The police community on the move: hierarchy and management in the daily lives of Portuguese police officers

Abstract

In this article, I argue that in order to maintain some organisational uniformity the Portuguese police institution must ensure a high level of individual mobility – that is, a professional community all over the country. Based on in‐depth fieldwork in Portuguese police stations, I treat police bureaucracy not only as an institution with fixed boundaries but also, and simultaneously, as a unit continuously sustained by broader environments and the officers’ own domestic rationales.