The aim with this article is to expand the understanding of current forms of professional arrangements that regulate coercive policing practices at the street level. The empirical material consists of in-depth interviews with individuals who have had violent encounters with security guards. Departing from experiences of being brutalised, the study engages with the moment when the police enter the narratives. The analysis highlights that the police can reinforce the authority of the security guards, but also [counter]balance their violence. There are occasions when the interviewees perceive that the police side with them, a matter that challenges simplified understandings of public and private policing agents exercising sovereign control in a unified way. The argument advanced is that the division of labour between the professional actors in some instances opens a window of opportunity where the police are positioned to decide whether they should implement either coercive or more consensual governing techniques.

This article builds on two interview studies on racial profiling conducted in Finland and Sweden. It examines policing practices in order to elaborate on the understanding of what we define as the “racial welfare state”. The analysis draws attention to the ways that bordering practices reproduce racial orders, within and beyond the nationstate. The embeddedness of the Nordic region in the Western sphere, with its colonial legacies, is highlighted through the empirical material that focuses on the consequences of internal and external migration controls, as well as more general police stop-and-search practices. The study underlines the need to investigate racial profiling as a practice that enforces an imagined community based not on whiteness in general, but on Nordic whiteness in particular as the norm against which the bodies of ‘others’ are measured.

Denna rapport bygger på en enkätstudie genomförd av Folkets Husby tillsammans med kriminologen Leandro Schclarek Mulinari och Sima Wolgast, universitetslektor vid institutionen för psykologi vid Lunds universitet. Undersökningen är baserad på svar från 715 respondenter insamlade under åtta veckor, sommaren 2020. Resultaten pekar på stora problem med trygghet i Stockholmsförorterna Hjulsta, Tensta, Rinkeby, Akalla, Husby och Kista. I rapporten uppmärksammas att invånare i dessa stadsdelar drabbas av utsatthet och oro kopplat till en rad olika aspekter av livet. Samtidigt framgår av enkätstudien att respondenterna trivs i sin stadsdel och ger uttryck för tillit till andra människor i sitt bostadsområde.

In this study questions of crime are used as a means to explore the relation between race and the social order. The aim is to empirically and theoretically expand the criminological understanding of racism as a structural phenomenon. Anchored in critical criminology, and particularly the work of cultural theorist Stuart Hall, the racialization of crime and its consequences is addressed, with a particular focus on the role of ideology and repression. Departing from a Swedish context, local and global power relations associated with the current conjuncture, such as neoliberalism and the colonial legacy of Western powers, are highlighted.

The four articles of the compilation thesis are intended to be read as a unit, but also stand on their own given that they address different dimensions of the social order where conflicts are played out. In the first article, the role of language in the racialization of official crime discourse is explored at the level of metaphors. In the second, attention is turned to why racist imaginaries of crime are contested by established journalists. The third article addresses security measures that target Muslims in the effort to combat terrorism. The fourth article focuses on racial profiling from a more general perspective, investigating stop-and-search practices as well as consequences of the intertwinement of crime and migration control.

In this qualitative study, I examine, through the lens of repression, Swedish Muslims' experiences of being targeted by authorities in the latter's attempts to prevent terrorism. In an effort to comprehend the full force of this repression-as coercion in its physical and violent sense, but also in its more subtle and consensual forms-I interweave various Marxist and postcolonial perspectives. The study discusses internal aspects of repression, as well as its external qualities, expanding our understanding of how repression occurs between bodies and within society. I develop the concept of repressive consent as a means of grasping situations in which people are influenced to undertake activities against their will. Empirically, the article focuses on experiences of disproportionate security controls and encounters with the Swedish Security Service (Sapo). The material reveals both painful and everyday consequences. For some individuals, becoming a target in the War on Terror may have, as the informants of the study indicate, devastating consequences; for others, it may feel like a friendly chat.

In this study I explore the city as a space where images of crime are challenged. Taking the experiences of well-established journalists as my point of departure, I analyze why they dispute the crime image of Malmo, Sweden's third-largest city. I show that my informants perceive that the image of the city is used to criticize notions of the multicultural society. The analysis points to the need to examine the media's role in challenging crime images in relation to race as a fundamental conflict line in society. The act of disputing is produced in opposition to the gaining presence of the extreme right within the political domain. Consequently, I conclude that this can be seen as an act of resistance, while also arguing that it can be complicit in a neoliberal urban agenda.

This study is part of a report series from the Department of Criminology at Stockholm University. It has been carried out by the criminologist Leandro Schclarek Mulinari on behalf of Civil Rights Defenders. The study is qualitative and based on interviews with police officers, as well as individuals who have been subjected to racial/ ethnic profiling. The interview subjects are Afro-Swedes, Muslims, and Roma, mainly from the marginalised residential areas of major cities. The overall aim of the report is to deepen the understanding of a muchdebated but under-examined phenomenon in Sweden.

Denna studie är en del av en rapportserie från Kriminologiska institutionen på Stockholms universitet. Den är framtagen av kriminologen Leandro Schclarek Mulinari på uppdrag av Civil Rights Defenders. Studien är kvalitativ och bygger på intervjuer med såväl poliser som människor som drabbas av ras-/etnisk profilering. Intervjupersonerna är afrosvenskar, muslimer och romer, i huvudsak från storstädernas marginaliserade bostadsområden. Rapportens övergripande syfte är att fördjupa förståelsen av ett omdebatterat men understuderat fenomen i Sverige.

This study is part of a report series from the Department of Criminology at Stockholm University. It is developed by the criminologist Leandro Schclarek Mulinari on behalf of Civil Rights Defenders. The study is qualitative and based on interviews with police officers, as well as individuals who have been subjected to racial/ ethnic profiling. The interview subjects are Afroswedes, Muslims and Roma, mainly from marginalised residential areas of major cities. The report’s overall aim is to deepen the understanding of a much-debated but under-examined phenomenon in Sweden.

”You are not welcome in our lovely Malmö”: Conditions for belonging in mobilization against organized crime.

Several murders occurred in the Swedish city of Malmo between 2011 and 2012. Against this backdrop, the municipality and the police initiate a public campaign. The aim is to mobilize the city's population against organized crime. In this study the ideology of the initiative is analysed. It is argued that the representation of organized crime as nurtured by the black economy can be read as an example of neoliberal revanchist city agenda, albeit an ambivalent one. The role of groups working in the low-price sphere of the economy becomes that of a threatening projection, while a consumption ideology regulates the boundaries of belonging.