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The Fine Art of Camouflage: Migrant-Drug Distributors Negotiating Police Interactions in Switzerland

Author

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  • Louis Vuilleumier

Abstract

Bogged down in exploitative jobs or unemployment, some migrants mitigate their precarious condition and forced idleness through involvement in petty crime, including low-level drug distribution. This article explores the daily lives of migrants who navigate asymmetrical interactions and relationships with police in ways that avoid detection of their illicit activities. Drawing from extensive ethnographic fieldwork and 18 biographical interviews with sub-Saharan male migrants active in low-level drug retail, I scrutinize how migrants negotiate the rules that are supposed to govern them. I am particularly interested in the ways in which migrants negotiate their legal status with the police, whose view of them is often heavily influenced by race. I demonstrate that relationships between police officers and migrants can be influenced by migrants’ deliberate mimicry of local norms, calculated conformity with informal policing practices, and influence over police officers’ moral judgment of whether they are deserving of police’s discretionary power to look the other way.

Suggested Citation

  • Louis Vuilleumier, 2023. "The Fine Art of Camouflage: Migrant-Drug Distributors Negotiating Police Interactions in Switzerland," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 709(1), pages 165-183, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:anname:v:709:y:2023:i:1:p:165-183
    DOI: 10.1177/00027162241248998
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Louis Vuilleumier, 2021. "Lost in Transition to Adulthood? Illegalized Male Migrants Navigating Temporal Dispossession," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-14, July.
    2. Steven D. Levitt & Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, 2000. "An Economic Analysis of a Drug-Selling Gang's Finances," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 115(3), pages 755-789.
    3. Waverly Duck, 2017. "The Complex Dynamics of Trust and Legitimacy: Understanding Interactions between the Police and Poor Black Neighborhood Residents," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 673(1), pages 132-149, September.
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    1. Dostin Mulopo Lakika, 2023. "Between Informality and (Il)legality: Congolese Migrants’ Survival Mechanisms in South Africa," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 709(1), pages 202-217, September.

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