Winner of the British Society of Criminology Book Prize, 2015
Fleetwood explores how women become involved in trafficking, focusing on the lived experiences of women as drug mules. Offering theoretical insights from gender theory and transnational criminology, Fleetwood argues that women's participation in the drugs trade cannot be adequately understood through the lenses of either victimization or agency.
1. Introduction: Cartels and Cocaine Queens 2. Imagining Drug Trafficking: Mafias, Markets, Mules 3. What do Women Talk About When They Talk About Trafficking? 4. Who are the 'Traffickers'? 5. For Money and Love: Women's Narratives About Becoming Mules 6. Beginning Mule-work 7. Mule-work and Gender 8. Backing Out 9. Conclusion: Women's Offending in Global Context
Despite the plethora of studies in criminology about women and crime that have appeared in the last thirty years, the preponderance of scholarship has focused on women as victims, with relatively little adding to our understanding of women as offenders. In this groundbreaking new book, Jennifer Fleetwood employs feminist criminology to illustrate how women are both victims and agents in illicit enterprises. Focusing on drug mules, women who transport cocaine across international borders, this book traces the various roles women play, the consequences of these roles, and what it means for the future of female criminality. Engaging, methodologically sound, theoretically driven, and just a plain 'good read,' Drug Mules promises to sit on our shelves as one of the most important works on the contemporary global drug trade, women and crime, and changing gender roles published in the last decade or more. - Patricia A. Adler, University of Colorado, Boulder
The fieldwork in this book is only matched by a handful of ethnographers worldwide. Fleetwood's book is a big advance in understanding women's participation in trl³+
![Drug Mules Women in the International Cocaine Trade [Paperback]](/itemImage/2/1/7/5/2_1738782.jpg)