Abstract
This article draws upon two separate studies on policing in Sweden, both investigating “ethnic diversity” as a discourse and a practice in the performance of policing functions: one interview study with minority police officers from a county police authority and one ethnographic study of private security officers. To examine how “diversity policing” and the “policing of diversity” are performed by policing actors, their strategic reliance on an ethnically diverse workforce is examined. The official discourse in both contexts stressed “diversity policing” as a valuable resource for the effective execution of policing tasks and the legitimation of policing functions. There was, however, also another, more unofficial discourse on ethnicity that heavily influenced the policing agents’ day-to-day work. The resulting practice of “policing diversity” involved situated activities on the ground through which “foreign elements” in the population were policed using ethnicized stereotypes. Diversity in the policing workforce promoted the practice of ethnic matching, which, ironically, in turn perpetuated stereotypical thinking about Swedish “others”. A conceptual framework is developed for understanding the policing strategies involved and the disjuncture found between the widely accepted rationalities for recruiting an ethnically diverse workforce and the realities for that workforce’s effective deployment at the street level.
Highlights
Drawing on two separate studies on policing in Sweden, this article examines how “ethnic diversity” is used by two different kinds of policing actors in the performance of their policing functions, as both a discourse and a practical strategy influencing the daily work of public police officers and private security providers
We focus on features and characteristics that are common to the policing efforts of both the public police and private security providers rather than on what separates them
The distinction made in the literature between private and public policing, where the former stands for the policing activities of private security companies and the latter for the activities of the public police authority, has been criticized as an overly simplified dichotomy not useful for analytical purposes (Bayley & Shearing, 2001; Crawford & Lister, 2006; Hutchinson & O’Connor, 2005; Kempa et al, 1999; Rigakos, 2002; Stenning, 2009; Williams, 2008). We adopt this criticism as a point of departure in our effort to focus more on general commonalities between different modes of policing, regardless of the type of organization, power, and authority and the kind of regulatory framework involved. Four such commonalities can be identified that, while of interest in themselves, pose specific challenges to both public police and private security actors engaged in policing work in modern multi-ethnic socities and form the background of our analysis presented in this article
Summary
Drawing on two separate studies on policing in Sweden, this article examines how “ethnic diversity” is used by two different kinds of policing actors in the performance of their policing functions, as both a discourse and a practical strategy influencing the daily work of public police officers and private security providers. One underlying rationale in these efforts in Sweden has been the need to better mirror the heterogeneity of the country’s general population This has been seen as necessary for the policing agents’ ability to legitimate their actions, activities, and purposes, provide higher-quality services, and perform their policing tasks more effectively. The study participants policed stereotypes, and themselves made use of ethnicized stereotypes when performing work tasks, policing through stereotypes In this actual, concrete policing work, ‘ethnicity’ as a notion was transformed, becoming a question of skin colour, general appearance, and language proficiency, with the new conceptualization put to use to aid one’s work in interactions with the public. Modern multi-ethnic society, this focus usefully narrows down on discourses on ethnic diversity among policing agents and the question of how the norms that these discourses provide for the policing agents’ thinking and interpreting in concrete work situations are translated into situated activities resorted to on the ground
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