Do migrants trust the police less? Evidence from two studies in Great Britain and Australia

It is commonly assumed that immigrants in countries such as the UK will evince lower levels of trust in the police: and there often appear good reasons for such an assumption. Migrant communities have been thought ‘difficult to police’; minority groups frequently experience problematic relationships with legal authorities; migrants from the global south to the global north, or from eastern to western Europe, may have been brought up in countries with extremely corrupt and/or repressive police regimes and have brought this experience with them to their new home. The literature on trust would also suggest that migrants will find it harder, on average, to trust police, because they may lack sufficient information to make trust judgements or because they may not feel they share a ‘moral community’ with police. Yet there has been little empirical investigation into this issue. In this paper data from the UK and Spain are used to explore the relationship between immigration and trust in the police. Analysis suggests that in both countries trust is actually higher among immigrants than among the native born population, although there is important variation by date of first arrival. Some, but not all, of this variation can be explained by the accrual of negative experiences of policing. The paper concludes with some reflection on the implications for theoretical understandings of the nature of trust in the police.