Tom 48 (2022): Zeszyt 3 (November 2022)

Immigrant associations in Germany are increasingly approached as experts and included in administrative action. This article develops a heuristic informed by governmentality studies to analyse this cooperation practice. A document analysis shows that immigrant associations are addressed as “bridge builders” between public administration and migrants. Interviews with actors in a municipal cooperation setting in Berlin reveal the paradoxes of this interpellation as well as reflexive strategies of organisational self-positioning.

This article investigates the role of ethnic and racializing differentiations in recruitment practices of public administrations in a context of demands to employ more staff of immigrant origin. Drawing on a qualitative study of local administrations in Berlin, I show how figures of “(un)suitable candidates” are constructed, in which ethnic/racializing differentiations intersect with gendered and spatial differentiations. This serves both to justify low recruitment numbers and established routines and to showcase openness to diversity.

This article discusses narratives on diversity within two Swiss police corps. In biographical-narrative interviews, police officers smooth out diversity by neutralizing, externalizing and dosing differences. The experience of being different and speaking about differences goes against the organizational narrative of the “police as a family”. The latter contributes to building a homogenized and community-oriented police corps culture.

Although previous research has criticized the racialization of violence against women, the tendency to link so-called “domestic violence” to migrant population remains popular in Switzerland. This article based on an ethnographic study of a police emergency unit, argues against the thesis according to which domestic violence is more frequent (or more serious) in migrant populations. It examines the “Sri Lankan case”, a prevailing narrative in this institution, to show how the police officers manufacture difference between similar cases.

Young people of color are affected by criminalization. This article addresses the question of how social work in the context of institutionalized out-of-home placement is framed by the ubiquity of national borders and police practices. It empirically traces that racial profiling manifests itself through ritualistic repetition. It is shown that the formal character of so-called dangerous places classified as criminogenic is transferred to youth-serving organizations through informal police practices.

Focusing on practices and representations mobilized by street-level workers in the management of North African unaccompanied minor migrants (UAMs) in Geneva, I take a closer look at the everyday assessment and production of UAMs’ deservingness in the context of humanitarianism. I show the importance of doubt and of perceived vulnerability in the informal evaluation process of UAMs’ right for protection. I further demonstrate how the social construction of childhood, race, and gender influence street-level workers’ perceptions.

The social relationship that devalues and freezes in an inferior otherness those people whose abilities do not conform to the standards produces a consensus on the help to be given to people considered as disabled. A second social relationship, based on territorial belonging, justifies unequal treatment of natives and people of foreign nationality. But how are these two criteria articulated when the disability concerns a person of foreign nationality? This is the question that is the focus of this article.