Affective Politics of Boundary-making and Belonging: Affective Negotiations and Resistant Agency in Integration Promotion
Type
conference paper
Date Issued
2026-08-28
Author(s)
Abstract
In Switzerland, public authorities encourage volunteer work by migrantised people. Despite narratives of cohesion, equality and inclusion, integration policies often produce exclusionary structures. Thus, migrantised volunteers who themselves experience racialised and gendered boundary-making, are encouraged to become providers of care and support. Within such arrangements, care practices are inherently contradictory and need to be affectively negotiated. This paper examines how such arrangements generate ambivalent affective dynamics between boundary-making and belonging.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Swiss integration promotion, I analyse the affective dynamics shaping relationships between migrantised volunteers, integration professionals, and refugees. I show how integration regimes generate affective orientations that oscillate between insecurity, obligation, care, and belonging. Insecurities and obligations foster unease, grief, and anger among marginalised individuals. At the same time, however, affective solidarity and emotion work oriented towards care and belonging function as resources for reclaiming resistant agency in this context of vulnerability.
I argue that, while democratically legitimised integration policies produce many exclusionary affects, migrantised actors still mobilise affects as tools of their resistant agency. By foregrounding affective solidarity and emotion work by migrantised individuals, this paper contributes to debates on how affects and emotions sustain collective action, negotiate boundaries, and enable forms of belonging and participation despite exclusionary infrastructures.
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Swiss integration promotion, I analyse the affective dynamics shaping relationships between migrantised volunteers, integration professionals, and refugees. I show how integration regimes generate affective orientations that oscillate between insecurity, obligation, care, and belonging. Insecurities and obligations foster unease, grief, and anger among marginalised individuals. At the same time, however, affective solidarity and emotion work oriented towards care and belonging function as resources for reclaiming resistant agency in this context of vulnerability.
I argue that, while democratically legitimised integration policies produce many exclusionary affects, migrantised actors still mobilise affects as tools of their resistant agency. By foregrounding affective solidarity and emotion work by migrantised individuals, this paper contributes to debates on how affects and emotions sustain collective action, negotiate boundaries, and enable forms of belonging and participation despite exclusionary infrastructures.
Funding(s)
Mobi.Doc grant by Research Committee of the University of St.Gallen
Language
English
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
Yes
Event Title
European Sociological Association Conference (ESA)
Event Location
Warsaw, Poland
Event Date
August 25 - 28 2026
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Contact Email Address
isabelle.albisser@unisg.ch