Development of the concept of “political profiling”: Citizenship and police repression of protest in Quebec

Abstract

Francis Dupuis-Déri argues that police abuse includes the profiling and repression of citizens based on their political perspectives. This is what he calls “political profiling.” Such targeted police abuse defines the boundaries of citizens’ acceptable political perspectives, even in established democracies. Using a case study of Quebec (Canada), this chapter examines how the concept of political profiling developed in the public sphere in the 2000s. It traces the relations between the police forces and social movements in the 2000s, assesses the main academic studies discussing relations between the police and social movements in Canada and Quebec, explains the history of the emergence of different concepts of profiling (criminal, racial, social, political), and captures the level of dissemination of the term “political profiling” today.