Sacrifice spirit and police work-family conflict among rank-and-file officers in China

ABSTRACT

Using data collected from 36 interviews with the police and their family members, the first author’s insider perspective as a former police officer and the second author’s lived experience of growing up in a police family, as well as media reports, this paper explores how work-family conflict plays out among rank-and-file police officers in China. We find that, like their counterparts elsewhere, the Chinese rank-and-file officers have been troubled by three dimensions of work-family conflict touching on professional habits, overtime work and working pressure. We argue that while the work-family conflict inflicted by professional encroachment may be common for police officers in all jurisdictions, the time-based and strain-based conflicts share unique political roots of self-sacrifice spirit advocated by the Chinese party-state. This study is not only one of the very first empirical studies on the work-family conflict among police officers in China but it also contributes to comparative policing studies by highlighting how politics in a particular country may affect the conflict.

KEYWORDS:

• Work-family conflict
• Police
• Sacrifice
• Politics
• China

Acknowledgement

We are very grateful to Paul Rock and members of the Criminology Weekly Meeting at the Department of Sociology, University of Macau, for their constructive suggestions on earlier drafts of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 110 is number for the police emergency hotline in Chiha.

2 Chinese New Year is the most important festival in China during which family reunion is a custom.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by Macau Higher Education Fund (HSS-UMAC-2020-06 & HSS-UMAC-2021-04) and Multiple Year Research Grant (MYRG2022-00199-FSS) from University of Macau.