Immigrant mafia or local lads on the binge? The construction of (un)trustworthiness in Swedish district courts

In this article we address the constructionof familiarity and distance in Swedish district courtcases, involving young men with both immigrantand Swedish backgrounds. Through ethnographicobservations of 40 trials related to street crimes, wehave found different qualities of social interaction that distinguish immigrant background and Swed-ish background cases from each other. These distinc-tions, disfavouring young men with immigrant back-ground, are built up through a series of practices and events that follow taken-for-granted behaviourand details in interaction, such as speech, laughter,choice of words to describe the accused and trust inSwedish witnesses. In conclusion, we argue for thenecessity of detailed, close-up studies of courtroom action and interaction to understand statistical find-ings of discrimination and disfavouring of certain groups of immigrants in court and elsewhere in thejudicial process. The research informing the article is also funded by Concurrences Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial studies at Linnaeus University [LNU 2014/7-5.1] "Förhandlingar i rätten", RJP12-0405:1 LNUC Concurrences