Description: While scholarship documents persistent tensions between police and racialized communities, far less attention has been paid to how legitimacy perceptions are formed, especially given critiques that dominant frameworks reproduce colourblind assumptions. Although widely debated in Anglo-American scholarship, the predominance of procedural justice approaches has sidelined indirect and intergenerational experiences. Moreover, the lived realities of being positioned as “police property” remain underexamined, and the transferability of Anglo-American findings to European contexts remains unclear. In Flanders in particular, systematic data on these experiences are largely absent. Specifically, this project addresses this by: (1) mapping the lived experiences of racialized minorities with the police through in-depth interviews; (2) examining whether and how intergenerational transmission practices occur in Belgium through multi-generational family interviews; and (3) refining existing legitimacy frameworks by analysing how the interplay between direct encounters and intergenerational processes shapes legitimacy beliefs. Using a qualitative, multi-level design and intersectionally informed critical discourse analysis, the study advances a socially grounded and theoretically nuanced understanding of police legitimacy, positioning intergenerational transmission as a structurally significant yet underexplored factor in European scholarship.
Promotors: Prof. dr. Sofie De Kimpe (VUB), Prof. dr. Ilke Adam (VUB)
Researcher: Julie Van Hoorenbeeck
Funding: FWO
Duration: 2026-2030
Research Line: Policing & Surveillance