Police, Race and Culture in the ‘new Ireland’

O’Brien-Olinger, Sam

doi:10.1057/9781137490452

Cited by 14 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…Focusing on the consequences of class and gender in such interactions, it is recognised that in many other jurisdictions race should be added as an analytical category. With its own unique experience of colonialism and immigration, questions of race and policing in Ireland operate considerably differently there to the US and UK (see Mulcahy, 2012;O'Brien-Olinger, 2016). It can nevertheless be argued that broader issues of power and exclusion operate in a manner that is similar enough for the insights set out in this paper to apply more generally.…”

Section: Scumbags! An Ethnography Of the Interactions Between Street-mentioning

confidence: 85%

Scumbags! An ethnography of the interactions between street-based youth and police officers

Ilan

2016

Policing and Society

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This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Permanent repository link: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/15764/ Link to published version: http://dx. AbstractThe interactions between young, disadvantaged, urban men and the rank-and-file officers who police them should be understood as layered structural, cultural and emotional phenomena. Using data from a multi-dimensional ethnographic project, this paper demonstrates that structural issues manifest in cultural scripts which place both groups in confrontation with each other. Within a tightly bound geographic district, competitiveness between them can be animated by intense emotionality. Frustration, humiliation, disdain and the potential for elation push both parties into behaviours that cannot be understood through discretion and confidence models of decision-making alone. Ultimately, through recognising how questions of inclusion/exclusion play out in simultaneously structural, cultural and emotive ways, the problems generated by negative interactions between the two groups might be meaningfully understood.

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Section: Scumbags! An Ethnography Of the Interactions Between Street-mentioning

confidence: 85%

Scumbags! An ethnography of the interactions between street-based youth and police officers

Ilan

2016

Policing and Society

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“…This contribution argues that institutions tasked with “truth finding” retain a particular interest to scrutinise the researcher. More specifically, it has been argued elsewhere (Borrelli, 2019) that agencies and, in this example, the border police who assess client eligibility often share a particular interest in “who one is” (O'Brien-Olinger, 2016). “Suspicion (like doubt) occupies the space between the law and its application” (Asad, 2004, p. 285), and suspicion arises where there is uncertainty.…”

Section: On Methodology and The Specificities About The Research Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As such, (police) institutions retain a general suspicion towards the outside world (Fassin, 2013). Suspicion is “one elemental police disposition, […] described as a product of the need to watch for signs of trouble, danger and clues” (O'Brien-Olinger, 2016, p. 99). The interest to fight crime and the idea to uphold the law are a common framing of their work; while at the same time, their work is also characterised by shuffling paperwork and rather boring administrative tasks (Borrelli, 2019).…”

Section: On Methodology and The Specificities About The Research Fieldmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Compared to researching organisations down, where we find yet again different power asymmetries, both ways of studying up or down may cause various forms of suspicion, directed towards the researchers. The culture of suspicion found in organizations is not necessarily specific for the context of police work, which is investigated here (O'Brien-Olinger, 2016; Rowe, 2007; Bohmer and Shuman, 2018). Yet, the presented analysis of rites of passage becomes more fine-grained to the street-level perspective in which the experiences in a bureaucratic setting and (state) organisation display an institutionalised and engrained suspicion and power asymmetry that is especially noticeable within government institutions that deal with decisions on eligibility (e.g.…”

Section: “And There Comes Lisa With Her Glowing Pen”—conducting Fieldworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Borrelli

2020

JOE

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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.

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“…The Irish police force, An Garda Síochána has had a key role in nation building (Conway, 2014) and has been characterized historically by a rural habitus: a common sense that enabled it to embed itself in communities, to be fostered in lay Catholic and sporting associations; it dominated the field with this localist, monocultural and heroic habitus (O’Brien-Olinger, 2016). According to Bowden (2014), this habitus was insufficient in the new post-Fordist conditions of uncertainty and precarity and could no longer provide a method of domination.…”

Section: The Formation Of a Security Field: The Case Of Irelandmentioning

confidence: 99%

The security field: Forming and expanding a Bourdieusian criminology

Bowden

2019

Criminology & Criminal Justice

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Recent scholarly contributions have sought to integrate Bourdieusian sociology with criminology, centring for example, on the 'street' field as a symbolic and narrative space occupied by players within criminal justice. This article complements this broad objective by focusing on the changes in contemporary police and security governance that are pointing towards an emerging security field. Such a change can be read from the literature on plural policing and crime control, and involves the morphology of policing into nodes or assemblages of security producers. While there has been some attention to the formation of security networks, further empirical work is required to map the field dynamics using a Bourdieusian toolkit. This article explores the concept of the security field, presents some observations from current field research, and identifies some remaining questions and challenges for further conceptualisation and empirical research.

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Police, Race and Culture in the ‘new Ireland’

Cited by 14 publications

References 0 publications

Scumbags! An ethnography of the interactions between street-based youth and police officers

Scumbags! An ethnography of the interactions between street-based youth and police officers

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

The security field: Forming and expanding a Bourdieusian criminology

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