This chapter demonstrates how highly unequal agents located somewhere along the legal–illegal continuum survive in an urban market that is global, highly lucrative, tentacular, and competitive. Central actors, like automakers and insurance companies who leverage their access to the highest echelons of Brazilian politics, expect that the selective criminalization of small chop‐shops and junkyards will control the supply of auto parts. Marginal actors such as street‐level policemen, car thieves, truck drivers, and clandestine chop‐shops thwart those efforts on a daily basis. They ensure auto parts are priced low by flooding the market with parts from stolen cars. Mauricio, an engineer by training, fiddled with a bullet‐shaped pen while he was telling us these stories about the transformation of the family's dismantling business in his spacious second floor office. Illegality creates a more vibrant, dynamic economy for the dismantlers and used auto‐parts tradesmen. Theft makes for a more competitive market.
Dismantling a Stolen Car
Stolen Cars ; 127-146
2022-01-06
20 pages
Article/Chapter (Book)
Electronic Resource
English
STOLEN BICYCLE TRACKING SYSTEM AND STOLEN BICYCLE DETECTION DEVICE
European Patent Office | 2016
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