Ethnic at Home, Policed in the Streets: Experiences of Policing and Racial Identity amongst Immigrant Men of Color

The purpose of this research is to gain a better understanding of the experiences of policing among young men of color. Currently, our nation is experiencing growing tension in regards to police-community relations. Dialogue... [ view full abstract ]

The purpose of this research is to gain a better understanding of the experiences of policing among young men of color. Currently, our nation is experiencing growing tension in regards to police-community relations. Dialogue has emerged around police killings of unarmed civilians, the use of racial profiling in relation to stop-and-frisk policies and punitive practices targeting perceived immigrants. Current social science research uses racial categories to describe respondents, but rarely has the nuanced identities of immigrant men of color, who bear both ethnic and racial identities been explored, specifically as it relates to policing. My project utilizes data collected from 8 interviews with self-identified first- and second-generation immigrant men of color at Middlebury College to explore the following questions: (1) How does policing function as a site of racial formation? (2) How do recent immigrants perceive the place of policing and surveillance in their lives? (3) How do interactions with authority affect the way recent immigrants adopt national identity?