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Blog post by Bridget Anderson, University of Bristol, UK and Ioana Vrabiescu, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
Blog post based on Identities' Special Issue, Affective Control: The Emotional Life of (En)forcing Mobility Control in Europe. The European Union presents itself as a global champion of human rights, yet its external borders are marked by hostility, surveillance and death. There is also an intricate network of borders within Europe that marginalizes and excludes migrants and asylum seekers. The vast majority of those excluded at the border and within Europe are people of colour. Two contemporary developments shape the context of our Identities Special Issue, Affective Control: The Emotional Life of (En)forcing Mobility Control in Europe – the global social movement for Black Lives and the COVID-19 pandemic. They have shaped conversations on structural racism and crisis-driven migration management and exposed the intersectionality of emotions and policies. For example, the invocation of national protection measures in the context of COVID-19 allowed European states to enforce border security under the guise of health protection, emphasizing the emerging pattern of governing migration through crisis management.
Emotions in migration studies
The complex connection between emotions and migration studies has been surprisingly understudied and undertheorized. Often regarded as simply side effects of immigration bureaucracies, in fact, emotions play a crucial role in migration control and shaping practices at the borders. This Special Issue explores how police, social workers, legal officials, private companies, NGOs and individuals make sense of the complex emotions experienced while executing immigration checks. It steps into the uncharted territory of how they manage, accommodate or suppress feelings when surveilling, controlling and recording migrants and enforcing deportations. The nuanced emotional landscape exposes how identity checks extend beyond territorial edges, permeating the fabric of European societies. The emotional challenges public servants face, including feelings of complicity and belonging, shape their behaviour and raise ethical questions about the moral values of those implementing migration policies. Exploring ethical emotions In our article, ‘Affective control: the emotional life of (en)forcing mobility control in Europe’, we introduce the concept of ‘ethical emotions’ to elucidate the affective states arising from the tension between personal views, organisational structures and social frameworks. This enables us to attend to the affective dimension within organizational settings, showcasing how emotions are negotiated, exhibited and managed in the workplace. By filling this gap in scholarship, this Special Issue contributes to a nuanced understanding of migration dynamics, highlighting the intricate relationship between emotions, ethics and organizational structures. Specifically, it brings together the fields of migration on the one hand and race and ethnic studies on the other, showing the ways in which ethical emotions support patriarchy and institutional racism. Nationalism, racism and ethical emotions The legitimacy of immigration controls hinges on claims that they are not racist even as they mobilize to protect national values. Negotiating the tension between nationalism on the one hand and not being racist on the other is emotionally challenging. The emotional experiences of those involved in migration control are analyzed through the daily work, how rationality is claimed by erasing emotions, and how the organizational structure and ideology of immigration entities influence emotional responses. The seven articles in the collection explore state bureaucracies and their proxies across different European countries, shedding light on the emotional dimensions of the social life of immigration policies. Conclusion This is a pioneering collection of the emotional dimensions of migration enforcers' work in Europe. It analyzes and interprets the affective dimensions of everyday life within bureaucratic structures, emphasising the ethical emotions experienced in the context of migration controls. This has been a gap in existing scholarship, and by filling it, this Special Issue contributes to a better understanding of migration dynamics, emphasizing the intricate relationship between emotions, ethics and organizational structures.
Read the Introduction to the Identities Special Issue:
Vrabiescu, Ioana and Anderson, Bridget. (2024). Affective control: the emotional life of (en)forcing mobility control in Europe. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2023.2282307. 
Read further in the Identities Special Issue:
Affective Control: The Emotional Life of (En)forcing Mobility Control in Europe. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 31(1). Feeling race: mapping emotions in policing Britain’s borders OPEN ACCESS Ambivalent feelings: ‘filotimo’ in the Greek migration regime Tracing the circulation of emotions in Swiss migration enforcement: organizational dissonances, emotional contradictions and frictions OPEN ACCESS ‘Back in order’: the role of gatekeepers in erecting internal borders in Barcelona The emotional governance of immigration controls OPEN ACCESS Criminalizing black solidarity: Dublin deportations, raids, and racial statecraft in southern Germany OPEN ACCESS ‘Detention is morally exhausting’: melancholia of detention centres in France OPEN ACCESS
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The views and opinions expressed on The Identities Blog are solely those of the original blog post authors, and not of the journal, Taylor & Francis Group or the University of Glasgow.