The recent increase in the numbers of refugees and asylum seekers has made it obvious that Europe is changing rapidly, accelerating its conflict-ridden transformation into linguistically and ethnically more heterogeneous societies. The police are arguably one of the most crucial – and most discussed – state organisations that interact with an increasingly diverse clientele often labelled simply ‘migrants’. How to deal with differences based on culture, ethnicity and race – all highly problematic terms – has become a central issue of policing in the last decade. In this book, we look at everyday, often mundane, interactions between police officers and migrantised actors in European countries and explore how both sides deal with perceived differences. Many, if not most, anthropologists currently position themselves, in the field and in writing, with the victims of the police. In contrast, our contributors study the practices, discourses and beliefs of actors whom anthropologists do not as easily sympathise with – police officers. We believe that such an epistemological positioning, while often ethically challenging, is unavoidable for a nuanced understanding of policing. By adopting an ethnographic and multi-perspective approach, the contributors to this book study the possible course of action, perspectives and rationalities of both sides in these encounters. Our book presents empirically grounded contributions from various European countries, jointly developing a field of study and generating robust concepts in a highly politicised field, bringing together anthropology, criminology, history, sociology and linguistics.