From institutionalized othering to disruptive collaboration. A postcolonial analysis of the police force in Greenland

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-01-2018-0018
• Published date: 05 October 2019
• Date: 05 October 2019
• Pages: 993-1013
• Subject Matter: Hr & organizational behaviour,Employment law
• Author: Lotte Holck,Sara Louise Muhr

From institutionalized othering to

disruptive collaboration

A postcolonial analysis of the police

force in Greenland

Lotte Holck and Sara Louise Muhr

Department of Organisation, Copenhagen Business School,

Frederiksberg, Denmark

Abstract

Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the construction and everyday maintenance of

racialized psychological borders in the Greenlandic Police Force reproduce a postcolonial hierarchy of

knowledge, where Danish knowledge and perceptions of professionalism are constructed as superior to

Greenlandic knowledge and perceptions of professionalism.

Design/methodology/approach –The paper is based on an ethnographic study comprising 5 days of

observation of a training course for Danish police officers going to Greenland on summer assistance, 13 days

of observation of police work in Greenland, 2 days of participatory observation of a leadership development

seminar in Greenland, 26 interviews conducted in Denmark and Greenland with both Danish and Greenlandic

officers and interventions in Denmark and Greenland.

Findings –The racialized borders create strong perceptions of “us”and “them”, which are maintained and

reinforced through everyday work practices. The borders have damaging effects on the way police officers

collaborate in Greenland and as the borders are maintained through (often implicit) everyday micro-

processes, management has difficulty dealing with it. However, the way the racialized borders became visible

through this research project created an awareness of –and sparked conversation about –the colonial

stereotypes that have constructed and reinforce the borders. This awareness opens up possibilities of

collaborative disruption of those borders.

Research limitations/implications –The paper shows how racialized borders limit the way

professionalism is understood in the Greenlandic Police Force. But it also shows that, because these

borders are socially constructed, they can be contested. Making the implicit everyday discrimination explicit

through vignettes, for example, offers the chance to contest and disrupt the colonial hierarchy otherwise

deeply embedded in the work practices of the police force.

Originality/value –Thanks to unique access to Greenland’s police force, this paper offers exclusive in-depth

insights into current processes of racialization and colonialization in a contemporary colonial relationship.

Keywords Colonialism, Professionalism, Racialization, Multicultural collaboration, Police work

Paper type Research paper

Having been singled out in the line, at the borders, we become defensive; we assume a defensive

posture, as we “wait”forthe line of racism, to take our rights of passageaway. (Ahmed, 2007, p. 163)

Introduction

Within equality, diversity and the inclusion literature, the notion of borders has long been

used to describe how boundaries and limits are drawn between different cultures, including

national cultures (e.g. Ng and Bloemraad, 2015; Özbilgin et al., 2015). Many of these studies

draw on critical race theory and postcolonial theory to show how such borders are racialized

(e.g. Al Ariss et al., 2014; Goh, 2015; Leopold and Bell, 2017; Liu and Pechenkina, 2016;

Paradies et al., 2013), that is how race is not just the product of borders, but how racialization

structures the very way in which borders operate and define people’s identities (e.g. Ahmed,

2007). Such racialization happens based on years of common colonial history, which, despite

Received 31 January 2018

Revised 1 June 2018

1 March 2019

Accepted 6 August 2019

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

www.emeraldinsight.com/2040-7149.htm

This paper is a part of the research project “Leading Cultural Diversity Ethically”financed by the

Ragnar Söderberg foundation (www.ragnarsoderbergsstiftelse.se).

Institutionalized

othering to

disruptive

collaboration

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

An International Journal Vol. 41

No. 7, 2022

pp. 993-1013

© Emerald Publishing Limited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/EDI-01-2018-0018

993

the fact that colonialism is said to have officially ended in most parts of the world, is still

exercised as a form of neocolonialism through the superiority of “Western”[1] ideology in,

for example, management discourse (Banerjee and Linstead, 2001; Jack et al., 2011;

Özkazanc-Pan, 2008), and through the continued Western (organizational) control of foreign

territory (e.g. Lammers, 2003) or the (financial) dependency on former colonizers (Ashley,

2016; Srinivas, 2012). In other words, colonization may no longer be exercised strictly

through expanding physical borders of colonial empires, but it is certainly exercised

through the continued construction and reinforcement of psychological borders of the mind,

which influence the identity and self-understanding of both ( former) colonizer and ( former)

colonized (Hall, 1996; McLeod, 2000).

Racialization in this way produces psychological borders that are socially constructed

through the everyday reiteration of race. As Ahmed (2004) argues, race is performative.

Race is constructed –and constructs the world –while being re-enacted every single day

and everywhere. When race is performative, it results in strong and often unconscious

perceptions of racialized us–them divisions that are repeated everyday, and that permeate

the workplace through, and are reproduced by, workplace encounters. However, as we

argue in this paper, because racialized borders are socially constructed, these borders can

also be contested, challenged and renegotiated in everyday work and actively encouraged

by organizations and employers. Racialized borders are, therefore, constantly (re)produced

and reinforced, but also challenged, in daily interaction.

This paper investigates the construction of racialized borders through an ethnographic

study of the Greenlandic Police Force. Greenland (Kalaallit Nunaat) is officially classified as

an autonomous constituent country within the Kingdom of Denmark. However, the colonial

history and current relationship to Denmark is complex. Even though there were early

Viking settlements in Greenland, the year 1721 officially marks the beginning of

Greenland’s colonial era when the missionary Hans Egede founded a trading company and a

Lutheran mission near present-day Nuuk. Although Denmark granted home rule to

Greenland in 1979, and in 2008 Greenlanders voted in favour of the Self-Government Act

(which transferred more power from the Danish government to the local Greenlandic

government), many aspects of governance, including the judicial system and policing,

remain a Danish responsibility. Because of the country’s long and close ties to Denmark,

most Greenlanders are a mix of predominantly Inuit and North European backgrounds.

While the country has two official languages –Greenlandic and Danish –some speak only

Danish, some speak only Greenlandic (in various dialects) and some are bilingual. This

racial and linguistic mix of the population, combined with (partially) continued colonial rule,

means that racialization happens along both visual bodily and linguistic differences.

Moreover, as this racialization happens in the context of a still very painful and

politically sensitive colonial history, it is tied to a noticeable hierarchy of culture and

knowledge where Western (i.e. Danish) knowledge and perceptions of professionalism are

constructed by many (particularly, but not only, the Danes) as superior in relation to local

(i.e. Greenlandic) knowledge and perceptions of professionalism. This influences the way

police officers perceive each other’s professionalism, skills and competencies and thus

influences the Danish–Greenlandic police collaboration. But, as we will argue, if these

borders are acknowledged, made visible and discussed, they might be challenged and

disrupted. The paper will, therefore, argue that micro-processes, which contest, challenge

and renegotiate racialized borders, are important, as they offer new openings for mutual and

respectful processes of collaboration.

A colonial hierarchy of work relations

Several organizational scholars have by now successfully demonstrated how a Eurocentric

or Americanized management discourse based on colonial stereotypes is dominating

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