European Journal of Policing Studies
Article

Minority Police Officers in the French Police

The ‘Republican tradition’ and the Workplace Experience of Minority Officers
Keywords Police, security, minorities, ethnicity, discrimination, France
Authors Jérémie Gauthier en René Lévy
DOI 10.5553/EJPS/2034760X2015002004005
Author's information

Jérémie Gauthier
Jérémie Gauthier is a researcher at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin. His main research topics are police discrimination and racism in France and Germany. He is currently working on policing and knowledge issues in France and in Germany (corresp.: gauthier@cmb.hu-berlin.de).

René Lévy
René Lévy is a senior research director at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) and a former director of Cesdip. He is currently director of the European network Groupe européen de recherche sur les normativités (GERN) and of the journal Crime, Histoire & Sociétés/Crime, History & Societies (Geneva: Droz). He has written extensively on the sociology and history of policing, on police discrimination and also on electronic monitoring.

  • Abstract

      This article discusses the situation of police officers from visible ethnic minorities within the French National Police Force. Part one deals with the main ideological and institutional factors responsible for the longstanding refusal to consider the issue of ethnicity in the police institution and goes on to describe the more pragmatic attitude prevailing within that institution in recent years, in spite of some resistance. Part two describes the tangible problems encountered by officers from minority groups as uncovered in a field study conducted in the Paris area.

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