Pleasures of policing: An additional analysis of xenophobia
| Author | David Sausdal |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480617707947 |
| Published date | 01 May 2018 |
| Date | 01 May 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480617707947
Theoretical Criminology
2018, Vol. 22(2) 226 –242
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480617707947
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Pleasures of policing:
An additional analysis
of xenophobia
David Sausdal
Stockholm University, Sweden
Abstract
In police research, dominant explanations of why law enforcers harbour xenophobic
attitudes are most often dressed in cultural or political rationalizations. Based on
an ethnographic study of Danish police detectives and their noticeable negativity
towards foreign suspects, this article offers an additional explanation of xenophobia. It
demonstrates how resentments are spurred not only by cultural prejudice or politics
but also by the ways in which foreigners complicate quite ordinary yet, from a police
perspective, valued work practices. Following this ethnographic observation, the article
ultimately constitutes a call for a better grounding of our criminological theories in the
wider context of the workday situations and sensibilities of law enforcement.
Keywords
Criminological theory, emotions, ethnography, everyday life, methodology, policing,
xenophobia
Introduction
One late April afternoon north of Copenhagen, Police Detective Jensen comes into the office
waving a yellow post-it note in front of me and his colleagues. ‘So guys, I was just talking to
Gabriel [a Romanian liaison officer] who’s been listening through some of the hours of tape we
have on an old case. Apparently, the primary suspect was on the phone with some other
Romanian guy who asked if he could help get “a discrete means of transportation”. You
Corresponding author:
David Sausdal, PhD Fellow, Department of Criminology, Stockholm University, Universitetsvägen 10,
Stockholm, 106 91, Sweden.
Email: David.sausdal@criminology.su.se
707947TCR0010.1177/1362480617707947Theoretical CriminologySausdal
research-article2017
Article
Sausdal 227
know—he was asking for some wheels to use for break-ins. Gabriel gave me the number so
maybe we should set up a wiretap?’ Looking apprehensively at the post-it, Detective Andersen
eventually reacts: ‘Hell no! Forget it. I don’t care about those damn foreigners. I don’t want
anything to do with them. They are no fun.’
The notion that foreigners1 tend to annoy police is well documented in criminological
research (Chan, 2011; Delsol and Shiner, 2015; Fassin, 2013; Mutsaers, 2014; Weber and
Bowling, 2014). This annoyance, or what might even be termed police xenophobia,2 is
most often explained by applying either a cultural or a political analytical framework.
Put differently, police xenophobia is understood as being an expression of cultural preju-
dice embedded in the individual police officer, the police organization and/or in the soci-
ety of which the police are a part, or alternatively, as being an example of a political
discourse in which foreigners are singled out as being a problematic social group in
special need of policing.
Using either one of these two analytical frameworks would constitute a reasonable
way of analysing the ethnographic observations of the Danish Police that forms the basis
of this article. Indeed, in Danish police research (Holmberg, 2000, 2003) as well in wider
Scandinavian police research (Flyghed, 2002; Granér, 2004; Høigård, 2011; Sollund,
2006; Uhnoo, 2015) it has been demonstrated how the police harbour cultural prejudice
towards foreigners as well as how the police politically promote the fear of foreigners.
However, if this article were to limit its analysis to these frameworks, it would not be
providing an exhaustive explanation of the negativity towards foreigners expressed by a
group of Danish police detectives. Here we may return to the article’s opening vignette
and Detective Andersen’s unenthusiastic reaction at the prospect of having to investigate
a possible Romanian burglary ring. Her words and the embedded attitude constitute
examples of the proposition that this article seeks to promote: that xenophobia also has
something to do with police perceptions that working with foreigners is less pleasurable.
Put differently, it is proposed that a reason why the police harbour negative sentiments
towards foreigners, in addition to cultural prejudice or politics, is because foreigners
complicate otherwise valued work practices. To the Danish detectives, foreigners are no
fun—or at least, they are on average not as much fun as other suspects.3
In its development of this argument, the article is structured as follows: it begins by
briefly describing the research and the empirical setting that circumscribe its arguments.
Second, it provides a short overview of the most common ways in which police xeno-
phobia is discussed. Third, providing its additional analysis of xenophobia, it demon-
strates how not only major but also mundane work pleasures/displeasures have a bearing
on police officers’ practices and perceptions. More specifically, ethnographic examples
are given of how two otherwise valued work practices, interrogating and using wiretaps
respectively, frequently turn sour and thus produce noticeable negativity when they
involve foreign suspects. Following this, the article concludes by arguing that if under-
standings of such a grave subject as xenophobia can also be found by carefully attending
to everyday vocational situations and sensibilities, then criminological research in gen-
eral might also benefit from remembering to ‘study down’ while ‘studying up’ (Nader,
1972). In other words, it is argued that theoretical advances can be made by examining
the significance of seemingly mundane, everyday phenomena, such as work pleasures,
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