Call for papers

Invitation to contribute to a special issue on ?Women and Transnational Crime? (Journal: Trends in Organized Crime)
Special Issue Editors: Dr. Jana Arsovska, John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Until recent years, the criminality of women had a long history of neglect. Criminology has treated women?s role in crime with a large measure of indifference. Women have been misrepresented in conventional criminological literature, leading to the development of feminists? critique of the accumulated wisdom about female offenders. Scholars have argued that theories of criminality developed by and validated on men had limited relevance for explaining women?s crime and that criminologists had little understanding of the social worlds of women. Throughout the years, feminist scholars have succeeded in ?gendering criminology?. Feminist approaches have tended to unmask the unique experiences that shape women?s criminal involvement and to understand the dynamic relationships between gender and crime.

The topic of this special issue is ?Women and Transnational Crime?. This issue will discuss current trends and developments in the field of transnational crime with focus on the role of women in committing cross-border activities. The editors would like to receive contributions on the role, presence, and activities of women in transnational criminal activities across the globe. By transnational crime we refer to acts that span national borders, violating the laws of more countries. The UN provides a list of eighteen crime categories that are considered transnational. These, among others, include money laundering, terrorism, theft of art and cultural objects, theft of intellectual property, illicit arms trafficking, airplane hijacking, sea piracy, insurance fraud, computer crime, environmental crime, trafficking in persons, corruption, drug trafficking, etc.

This Special Issue will study women's involvement in transnational crime from both practical and theoretical perspectives. Some of the suggested sub-topic for this Special Issue are: (1) the extent to which women with different backgrounds (ethnic, cultural, economic, educational, etc.) are involved in various transnational criminal activities; (2) the relation between women, social mobility, and transnational crime; (3) the role of women in transnational criminal networks (functional roles, peripheral actors, central players; recruiters, pimps/madams, curriers, victims-deceivers, consultants, debt-collectors, organizers, leaders, etc.); (4) the position of the woman in the criminal networks in the country of origin vs. the position of the women abroad (i.e., do they have more power abroad?); (5) the relation between male and females in the transnational networks (Are male and female offenders equally capable of committing transnational crime activities?); (6) the link between gender power, patriarchy, women subordination, and female offending (i.e., how women navigate gender-stratified environments, and how they accommodate and adapt to gender inequality in their commission of organized crime?). These are topics of growing importance to both practitioners and academics, and there has been limited scientific research done in this field. Therefore we encourage everyone who is interested in these issues to send us an abstract (250-400 words) and a paper topic latest by March 1, 2012.

Abstracts should be submitted latest by March 1, 2012. The final papers should be submitted by September 15, 2012. The special issue is scheduled to come out in February/March 2013.

Send your abstracts to:
Dr. Jana Arsovska, John Jay College of Criminal Justice [jarsovska@jjay.cuny.edu]