Subtle silencing. Police attendance, citizenship and justice in cases of domestic violence victims

Abstract

The legitimacy of police action depends on the practical authority and the emotional belief that the police may ultimately open a window of opportunities for the recognition of a citizen right: the right to security. Through ethnographic explorations and interviews conducted in police stations in Portugal, this essay aims to analyse the moral and emotional grammars governing the practice of police action in relation to domestic violence victims. I use the theoretical and methodological notion of areas of intersubjective ambiguity. I argue that in order to define policing what police officers do is as crucial as what they choose not to.