Legalism, national ideals and the contested morality of racial profiling in border checks

In this paper, we ask how Finnish border guards present and legitimize profiling practices in border checks at the external Schengen border. Through a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with border guards and observation of their basic training, we demonstrate how a pervasive nationalized ideal of legalism, coupled with the formulation of the ban on ethnic profiling in Finnish legislation, allows for a narrow definition of ethnic profiling and for subsequently presenting the ban as irrelevant to policing in border checks. Legalism historically has a strong role in the Finnish national narrative, which builds on self-perceptions of an egalitarian and ‘good’ welfare state without a colonial past. We demonstrate through this example how legalism gains a central role in the logics of the ‘racial welfare state’ by legitimizing racialized structures of policing and making the multi-faceted realities of human conduct difficult to openly address.