It is an association of gangs which sell their protection and arbitration services under a common brand. The Mafia's core activities are protection racketeering , the arbitration of disputes between criminals, and the organizing and oversight of illegal agreements and transactions.
The basic group is known as a " family ", "clan", or cosca. Its members call themselves " men of honour ", although the public often refers to them as mafiosi. By the 20th century, wide-scale emigration from Sicily led to the formation of mafiosi style gangs in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, and South America.
These diaspora-based outfits replicated the traditions and methods of their Sicilian ancestors to varying extents. The word mafia originated in Sicily. The Sicilian noun mafiusu in Italian: mafioso roughly translates to mean " swagger ", but can also be translated as "boldness, bravado ". In reference to a man, mafiusu in 19th-century Sicily was ambiguous, signifying a bully, arrogant but also fearless, enterprising and proud, according to scholar Diego Gambetta.
The Sicilian word mafie refers to the caves near Trapani and Marsala , [ 4 ] which were often used as hiding places for refugees and criminals. Sicily was once an Islamic emirate , therefore mafia might have Arabic roots. Possible Arabic roots of the word include:. The public's association of the word with the criminal secret society was perhaps inspired by the play " I mafiusi di la Vicaria [ it ] " "The Mafiosi of the Vicaria" by Giuseppe Rizzotto and Gaspare Mosca.
Soon after, the use of the term "mafia" began appearing in the Italian state's early reports on the group. The word was first documented in in a report by the prefect of Filippo Antonio Gualterio [ it ]. The term mafia has become a generic term for any organized criminal network with similar structure, methods, and interests. But Giovanni Falcone , an Italian judge who was murdered by the Mafia in , had objected to the conflation of the term "Mafia" with organized crime in general:.
