Affective Bordering: Race, Deservingness and the Emotional Politics of Migration Control

Affective bordering is a powerful exploration of the emotional politics of borders that demonstrates how racial and national boundaries are secured through the political mobilisation and unequal distribution of affect. Examining key events in the wake of the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ in Germany, it traces how the initial hope and empathy of the early days of the long summer of migration of 2015 could so easily give way to national anger, fear and shamelessness in the years that followed.

In developing the concept of affective bordering, the book challenges the notion that appeals to positive affective forces like compassion necessarily work as a counter to negative emotions such as anger, resentment and fear. Instead, it reveals the racial grammars of deservingness that shape practices of affective bordering and that privilege the affective life of the nation over the concerns, experiences
and demands of migrants. Rather than centring the affective life of national citizens, the book advocates for a paradigm shift towards the affective practices enacted in the cracks of the European border regime, where those most impacted by border violence enact forms of collective agency and resistance.

Combining queer feminist theories of affect with postcolonial border and migration studies, Affective bordering offers a thought-provoking perspective on the reproduction and contestation of borders in today’s world.