ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the association between ethnic minority status and police legitimacy across 27 European countries. It explores how people's experiences and circumstances may relate to their relationships with the police. Pooling data from the 27 countries, a series of joint models are fit. Estimating the average statistical effects of individual-level variables that are themselves averaged across the 27 countries, the chapter focuses on some of the factors that predict legitimacy judgements of minority group members across multiple jurisdictions. Intimately linked to citizenship, participation in democratic processes can be an important marker of belonging and inclusion in society. Economic insecurity may indicate a subordinate position in vertical structures of social ordering, predicting a particular set of experiences of police and/or a sense that the system is failing. There is plenty of scope for further work to flesh out the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion though which some minority groups become fully incorporated into social and economic systems.
