Shadow Europe: Alternative European Financial Geographies

ABSTRACT This paper sets out to trace some major points of convergence between an emerging literature on the political geographies of corruption¹ and current attempts to develop a renewed research agenda in the geographies of global finance—in this case in a specifically European context. In particular, we offer some preliminary observations on the need to elaborate an alternative geography of Europe's financial architecture that could incorporate the role of flows of illegal and informal finance as major driving forces behind the way in which that architecture currently constitutes itself. This is an inherently complex task due to the intrinsically hidden nature of these flows and the difficulties involved in their accurate measurement; nevertheless, they are too important to be ignored, as is too frequently the case at present. In the paper we offer some necessarily preliminary, and deliberately provocative, reflections on how to take forward such a re‐conceptualisation. Ultimately, our analysis revolves around the identification of an uneasy tension between the demand for deregulated financial markets and the increasing integration of those markets, and the international momentum towards finding ways of dealing with the (apparently) ever‐increasing problems of corruption, money laundering, and the financing of terrorism through new forms of financial regulation and control.