangheta clans excel at, or whether it's, I don't know, murder, or whether it's any other type of criminality that can be linked to organized crime. However, there is a different element of it, because one thing is to Say, okay, these people are cocaine traffickers. And another thing is to say, okay, these are cocaine traffickers and also Ndrangheta members. To have the membership or to confirm the membership helps you, as I said, predict what the group is gonna do and what kind of strength and resilience there is behind it. So with this in mind, this is the kind of analytical, you know, twist that I needed to introduce, because all. All the approaches that I suggest are not to catch the criminals. That's someone else's job. So I. But they assume that there has been some criminality, especially abroad, whereby law enforcement is already looking at these people with, you know, some interest for criminal purposes. So, of course, I envisage a number of tests. These tests are not yes or no tests. They are nuanced, as you said. They are tests for Mafia recognition, which happen to be. Well, they come from all my experience with law enforcement, so they come from the ground up. So I didn't make them up. I essentially distilled all my. All the frustration, let's say, of law enforcement and trying to help them frame what they already know. There are a number of them, but one of. Well, a few of them that I can mention have to do with intergenerational transmission of crime, for example. So the tradition test. To what extent are tradition inherited, cultural traditions, or they are adapted, or they are passed on from generation to generation, from father to son abroad? Let's say. So our Calabrian is the third generation of Calabrians in a mafia family in Australia. That's a question that needs to be answered. Because if these people are the third generation are very, very Orthodox in their Calabrianness, that is a test that needs to be considered as relevant. The farther away they drift from traditional approaches to Calabrianness, let's say. The more you're looking at hybrid forms of organized crime, the more traditional they are. Of course, they. You know, chances are the intergenerational transmission also included Ndrangheta cultural tools. There are other things like trauma. The Ndrangheta is a deeply traumatic experience for a family. To have a member of your family be involved or being, you know, part of the Ndrangheta inducted in The Ndrangheta is a trauma. And it's. It's. There is. You know, there is not enough research into that, but it's obviously a trauma in the sense these people experience prison. They experience being left alone by your father at very early ages. It means sometimes leaving different places because, you know, you are on the run. It means seeing a lot of suffering in your family. So the impact of intergenerational trauma linked to organized crime, experiences of individual, of individuals taps into the test that I suggest law enforcement or in general analysts can do. Because of course, these, you know, these people are going to have mental health issues. They're going to have. There's going to impact on their agency and vulnerability of acting even criminally. The way they handle aggression, the way they handle violence is often part of this trauma. Let's say there are issues about kinship, for example. So assessing and examining different forms of reputation and what type of reputation these people seek, what type of attachment they, they have to their family. So for example, if someone really, really leverages their surname or really leverages the family reputation in any business that they're doing, whether legal or illegal, that to me is a sign of an extremely traditional, in that sense, attachment to the family clan that can have an impact in the way you carry out even your illicit trade. For example, reputation for the narangata is particularly important is what they sale effectively. So that's how they present themselves. So there are a number of these tests and you know, that have to do with trust, with the way we understand how trust across the members of the family is and people external to the family is somewhat maintained. There are issues about how these people behave with outsiders. All of these tests that come with, let's say, even media resonance. The way they approach that and also the way they, in the case of the diaspora, the way they are attached to their motherland, what type of crafted nostalgia they have of their motherland, which again, a lot of this comes from migration studies, which tells us a few things about first, second, third generation migrants and their different forms of attachment and nostalgia towards the place of origin. So there are a number too long to go through them, but hopefully I gave you a flavor.
- [37:12]
Podcast Host (possibly Miranda Melcher)
Well, there's two I think I'd love to pull out to talk about a little bit more. The first would be this idea of transferring through generations, because obviously as soon as you kind of mention it, it makes a lot of sense that that would be a key aspect. But as an analyst sort of trying to figure out, trying to apply some of those tests, how can we figure out the extent to which membership is transferring through generations?
