Book Review. Mafias on the Move: How Organized Crime Conquers New Territories, by Federico Varese. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2011, 288 pp

The idea that mafias are able to expand in distant territories to conduct their illegal activities dates back to the rise of the alien conspiracy approach to organized crime in the 1950s, although only in recent years influential scholars have started using the expression “transnational organized crime” to refer to this phenomenon. Mafias on the Move places itself in this branch of research by providing a detailed account of successful and unsuccessful attempts of mafia transplantation to new territories.