De Pablo Escobar à Phoolan Devi, les bandits morts ou vivants ne cessent d’alimenter l’imaginaire collectif. Les scénaristes de ces multiples récits circulant désormais à l’échelle du globe en sont souvent les protagonistes eux-mêmes, soucieux de contrôler leur image de marque dans une économie numérique mondialisée. Ce numéro explore les processus de fabrication des icônes du banditisme, et leur articulation aux pratiques concrètes des brigands d’aujourd’hui dans des économies de la prédation. En croquant une bande de truands ambivalents venus des quatre coins du monde, il interroge les formes charismatiques contemporaines de la violence et de l’autorité.

L’universitaire camerounais à New York, le trader français à Londres, l’ouvrier népalais à Doha… sont autant de figures contemporaines de la mobilité. Le numéro  3 de Monde commun met en évidence la dimension ordinaire, sans être anodine, de la migration. Au-delà de la singularité de chacune des situations, considérer ensemble cette multitude migrante –  plus de 250 millions de personnes vivant hors de leur pays de naissance  – invite à penser le monde à partir des sites et situations de rencontre, cohabitation, coprésence, conflit ou collaboration. Ce numéro intègre les migrations de travailleurs à l’intérieur d’un vaste pays, comme c'est le cas en Inde, ou  la migration comme devenir qui traverse la vie de celles et ceux qui aspirent au déplacement. Tous ces mouvements redessinent les frontières, qu’elles soient géopolitiques, sociales, culturelles. Comment les migrations s’inscrivent-elles durablement dans le tissu social ? Comment les sociétés fonctionnent-elles avec l’ouverture au monde et la mobilité comme principe ?

"Mafia" has become an indigenous South Asian term. Like Italian mobsters, the South Asian "gangster politicians" are known for inflicting brutal violence while simultaneously upholding vigilante justice—inspiring fear and fantasy. But the term also refers to the diffuse spheres of crime, business, and politics operating within a shadow world that is popularly referred to as the rule of the mafia, or "Mafia Raj." Through intimate stories of the lives of powerful and aspiring bosses in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, this book illustrates their personal struggles for sovereignty as they climb the ladder of success. Ethnographically tracing the particularities of the South Asian case, the authors theorize what they call "the art of bossing," providing nuanced ideas about crime, corruption, and the lure of the strongman across the world.

De Pablo Escobar à Phoolan Devi, les mythes de bandits plus ou moins sociaux se développent de manière exponentielle et se répandent par le biais des médias numériques. Célébrant des bandits, des gangsters, des politiciens mafieux – morts ou vivants – à partir de bricolages transculturels, ces mythes constituent des armes effectives dans le présent immédiat mais aussi un rendez-vous avec une postérité incertaine. Fiction et faits semblent ainsi fusionner et donner naissance à des réalités fictionnelles puissantes qui débordent les vies présentes et post-mortem de ces figures. Cette introduction expose comment ces réalités fictionnelles sont concrètement élaborées par le biais d’« écritures scénarisées de mythes » qui sont pleinement constitutives de l’autorité de ces bandits. Ce concept théorique que nous développons est aussi un objet ethnographique : nous explorons empiriquement cette fabrique quotidienne de la séduction, de la fascination et de l’effroi, laquelle est indissociable de la capacité à faire agir autrui dans les économies politiques criminelles.

From Pablo Escobar to Phoolan Devi, myths featuring bandits (more or less socially-responsible) have grown in popularity and reach and are disseminated through digital media. Constructed through processes of transcultural bricolage, these myths celebrate bandits, gangsters and mafia politicians, dead or alive, as effective weapons in the present. At the same time, they project an uncertain posthumous future for the bandit. In these myths, fact and fiction are fused to give birth to powerful fictional realities that exceed the life of these figures, giving them sometimes unexpected post-mortem careers. This introduction reveals how these fictional realities are elaborated through a process of ‘myth scripting’ that becomes constitutive of bandits’ authority. This concept is also our ethnographic object: we explore an everyday fabrication of seduction, fascination and terror indissociable from the bandits’ capacity to spur others to action that is essential to the criminal political economy.

