Maria Jung, Carolyn Greene and Jane Sprott

 When compared to studies examining racialized people’s perceptions of police in North America, studies of immigrants’ views of police are quite rare and they often conflate the views of immigrants with those of racialized people. Yet, we know racialized people are not necessarily immigrants and immigrants are not necessarily racialized. Research that distinguishes immigrant status from racialized status has found important differences based on immigrant vs. native-born status, country of origin, and length of settlement. This research builds on these findings by specifically considering the relative influence of universal and immigrant-specific factors that may shape within-group views of police. Universal factors refer to factors that apply to a country’s population more generally whereas immigrant-specific factors refer to those that are specific to immigrant experience. Universal factors may include measures such as race/ethnicity, age, perceptions of neighbourhood crime, experiences of victimization, discrimination, fear of crime, police contact, etc. Immigrant-specific factors may include measures such as country of origin, experiences in the country of origin, length of settlement, etc. Using the 2014 General Social Survey, variations in views of police among South Asians – Canada’s largest racialized group – are explored by whether they were born in Canada, immigrated recently, or had long settled within Canada. Our findings suggest that traditional measures – or the universal factors– used to assess perceptions of police may not explain immigrants’ views in the same way that they do for native-born individuals, and that immigrants’ views of police may be shaped in ways that are, as of yet, unaccounted for in the literature. Above and beyond a variety of universal factors which shape views, recent and settled immigrants from flawed regimes held significantly more positive views of police than those who were born in Canada. Moreover, a greater number of the universal factors are predictive of the views of South Asians born in Canada compared to recently immigrated and settled South Asians. In other words, the set of variables typically used to understand people’s views of police are more relevant for those who are native-born compared to immigrant groups. Our findings suggest that we may not be asking the “right” questions when examining immigrants’ views of police. Perhaps then, researchers might consider asking different kinds of questions around immigrant experiences of acculturation and adaptation, holding multiple marginalized statuses, religious identity, and/or inter/intracultural social relationships.