Governing unwanted migration through the work of emotions

This paper explores how contemporary European migration governance uses affect and emotions to govern unwanted migration. By juxtaposing two cases in each end of the migratory trajectory, we aim to show how emotions are used to bring the border alive both inside Europe and far away from the actual geographical border. We aim to show the interlinkages but also differences between the two cases examined: an emotionally charged IOM information campaign targeting the local population in rural Senegal and a series of motivational interviews with rejected asylum seekers in Denmark. In both cases emotions are actively used to draw morally charged spatial geographies of hope and despair to impact and direct the unwanted migrant subject im(mobility). Furthermore, we also want to tease out the ambivalent contested encounter between these interventions and the people they target. As such, we analytically bridge cases that in the academic literature are often dealt with as separate phenomena to tell a more nuanced story of the interlinkages between EU border externalization and internalization practises that form part of EUs contemporary European border governance logics.