Mafias, memory and citizenship

Abstract This article develops an analysis of mafia-type organizations, conceptualizing mafia power as a system of domination sustained by violence, social control, and the erosion of rights. Using the ’ndrangheta as a case, it combines legal analysis with qualitative methods. It shows how the threat of violence is normalized in everyday life and how mafias act on the frameworks of memory through intimidation, silence, and selective remembrance. The article argues that recognition of innocent victims and their families links memory to justice as a right to truth and to substantive—not merely formal— justice. Drawing on Halbwachs, Alexander’s cultural trauma approach, Todorov’s exemplary memory, Bourdieu’s symbolic violence, and Rodotà’s “right to have rights,” it frames antimafia remembrance as critical memory: a democratic practice that converts private grief into public claims and reactivates citizenship in mafia-affected territories through encounters, testimony, and education.