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Paper short abstract

This paper examines the Port of Piraeus as an (il)licit maritime space where the logics of logistics, infrastructure, and supply-chain routines produce grey zones between legality and illegality that are difficult to disentangle.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines the Port of Piraeus as an (il)licit maritime space in which logistical practices and infrastructural arrangements produce grey zones between legality and illegality. Rather than approaching illegality as an exceptional breach of regulation, the paper argues that the ways in which contemporary ports and global supply chains organize administrative, labour, and customs procedures routinely rework the boundaries of what counts as licit.

Empirically, the paper brings together two domains that are usually analyzed separately: labour regimes and commodity circulation. First, drawing on long-term ethnographic research on labour relations in the Port of Piraeus following its transformation into a gateway to European markets under the ownership of the Chinese company COSCO, the paper examines how contemporary logistical infrastructures and modes of operation mould dockworkers into the broader category of supply-chain workers, enabling the semi- legal misclassification of their labour. Second, introducing a developing research strand in Piraeus, the paper analyses a large-scale customs and VAT fraud case linked to the port, which lead to the largest VAT-related seizure in the European Union (investigation Calypso). The case concerns goods that entered Piraeus under legal transit and VAT-suspension regimes and were subsequently absorbed into domestic and foreign markets without taxation.

Mobilising the concept of para-crime (Vigh & Sausdal 2025), the analysis shows how illicit outcomes emerge through hegemonic material and political routines that are intrinsic in the mantra of seamless operation of global supply chains.