This chapter discusses the emotional dynamics of migration in two main areas: migration experience and politics of migration. The first section considers migration experiences at the individual, family and community levels. It approaches emotion work in the context of changing life circumstances, as migrants moved and cultivated real and imagined connections with the home they left behind and the home they built in new places. Understandings of emotions and management of feelings adapted as individuals and families changed over time, as did connections between emotions and constructions of self in motion. Mobility brought these worlds together, resulting in a range of experiences characterised by tension and conflict, but also by negotiation and accommodation. The second section takes the analysis to the societal level to focus on politics and power. It examines how migration has been studied in places of destination within a framework that uses emotional language to mobilise diverse audiences (readers, voters, fellow-citizens). It explores restriction, scapegoating and xenophobia to illustrate the politics of migration, but also ways in which emotions were used in a positive way to aid or welcome specific populations in terms of gender, age or culture. Our objective is to identify emotional expressions associated with significant moments in the process of migration from individual, familial and communal perspectives that have received substantial scholarly attention. Examples focus mainly on experiences connected to historical and contemporary labour migrations, with some references to migration originating in contexts of socio-political conflict and violence that have resulted in less free migrations or forced displacements.

Borges, Marcelo J., and Maria Bjerg. Emotions and Migration. In The Routledge History of Emotions in the Modern World,
edited by Katie Barclay and Peter N. Stearns, 495-511. New York: Routledge, 2023.

Marcelo Borges is a professor of History at Dickinson College.

For more information on the published version, visit Routledge's Website. https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-History-of-Emotions-in-the-Modern-World/Barclay-Stearns/p/book/9780367902438

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