Anti-Mafia, Migrant Rights, and Community Economic Development in Western Sicily

Mafias thrive on vulnerable people and territories, increasingly on migrants around the world. Since the 1990s, Palermo, Sicily, has by some accounts been liberated from organized crime and subsequently revitalized thanks to migrants repopulating the city. Yet the Sicilian and other mafias still control much of the region's—and of migrants’—housing, labor markets, and commerce. These have thus become significant areas of anti-mafia activism and community economic development. This article explores how and why mafia exploitation of migrants became important to anti-mafia work in Western Sicily, documenting the evolution of that work. Anti-mafia movements’ commitment to legality and the rights that follow from it helped create the conditions for this shift, shaping numerous lines of activism, urban governance, and development. Yet despite important victories and transformations, Italy's immigration system reproduces illegality and oppression in numerous forms, creating spaces for mafias to exploit migrants, local economies, and communities.