Organized crime emerges where social mobility is feasible, not where it is blocked

Evidence

The opportunities for social mobility should be considered as a third concomitant cause. Franchetti does not do so explicitly, yet evidence suggests that the areas in southern Italy where organized crime has traditionally evolved are those where for different reasons social mobility was feasible. As well as in the large urban concentrations such as Naples and Palermo, it emerged in the latifondo of western Sicily where landowners were absenteeists (Blok 1974), but not in other parts of Sicily (Franchetti 1974: 53-6), or in Calabria (Crotonese) and Puglia, areas where the presence of landowners left no opportunity open to the rural middle class (Arlacchi 1980; Cosentino 1983). It also developed in those small farming areas which manifested a thriving agriculture, but not in those based on a subsistence economy (Arrighi and Piselli 1986). — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2152

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes social mobility as a third causal variable for mafia emergence, alongside lack of trust.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s causal mapping of sight-loss-to-collapse to trust theory — this is the condition under which cooperation or predation arises.