Profiling Inside Out: Surveillance, Resistance, Collaboration 

Building on long-term collaboration with a migrant-led activist project in Italy, ‘Profiling inside out’ opens spaces for reflection, collaboration, and action on racial profiling.

While local organizations are increasingly speaking out about 'racial profiling' (defined as the discriminatory use in police work of grounds such as race, language, religion or nationality origin) in Italy, and ‘celebrity cases’ of racist police action occasionally make international news, there is little recognition of racial profiling in public and policy debate in Italy, and core publications and initiatives on racial profiling in Europe are yet to identify Italy as a fundamental case-study.  

Working with Occhio ai Media, one of the very first groups in Italy tackling racial profiling, and collaborating with longstanding social action projects on policing in the UK including Account, this project addresses racial profiling head-on by collating first-hand experiences of policing, setting up spaces for collective knowledge exchange across national and generational lines, and supporting community action. 

Profiling inside out is supported by a Goldsmiths Strategic Research Fund award. Project work includes:

• Progetto Yaya: racial profiling in Italy – a community designed & led monitoring project on racial profiling in Italy. More infomation on the project.
• International conference on racial profiling in Italy – University of Ferrara, Italy, 28 April 2023. More infomation on the conference. 
• Participatory workshop on racial profiling – Associazione Cittadini del Mondo, Ferrara, Italy, 29 April 2023. More infomation on the workshop. 
• Profiling inside out workshop – Goldsmiths, University of London, UK, 26 May 2023. More information on the workshop.

Dr Alice Elliot

Alice Elliot works in North Africa and Europe on the social and intimate dimensions of migration, economic crises, and political revolutions. She works in Morocco, Tunisia, and Italy on themes of gender, kinship, and intimacy, Islam and theological/political imagination, hope and indigenous conceptions of movement.

For more information please see Alice's staff profile. 
Email: a.elliot (@gold.ac.uk)