Safety Work with an Ethnic Slant

Abstract

Ethnic discrimination in the criminal justice system is a well-researched topic, but the significance of ethnicity in policing activities at more mundane levels has attracted less attention. This article analyzes ethnographic data on municipal 'safety work' in a Swedish city troubled with robberies, vandalism, and violence. It shows how the efforts of different safety workers, operating to curb crime and promote security, came to focus on the 'soft' policing of young men with various immigrant backgrounds. A set of street-level safety practices, performed within spatial demarcations, was found to represent a more-or-less silent orientation towards local minorities; a focus on non-Swedish ethnicities was embedded in the policing activity. This article points out the importance of implied ethnicities in the contemporary landscape of plural policing.

Sensitive Stuff and Expressive Caution: Notes on the Research Process in Studies of Ethnicities Associated with Crime

“…The first in 2008-2009 and the second in 2013-2014 (Åkerström 2016). 4) The last study we draw on is an ethnographic study about safety work in a small Swedish town (Landskrona), where approximately 25% of the residents were born in another country and the local media for a period of time focused on associations of crime and young immigrants (Wästerfors and Burcar 2014). The study (which was conducted during 2006-2007) consisted of 'go-alongs' with security guards and voluntary safety workers, field-based interviews with the local people they met and field-based interviews with social workers, policemen, shop owners and their assistants, youth and 'people in the street'.…”

“…It is also, however, about an epistemological hope that being an immigrant makes it easier to understand and talk to other immigrants (for similar findings, see Damsa & Ugelvik 2018: 205). As mentioned previously, in a study of safety work in Landskrona (Wästerfors and Burcar 2014), Burcar Alm was asked by potential interviewees with ethnic minority backgrounds if she was ' a svenne (Swede) or a wog', as if the answer to this question would decide if they would talk to her. The answer 'both' seemed satisfactory.…”

Diversity Policing–Policing Diversity: Performing Ethnicity in Police and Private-Security Work in Sweden

“…All this then makes ethnic matching appear as a rational choice in policing: police employees or security staff coming from ethnicminority ("foreign") backgrounds, the thinking suggests, should then be the ones to police ethnic minorities in the public, producing as they would better outcomes than their ethnically "Swedish" colleagues attempting the same (cf. Hansen Löfstrand, 2013b;Wästerfors & Burcar, 2014). Underlying this distinction between "foreigners" and "Swedes" in the workforce of the policing agents, just as in the population at large, is a specific notion of "Swedishness", one that is linked to appearance: in it, a "Swedish" appearance is "equated with being blond and having blue eyes, which involves a direct and clear link between Swedishness and whiteness" (Mattson, 2005, p. 150).…”

Refraining from reporting crimes: accounts from young male crime victims with an immigrant background

“…Stories about young people attacking the police or fire brigades are frequently and regularly reported by the media (Hallin et al 2010). Such depictions have social consequences, both in terms of the self-identity of the group of people (Jacobsson and Åkerström 2013;Council of Crime Prevention 2018;6) and in terms of policing and surveillance (Wästerfors and Burcar 2014).…”