- [37:36]
Professor Anna Sarge
Yeah, that's a tough one. And it's one that I only started to test out in the book. It's definitely going to be my next few projects probably. But it's really about the set of values that are transferred within and outside of Calabrian culture or certain type of Calabrian culture. So the Narangheta really banks on the ambiguity of certain values that are traditional values in Calabrian culture, not just in Calabrian culture, things like family honor, for example, that in a way show how, let's say, the concept of honor, for example, it's one of the most problematic ones, because honor, in theory, it's a good thing. So if you are an honorable person, that means something good, it also echoes something very traditional, something that requires action in the face of dishonor, for example. So this is the way the Narangheta justifies violence, revenge, it justifies a number of very violent repercussions if you are a dishonorable man or you've done something dishonorable. So the ambiguity of these, of values such as, such as honor, such as this one, are taught in certain families in different ways. And it's been called a form of black pedagogy, whereby instead of teaching your child that being honorable is something that has to do with your moral righteousness, with the way you behave with others, with the way your honesty and whatever it is, you teach them that honesty means a number of other things, including the fact that you have the right to exercise revenge if your honor is somewhat disrespected. Okay? So if you are disrespected as a man, if your strength is put into, is challenged, if someone in your family, let's say a woman in your family, is mistreated, then you, as a dangeta member, you exercise honor in that ambiguity formula, which allows you to justify violence, to justify revenge, to justify a number of other actions. So this is the way in which intergenerational transmission works in the nangita, and oftentimes it works through women. So these are women who teach, of course, children how to behave, male children, how to behave and how to effectively move across generation, as your father and your grandfather before you. So this black pedagogy is problematic because it's imbued with Calabrian values. So the Ndranghetista will never say or not at the beginning at least, this is Andrangheta value. They will often say this is a Calabrian value. So the value of being our self made men who will take care of their enemy by brute force for a long time has been considered by, let's say, law enforcement abroad, a characteristic of calabriness. There are cases of 1964 in Australia whereby a brother killed their sister because she had been dishonorable for the family because she had committed adultery, and the judge in the judgment, in 1964 says the poor guy was acting out of honor because that's what they do in Calabria. Well, that's not what we do in Calabria, thankfully. That's what we do in the Narangheta. So. But this is the way it's been taught to be a true Calabrian, a true, you know, Ngatista, are sometimes presented as the same thing. And this is really problematic for other Calabrians. Of.
- [41:29]
Podcast Host (possibly Miranda Melcher)
Of course. Yeah. This is the ethnicity trap, sort of. Again, in a way. Yes. Yeah, no, that's definitely. I'm glad we went into more detail on that one. The other one I'd love to pull out is this idea of reputation. You mentioned earlier that this is really important. Why?
- [41:45]
Professor Anna Sarge
So reputation is very important for all organized crime groups for a simple reason. We are in a lawless environment. So if something happens in across organized crime, you cannot go to the police and complain. See, someone steals your cocaine. If someone doesn't pay the cocaine that they ordered, you have no way, in theory, to exercise your right, let's say, to be paid or to get back your stolen goods, because there is no third guarantor like we are used to with the police or all we have the regulation mechanism to complain to. So reputation is really in a very gentleman's agreement kind of formula. What sets criminal groups apart. If you are a group that always pays, if you are a group that's been around for 30, 40 years in the cocaine trade and again, always face. If you don't get problems, if you don't get caught, if you don't give out the names of your, I don't know, partners or your brokers, then your reputation increases and you are considered to be someone very high level in the business, whichever the business is. The Nrangheta enjoys such a reputation. They are very, very high in cocaine, let's say reputation, because they've been considered to be among the quick ones to pay. They had a very glorious period of cash liquidity back in the days that, you know, kind of gives them these, you know, this reputation, this echo of their reputation. But they're also particularly. They have reputation also for another thing, which is violence. They've been extremely, extremely violent in the. At the beginning of their, let's say, appearance in the world view. The Ndrangheta is very old, but it appeared in the world, let's say, outside of Calabria, in the 80s, 70s, 80s, and in that period they were very violent, meaning that they would get rid of their enemies of the people who crossed them, or they were. They. They conducted over 200 kidnappings in the 80s and the 90s.
