Between suspicion, nicknames, and trust—renegotiating ethnographic access with Swedish border police

Abstract

PurposeThis article contributes the following: First, it argues along previous works that rites of passage include continuous testing, which needs to be passed in order to gain a certain level of acceptance within the research field. Here besides the emotional effort, researchers have to position themselves and are confronted with questions of trust. Second, it is argued that the collected and analysed data on the rites of passage enable us to make sense of street-level bureaucrats' work and functioning of state institutions, especially in a police context. Reflections on research negotiations drew the author's attention to how mistrust towards the “other”, here defined as migrant other, prevails the migration regime. This mistrust is later transferred onto the researcher, whose stay is deemed questionable and eventually intrusive.Design/methodology/approachThe collected data include semi-structured interviews, as well as several months of participant observation with street-level officers and superordinate staff, deepening previous discussions on research access and entrance. It further allows understanding street-level narratives, especially when it comes to the culture of suspicion embedded in police work, connecting the experienced tests with the everyday knowledge of police officers and case workers.FindingsThe analysis of rites of passage enable us to make sense of street-level bureaucrats' work, especially in a police context, since we find a specific way of suspicion directed towards the researcher. It is based on a general mistrust towards the “other”, here defined as migrant other, whose stay is deemed illegal and thus intruding. In this context, the positionality of the researcher becomes crucial and needs strategical planning.Research limitations/implicationsAccessing and being able to enter the “field” is of crucial relevance to researchers, interested in studying, e.g. sense-making and decision-making of the respective interlocutors. Yet, ethnographic accounts often disclose only partially, which hurdles, limiting or contesting their aspirations to conduct fieldwork, were encountered.Originality/valueThe personal role of researchers, their background and emotions are often neglected when describing ethnographic research. Struggles and what these can say about the studied field are thus left behind, although they contribute to a richer understanding of the functioning of the chosen fields. This work will examine how passing the test and going through rituals of “becoming a member” can tell us more about the functioning of a government agency, here a Swedish border police unit.

A collaborator? Ethnographic issues of police and peer suspicion

“…Opening their doors, something which the police are famously reluctant too (see for example Van Maanen, 1978;Punch, 1979;Reiner and Newburn, 2007), the police will ask questions about how the study may be of use not only academically or societally speaking, but for them, for policing (cf. Nader 1972;Holmberg, 2014;Manning, 2014;Borrelli, 2020). The above quotation is an example thereof.…”

“…Contrary to many other instances of ethnography, the example explains how we police ethnographers are rarely, if ever, able to achieve the full trust of our interlocutors (cf. Rowe, 2012;Sausdal, 2021b;Borrelli, 2020). Even after spending many months with the police, as I had when this situation occurred, there are always reservations to be found.…”

“…There is no easy fix. Instead, doing police ethnography may better be described as a matter of perpetual access and rapport negotiation (Reiner and Newburn, 2007;Borrelli, 2020) negotiations largely based on persistent police suspicions and questionings of whether we as researchers are "really" with or against the police. Are we, as the police have asked me, "there to help"?…”

Cultural practices and organizational ethnography: implications for fieldwork and research ethics

“…The literature on qualitative fieldwork discusses a concept similar to wasta, namely the act of “vouching”. Numerous qualitative researchers have noted that they were vouched for by someone to help them gain access (Borrelli, 2020; Reeves, 2010; Tittensor, 2016). The practice of vouching is widespread in human cultures, but it manifests differently in different contexts, as it is unavoidably enacted within local cultural relations.…”

“…In this spirit, qualitative researchers have contributed to the literature on qualitative fieldwork by engaging in reflexive exercises to reveal different dimensions of how positionality and fieldwork processes intersect in complex and situated ways. For example, it has been shown how a researcher's positionality shapes the data generated during interactions with Cultural practices and ethnography participants (Mikkelsen, 2013), how positionality facilitates or hinders research access (Anthony and Danaher, 2016;Borrelli, 2020) and how participants construct and ascribe specific positionalities for researchers (Baum-Talmor, 2019;Turgo, 2012). Reflexive analyses of cultural practices, such as wasta, and how they influence the positionality of a researcher during fieldwork are scarce.…”