Despite official reports and widespread popular accounts of electoral fraud, manipulation, and violence in India and Pakistan, this topic has not been systematically addressed by the scholarly literature. This special issue explores how electoral malpractices are performed across a variety of settings (villages, small towns and cities) in criminalised political contexts. Our in-depth ethnographic studies of the electoral seasons show how fraud and manipulation of electoral processes are a diffuse and pervasive assemblage of practices, discourses and representations which shape and are shaped by local modes of governance and by the idea of free and fair elections.

Based on an ethnographic case study of the 2014 electoral process in a small town of the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, this article explores the tensions between the self-making of political entrepreneurs, the loyalties to political leaders and the everyday making of electoral manipulation. By looking at the Dalit henchmen of bosses-political candidates, it argues that electoral democracy is considered by henchmen as an issue of life and death: by performing electoral manipulation, they have the opportunity to appear as men of resources, capable of extraordinary actions, and to transform their precarious social and political positions.

Why and how do labour migrant brokers engage with henchmen of bosses, small-time criminals and violent politicians? What significance do labour brokers’ political relations have in the fabric of labour circulation? This article argues for migration brokerage to be examined along a broad continuum of brokerage to explore the local fabric of labour circulation in the Indian construction sector. Considering migration brokerage as part of a broader landscape of brokerage firstly allows look at how migration brokers concretely navigate the worlds of labour and politics to pursue their activities and to further their own agendas. It secondly offers insight into how the everyday relations between migrant brokers and henchmen of bosses shape the lives of migrant labourers in the urban construction sector. Based on a detailed ethnography of the relation between a Dalit labour maistri and a Dalit henchman of a boss in a context of violent criminal political economy, this article explores the roles of Dalit politics in shaping the Dalit fabric of labour circulation and labour broker’s trajectories in South India. It further looks at the ambivalent production and mobilisation of Dalit identities in the making of an ideal Dalit migrant labourer.

This paper explores the relations between the trajectories of Dalit assertion and of faction politics in contemporary Rayalaseema in rural Andhra Pradesh. Based on a case study of a local hybrid alliance between a Dalit NGO and a Dalit agricultural labour union, it examines how Dalit organisations deal with the state and politics at village and town levels in a context of economic and political insecurities. It shows how the decline of Dalit collective forms of mobilisation in the 2000s has reinforced feelings of disempowerment among Dalit activists who look at goondaism and bossism as concrete and direct modes of assertion. The article then investigates the ambivalent relations between Dalit agenda, individual social mobility and dependence on faction leaders.

Se explora cómo los trabajadores rurales migrantes en el sur de la India negocian y conciben el endeudamiento en un contexto de relaciones de empleo y de poder cambiantes. El rechazo a ataduras, su búsqueda de dignidad y la transformación de la migración laboral se combinan con las relaciones renovadas de patronazgo en el contexto de pobreza estructural y precariedad. Esto los conduce a formas diversas de empleo, crédito y protección. A través de un estudio de caso etnográfico de trabajadores migrantes se muestra cómo las reformulaciones de la protección a los trabajadores y las relaciones de poder que implican son cruciales para comprender los límites entre endeudamiento y sobreendeudamiento. Se argumenta que el sobreendeudamiento aparece cuando laobligación moral de pagar se combina con la ausencia de protección estable y un quebranto eventual del estatus.

When talking about labour exploitation, does it matter if the activity that the labourer is doing is legal or not? Many would say yes. If the job is to commit a crime, simply enforcing the law should put an end to the exploitation as well.But reality in contemporary globalisation is far more complex than that. And detailed study of the closely entwined economic and political processes at the heart of globalisation show that unfree labour and illegality are part of what makes globalisation tick in the first place. The question then is: how does the interplay between legality and illegality, as well as between freedom and unfreedom, shape and impact the exploitation of labour?

This chapter offers insights into the material assemblage of red sanders smuggling, extending to its recruitment and labour processes and the role of electoral democracy in determining hierarchies and structures of power. By following a number of smugglers/politicians’ career trajectories, it explores how electoral politics and the red sanders mafia are entangled in relations of intreccio. It also reveals how the regulation of red sanders smuggling is deeply entrenched in the economic, cultural and political history of Rayala-seema. The latter is further illustrated by the ways the mythical figure of Veerappan is used to negotiate labour, violence and justice in the region.