International Journal on Criminology
italism ,” reigning there for a long time . Even today , the tireless swarming “ ants ,” most often immigrants from the Maghreb and the Sahel , form the basic infantry of “ globalization from below .” In the Franco-Spanish-Maghrebian colonial slang , this informal trade , straddling the licit and illicit , is the TRABENDO ( contrabando in Spanish ).
In the 1980s , its apogee , “ Belsunce ,” is in reality a colonial post-comptoir , on the informal side . Then , pressed against each other , there are 350 to four hundred stores held mainly by Algerians . About fifty large Algerian families hold most of the stores .
As we will see below , things change with the near civil war that ravaged Algeria in the 1990s . In the year 2000 and thereafter , “ Belsunce ” is under the control of some 120 families , mostly Moroccan , owning about eight hundred stores spread throughout the south of France and beyond , of which now only ± 175 is in “ Belsunce ” itself .
Since the 1980s , these stores have attracted a huge clientele : each year , about 700,000 customers make a round trip from the Maghreb ( especially , or during a family visit ), including 300,000 to 400,000 immigrants living in Europe .
For those who come from Algeria , the stages of the road ( sea or land , private cars or coaches ) are then : Oran , Alicante , and finally Marseille .
Annual turnover of Belsunce , around 1987 , was about 600 million euros (± 3 billion French francs at the time ). Belsunce , with its somewhat miserable and decrepit appearance , was then by far the leading commercial sector on the Mediterranean coast of France .
One sells in Belsunce all ( licit or illicit ) that is untraceable in the “ socialist ” Algeria of that time : everyday consumer goods , household appliances , and trousseaux for the bride and groom . But also , one sells more discreetly and “ under the counter ” what is already part of the illicit economy : counterfeit clothes , contraband cigarettes , and car electronics and spare parts ( then counterfeit in southern Italy ).
At the time , however , the unofficial law enacted by the “ Informal Notaries ” of the trabendo ( which we will discuss below ) prohibited trafficking to the Maghreb arms , strong alcohol , sex workers , and drugs — barriers that increased during the crisis of armed Islamism in Algeria ( 1992 – 2005 , approximately ).
Upheaval in Belsunce around 1991 – 1992 included the near civil war in Algeria , which affected all this Franco-Maghreb trade . Very active in Marseilles , though not very visible , the Islamists of the Islamic Salvation Front , then the ( very ferocious ) Armed Islamic Group , began to racketeer merchants , demanding from them — on pain of death — that they pay them an exorbitant version of the “ zakat ,” a religious tax — an Islamist translation of the “ revolutionary tax ” of the guerrillas of the wars of independence .
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