- [44:02]
Podcast Host (possibly Miranda Melcher)
They.
- [44:02]
Professor Anna Sarge
There were some of them particularly brutal, of children, of women. And this gives them naked of violence, a reputation which is based on the ache of that violence, and it's based on the ache of the things that they could be doing if they decided to. So the Nrangheta needs its reputation to be not just intact, but to be nourished by a number of different things. And recognition, in that sense is one of those things. If something happens in Germany that is attributed to the Nrangheta in Germany, then the whole of the organization benefits. If something bad happens to the Drangit in Germany, then all the organization suffers. So reputation is key. A. Because they are organized crime groups, and so they need it as currency. It's something, as I said before, that they can sell. I sell myself. I present myself and I sell myself on the market as a reputable, trustworthy cocaine financier. That's what they do. They finance cocaine job. I buy cocaine wholesale. How can you trust me? Because I am the Narangita. So to attach yourself with one of the big Narangita groups, if you are a cocaine trafficker, it's definitely, you know, quite a good deal. Of course, at the same time, reputation is also important to enrich the Ndrangheta representation. So the fact that we have 20, 23, something I write in the book, a member of a family, they are considered andranghetista. They are not necessarily deeply involved in the drug trade, but they own a restaurant in Belgium where the drug trade gets arranged by his family. He has a very important surname in the Ndrangheta. This man. This man is trying to show someone else who is a Serbian national, who is his family. And to do that, they choose to refer to an act of. To something that happened In Duisburg in 2007, a mass murder, essentially, that his family was, you know, part of. And to basically say to this guy, look, this is who we are. This is what we can do. So the media that keep on talking about us, telling how important we are, how great we are as a mafia group is actually telling the truth. We are so great. We are so important. So reputation is currency. Reputation is money and is money for. Because they are organized crime groups, but also because they have to keep intact the cultural dress that they sell, including the resentment, including the ability to be the only one that can protect or really want to protect the traditional values of the Calabrian people.
- [46:55]
Podcast Host (possibly Miranda Melcher)
Now, that makes a ton of sense in terms of the incentives to have that kind of reputation and use it for all those reasons you've just listed. But if we go back to the sort of psychological trauma element of it that you mentioned earlier, like, that can't feel good, right? To be stood there talking to someone else and be like, yeah, my family's known for being really nasty. I mean, how does that work? Are there ways, like, do members just go around being like, yeah, no, I'm used to it. I've been trained this way. Like, this is what the intergenerational transmission's for, that I can say all these things and it doesn't impact me? Or is there some sort of framing that makes it possible to say things like this and yet not feel horrible about it?
