Affective Bordering

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 ‘refugee crisis’ in Germany, it traces how the initial hope and empathy of the long summer of migration of 2015 gave way to national anger, fear and shamelessness in the years following. Challenging the assumption that positive emotions like compassion necessarily work as a counter to negative emotions like anger or fear, the book reveals the racial grammars of deservingness that shape border governance today. Combining queer feminist theories of affect with postcolonial border and migration studies, Affective bordering offers a thought-provoking perspective on borders in today's world.