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

Dr Billy Holzberg, Lecturer/Assistant Professor, Kings College London

Dr Billy Holzberg will talk about his BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize 2025 winning book Affective bordering: Race, deservingness and the emotional politics of migration control.

This book conceptualises the affective dimension of bordering practices by uncovering how emotions like anger, fear and hope work to reproduce and contest racialised distinctions between citizen and migrant in political and media discourse. It examines key events in the wake of the 'refugee crisis' in Germany, and 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. The book challenges the assumption that positive emotions like compassion necessarily work as a counter to negative emotions like anger or fear and 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.

• This is an in person event and registration is essential.
• This event is free and open to the university staff and students .
• Please note, this event is not being recorded.