- [47:40]
Professor Anna Sarge
Yeah, they don't feel horrible about it because they don't frame it probably. Like, they're not all of them. Of course, some of them have to at some point, but most of them don't frame it like this. They don't frame themselves as bad actors. They think they are protectors of the people. They frame themselves as honorable men. I mean, the name of the Ndrangheta remains the Honor Society. They do frame a lot of what they do as honorable, as the only honorable reaction to, again, the oppression and the bad things that have happened to them as a family, as a community, as a region, or more generally, as a population of Calabrians. So all of this is classic neutralization techniques, criminologically speaking, whereby you deflect your guilt by pushing it to someone else. So it's not my fault. It's someone else's fault. I don't want to be like this. It's the state that pushes me to be like this. It's, you know, the fact that I've always been denied access to jobs, that I turned out to be a very successful drug trafficker, and not the fact that maybe I didn't want to study or I didn't want to actually have a proper job. So all of these neutralization techniques are in place, but as I said already, a lot of it is framed, unfortunately, through collaborativeness. It's what we are used to talk about in the English language. I'm sure you heard the term omerta. Omerta. So the idea that people in the Mafia don't talk, right? So the people around the Mafia don't talk, that people in the same villages of the Mafia don't talk to the police. They just keep silent. They just, you know, there's a conspiracy of silence around them. I will say that it's somewhat the way they frame it is somewhat similar to what omerta really looks like, which is the fact that we constantly see with the Narangheta, a shield of people around them, the sympathizers, the supporters who are not Narangheta members. But they would definitely defend alleged Mafioso, an alleged dangetista, if that person is from the same village. If the person is from, you know, is known to their family, if the person is Calabrian. Why? Because in the diaspora, ethnic solidarity is somewhat serving the purpose of creating these shields even around, well, essentially around ambiguity. So I don't know if that person is really a bad person or not, because I haven't seen him do anything bad. The police say he is part of a mafia family, but to me they're always a nice person. And they cook this very traditional Calabrian meal that I really, really very much enjoy, that my grandmother used to cook. And that brings me back into my memories. So obviously I'm simplifying here, but this is very much part of the field of complications that we face around the Narangheta, especially abroad, but also in Calabria. In Calabria, they frame it as Calabrianness. This is just what true Calabrians are outside of Calabria, they frame it also as Calabrianness and as, let's say, an attachment to the most traditional Calabrian values, which has an enormous appeal on the Diaspora, on a certain part of the Diaspora, which is going to side around them, which is going to side to justify them as traditionally Calabrian rather than Ndranghetiste. So it's very easy also for them to frame themselves as such as being persecuted because they are from a certain village. They are persecuted because they are Calabrians. So they use the ethnic trap, the ethnicity trap that they know law enforcement is using to their advantage. And this is, you know, probably the end, the closure of the circle.
- [51:50]
Podcast Host (possibly Miranda Melcher)
Yeah, I mean, it really does take us right back to where we started. So a good place, I think, to conclude our discussion on the book. But clearly you've already hinted at this is not the end of your engagement with the subject. So do you want to give us a brief sneak preview of what you're working on now?
- [52:05]
Professor Anna Sarge
Yes. So I am interested in the so called phygital dimension of this. I've already written a little bit about in the book the dimension of how all of this looks like in the digital world and to what extent the physical survival of the Narangita. So the actual physical membership is somewhat affected by the performance of Calabrianness and Calabrian patriotism, let's say or campanilism or parochialism on TikTok or on any other social media, especially video based. And how this effectively how the mafia ubiquity can be stretched into the digital realm. So that realm that whereby the digital Persona and the physical Persona might not look the same, but they might represent again, once again a form of ubiquity that eventually reaches the organization. So I'm also very interested in the way in which illicit trade is transmitted from in the Narangheta. So how comes that some families are more than others involved in cocaine trafficking? How do fathers teach children how to traffic cocaine? That's a very difficult question that I'm trying also to disentangle. So yeah, so essentially this is what it looks like. But strangely I've also changed mafia a little bit. So I'm currently writing a book, finishing a book that I have started years ago with a colleague of mine in Turin about lcn, La Cosa Nostra, the American Mafia, the whatever happened to the families, the five families of New York. Still within this idea of ubiquity, this idea of intergenerational criminal transmission, which is the core of my research so far in mafia mobility studies.
- [54:04]
Podcast Host (possibly Miranda Melcher)
Well that certainly sounds like you will have plenty to keep you busy. So best of luck with those multiple projects. And of course for anyone who wants to learn more, they can read the book we've been discussing titled how to Recognize the Mafia Abroad, published by Bristol University Press in 2025. Anna, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast Foreign.
- [54:37]
TJ Watt
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Podcast Host (possibly Miranda Melcher)
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Professor Anna Sarge
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Podcast Host (possibly Miranda Melcher)
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Professor Anna Sarge
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Podcast Host (possibly Miranda Melcher)
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Professor Anna Sarge
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