Research project

Managing Security in Complex Trans-National and Local Settings: EU-Latin American Crime-fighting Efforts Since the 1980s

The project investigates the changing local context of crime dynamics and the responses by selected international organizations and national governments. It places a major emphasis on security management at the trans-national level by investigating intra-regional security cooperation between Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe from the 1980s onward.

Duration: 2024 - 2030
Contact: Havar Solheim
Funding: Starting Grant NWO
Partners: Roosevelt Institute for American Studies

The Latin American and Caribbean regions have become ‘a hotspot of global crime’ (ICG 2023), and the effects of the regions’ criminal landscapes are felt by the EU and its member states in multiple ways. By chiefly focusing on international police cooperation, the research will contribute to framing transatlantic security cooperation (i.e., the interaction between EUROPOL, its Latin American counterpart AMERIPOL, and INTERPOL, as well as the cooperation between key national police organizations operating in areas affected by drug trafficking) and the phenomenon of transnational organized crime as main drivers of change in contemporary security cooperation.

The study aims to gain a comprehensive understanding of transatlantic security cooperation and the organized crime dynamics between Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe. By implementing a mixed research method, involving qualitative interviews, participatory observations and archival research, an actor-oriented approach is taken, which allows for the gathering of strategic information of a highly dynamic cross-border security management and a complex criminal phenomenon in both Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean.

The project ‘s main objectives are to:

Research the relations between Latin American crime syndicates and networks and their European counterparts, how they operate, and how these connections and activities affect public safety on European soil;
Investigate how the EU and its members states cooperate with Latin American governments and security agencies in countering transnational organized crime, and how this transatlantic security cooperation has developed since the mid-1980s;
Study the factors influencing EU security policy design and decision-making towards Latin America within the area of transnational organized crime.