Governance, coercive brokerage and illicit economies through the urban frontiers

自20世纪80年代以来，拉丁美洲非法毒品市场的全球化，以及贩毒组织和犯罪网络的扩张，给拉丁美洲城市的政治精英和政府施加了压力，要求他们采取行动，保护公民，并管理新形式的不安全和暴力。然而，在边缘城市空间，中央政府往往表现出无力（也不愿意）采取行动和治理。正因为如此，民兵出现了，往往得到中央各州和政治精英的支持和/或似是而非的否认。这些不受约束的，不负责任的治理安排往往会为边缘化人口创造暴力环境。本研究对话了近年来发展中国家城市人口及其政府面临的最紧迫问题之一：如何确保与民兵一起生活的边缘化城市人口的更和平的城市治理安排。学术文献中有一个关于城市民兵在“犯罪”治理形式中的作用的激烈辩论。但是，关于民兵的既定政策共识往往会使治理安排恶化，导致暴力水平上升，这一共识是基于这样一种假设，即民兵是通过“脆弱”和“弱小”国家造成的真空出现的。学术和媒体的叙述将城市边缘描绘成犯罪猖獗、“野蛮和不守规矩”、落后的地方，使这种情况更加复杂。这些地区经常被描绘成“腐败”的温床，并对中央政府和市场的发展雄心构成生存威胁。因此，处理民兵问题的政策反应往往是建议“更多的国家”和“更多的市场”来填补空白，弥补前任政府的弱点。它建立在我的博士研究的结果表明，城市民兵及其在边缘空间的强制性统治系统维持，适应，并巩固了既定的城市政治经济动态和过程。以前所未有的方式，这个项目询问了民兵是如何以及为什么在全球和历史上出现和持续的，以促成城市边缘的结构性变化和转型，并且是当代国家形成的领土表达。它通过将民兵组织置于地方、城市、全州和全国的政治解决方案中，作为全球进程的组成部分，并作为推进和巩固强大利益的方式来实现这一目标。我在博士学位期间收集的证据表明，民兵组织可以承担强大的经济责任，这意味着他们可以中饱私囊，获得政治权力，并以暴力和不负责任的方式行事。在我的博士项目结束时，我从一个议会委员会对里约热内卢民兵的调查中获得了33，000页的机密文件，其他研究人员无法获得。虽然没有时间和资源对这些数据进行系统分析，但初步分析显示，非法流动是如何从城市边缘被粗暴地抽取出来，再循环到中心的真实的房地产中的。该项目将系统地分析这些数据，并与圣保罗Primeiro Comando Capital的强制经纪动态进行比较。本项目旨在揭示城市发展、资本流动和强制性权力之间的循环互动关系，这些强制性经纪人都参与其中。这些动态可能意味着城市边缘的发展和国家建设可能会加强（而不是软化）结构性边缘化和暴力。通过研究强制经纪及其边境政府的空间动态，该项目探讨了这些强制行为者如何能够重新定义城市及其他地区的政治，经济和社会生活。

Globalisation of illicit drug markets in Latin America since the 1980s, and the expansion of drug trafficking organisations and criminal networks, have put pressure on political elites and governments in Latin American cities to act, protect citizens, and manage new forms of insecurity and violence. However, in marginal urban spaces the central state has tended to demonstrate an inability (and unwillingness) to act and govern. Because of this, militias have emerged, often with the backing and/or plausible deniability from central states and political elites. These unchecked, unaccountable governance arrangements often create violent conditions for marginalised populations.This research dialogues with one of the most pressing issues facing urban populations of developing contexts and their governments in recent times: how to ensure more peaceable urban governance arrangements for marginalised urban populations living with militias. There is a lively debate in the academic literature about the role of urban militias in 'criminal' forms of governance. But the established policy consensus on militias tends to aggravate governance arrangements and lead to increased levels of violence.This consensus is based on the assumption that militias emerge through a vacuum created by 'fragile' and 'weak' states. This is compounded by scholarly and media narratives portraying urban margins as infested with criminality, 'wild and unruly', and lagging behind. These regions are often portrayed as hotbeds of 'corruption' and as posing existential threats to the developmental ambitions of the central state and market. Policy responses for dealing with militias, therefore, tend to suggest 'more state' and 'more market' to fill-in the gaps and patch up the weaknesses of previous governments.This project takes a step back from that consensus. It builds from findings of my doctoral research that suggest urban militias and their coercive systems of rule in marginal spaces sustain, fit into, and underpin the established urban political economy dynamics and processes. In ways that have not been done before, this project interrogates how and why militias have emerged and been sustained, globally and historically, to broker structural change and transformation in the urban margins, and are territorial expressions of contemporary state formation. It does so by situating militias in local, urban, state-wide and national political settlements, as components of global processes and as ways of advancing and entrenching powerful interests.Evidence collected during my doctorate demonstrates how militias can absorb powerful economic responsibilities, meaning they can enrich themselves, obtain political power, and act in violent and unaccountable ways. At the end of my doctoral project I acquired 33,000 pages of classified documents from a parliamentary commission inquiry on Rio de Janeiro's militias, which no other researcher has access to. Although there was not the time nor resources to analyse this data systematically, preliminary analysis reveals how illicit flows are extracted violently from the urban margins and recycled into real estate in the centre. This project will analyse this data systematically and draw comparative reflections with coercive brokerage dynamics in São Paulo on the Primeiro Comando Capital. This project aims to make visible the circular interactions of urban development, capital flows, and coercive power within which these coercive brokers are implicated. These dynamics can mean that development and state-building in the urban margins can reinforce (rather than soften) structural marginality and violence. By examining the spatial dynamics of coercive brokerage and their frontier governmentalities, this project explores how these coercive actors are capable of redefining political, economic, and social life in the city, and beyond.