African immigrants’ perception of police in Finland: Is it based on the discourse of race or culture?

This article is principally concerned with an issue, that presently does not appear to have received much attention in academic literature in Finland, namely the perception and experiences of immigrant minority with the police. These issues have only appeared in a limited way in Finnish research findings. Furthermore, an immigrant minority and the majority may have vastly different views on police behaviour, which could easily be attributed to cultural differences. However, few qualitative studies have validated this claim. This is an attempt to explore this issue by seeking to place the respondents’ perception and experiences into context by using their prior experiences, which seem not to have appeared frequently in Finnish research findings, as the basis of my analysis. Thus, this present study assesses this concept in detail and considers whether it is possible to reconceptualise the traditional research approaches to understand police/immigrant minority relations in Finland on the basis of different socio-historical perspectives found in the literatures of police/ethnic minority relations. Specifically, it assessed my interviewees’ views by drawing on an in-depth interview with 53 African immigrants on the basis of their knowledge, perception and experiences in Turku. Finally, this was also an attempt to offer useful knowledge that may be utilised in further research into immigrant minority issues in Finland. The study concludes that, given the cultural and contextual nature of the respondents’ different interpretations of issues in Finland, a formulaic approach for tackling these interpretations is necessary in Finland.