Racism and "dual allegiance": The ordeal of police officers of Moroccan origin in Brussels

Faced with the increasing number of deaths of citizens during interventions, often involving people of foreign origin, researchers Maïté Maskens and Nawal Bensaïd conducted an unprecedented field investigation. According to Le Soir, they shared the daily life of several brigades in the Belgian capital between 2023 and 2025. This vast work shows the institution’s inability to manage the omnipresent diversity in the metropolis.

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While agents from immigration backgrounds are well represented at the lower levels, a hierarchical blockage systematically excludes them from management positions. To this glass ceiling is added a powerful distrust of their colleagues. The report points to constant suspicions of "dual allegiance": these civil servants are often perceived as too lenient with their community, which sometimes forces them to display "excessive rigor" to prove their impartiality.

The study also highlights an ordinary racism massively camouflaged under the veneer of joking. Accepting these stigmatizing jokes is a real tacit integration rite, under penalty of immediate marginalization. This dynamic imposes a brutal asymmetry within the teams since, as the authors point out, "the white man is never the object of mockery."

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Even more alarmingly, the observation reveals a "temptation of racism" that is totally assumed by certain agents, whose cognitive biases end up mechanically associating delinquency and origins. To reverse this trend, the researchers are calling for firm sanctions and appropriate training, believing that the current universalist policies to fight discrimination remain much "very timid."