An Ethnographic Study of Identity Work in Policing

Abstract

Policing around the world has been subject to major impetus towards transformation with implications for the ways in which police officers define, refine, and substantiate their work identities. This research addresses how police officers ‘do’ identity in organisational contexts by studying individuals’ identity beliefs and formation in the context of a recent decision to recruit and deploy women to front-line policing, previously a male preserve in the UAE. An ethnographic case study approach is employed using Abu Dhabi Police College as the focal case to explore the lived experiences of police officers doing identity work in a change context. Ethnographic accounts based on interview and observational data are drawn from a cohort of male and female cadets in their first year of study and from newly graduated police officers. The findings suggest that identity exists both within the social institutional context and within the individual realities bound in personal aspects of affective, cognitive and behaviours. The most dominant mode of identity work observed is in discursive practice drawing on different social, organisational, and personal narratives. Identities of self are bound in collective beliefs concerning the role of men and women in society that establish boundaries for defining gender-based views of self in policing. These are the source of social and personal tension in both male and female cadets which establishes the focus for identity construction. This study makes a contribution by providing new insights about identity work, a topic about which there is limited understanding. Furthermore, new insights are provided of female cadets’ construction of identities that go beyond the traditional gendered roles identified by male police officers towards self-categorisation in a wider range of professional roles, and the tactics used by female police cadets to address and manage the inherent tensions in conforming to cultural and masculine police precepts of gender roles.