Download full text
(external source)
Citation Suggestion
Please use the following Persistent Identifier (PID) to cite this document:
https://doi.org/10.17645/si.v2i3.40
Exports for your reference manager
Diversity policing-policing diversity: performing ethnicity in police and private-security work in Sweden
[journal article]
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 sec... view more
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.... view less
Keywords
Sweden; police; ethnic structure; stereotype; labor
Classification
Criminal Sociology, Sociology of Law
Ethnology, Cultural Anthropology, Ethnosociology
Document language
English
Publication Year
2014
Page/Pages
p. 75-87
Journal
Social Inclusion, 2 (2014) 3
Issue topic
Policing ethnicity: between the rhetoric of inclusion and the policies and practices of exclusion
ISSN
2183-2803
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed
Licence
Creative Commons - Attribution