New research published in Criminology & Criminal Justice reveals that illicit drug flows can become deeply embedded in the political and territorial landscapes of the countries they pass through. Rather than being a transient activity disconnected from social fabrics, drug trafficking often becomes intertwined within local contexts.
Authored by the Department’s Dr Emilia Ziosi, the paper focuses on Honduras, which since the 1970s has been a transit hub for drug trafficking, particularly cocaine trafficking directed to the United States. In the past two decades, the country's role in cocaine trafficking has significantly grown, with hundreds of tonnes estimated to pass through annually.
Drawing on the qualitative analysis of publicly available US court documents on drug trafficking in Honduras, along with semi-structured interviews with experts on the country’s drug economy, this study explores the movement of US-bound cocaine shipments across Honduras between 2015-2024.
Dr Ziosi, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Sociology, explains:
As drug traffickers need access to transit points like airstrips, security checkpoints, and road networks to move drug shipments, they build relationships with the legal and extra-legal actors controlling these infrastructures and points of passage.
This process embeds drug flows within the local social fabric, even in so-called 'transit' countries like Honduras, where drugs are primarily thought to be passing through.
In Honduras, drug trafficking groups called ‘transportistas’ move drugs across the country, connecting the illicit supply chains.
These groups have been frequently found to collude with some politicians and law enforcement officers to facilitate the traffic of drugs, often in the form of locating areas to build illegal landing strips, or negotiating access to existing clandestine airstrips and security checkpoints.
Airstrips specifically are usually found in isolated areas and across a variety of landscapes, such as forested regions, oil palm plantations, indigenous territories and communal lands, but have also been found on private property.
In certain cases, civilians from these isolated and rural communities – where economic alternatives are scarce and access to infrastructure and public services is limited – are then recruited to man these airstrips and unload drug cargoes.
After drugs shipments are unloaded, transportista groups are responsible for moving them across Honduras, a task that requires a multitude of relationships and can see the drugs change hands numerous times.
Often, transportistas work with individual drug traffickers who exercise control over specific territories or infrastructures, or negotiate access to existing infrastructure and security checkpoints with some state officials to enable the safe passage of the drugs.
Dr Ziosi adds:
This paper reinforces the idea that organised crime does not operate in a vacuum. Drug trafficking is deeply embedded in the social fabrics and physical spaces it moves through, even in contexts where drugs are presumed to merely pass through.
Transit spaces and logistical infrastructures across which drugs are moved are not just passive conduits – they are active sites of negotiation, where various actors influence illicit supply chains.
The findings highlight the need for further exploration into how the movement of illicit goods affects the transit areas they pass through, shifting the focus from just the volumes and directions of these flows to understanding the critical role that transit regions play within transnational illicit markets.
