To be a part of this online event, please email Dr Maren Elfert to receive the link.

Affect and emotion have become of evermore importance for understanding contemporary European migration and border politics.

In this CPPR lunchtime seminar, Dr Billy Holzberg discusses the politics of ‘affective bordering’ through the case study of hope. (Re)turning to the so called ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015 in Germany, he compares the mobilisation of hope in Angela Merkel’s ‘Wir schaffen das’ speeches with the migrant cross-border March of Hope.

Billy’s analysis highlights the importance of marginalised affective politics in the context of the European border regime shaped by the legacies of colonialism and racial capitalism. While Merkel’s rhetoric and policies of humanitarian securitisation ultimately redistribute hope away from migrants and towards a German nation imagined to be in need of protection from them, cross-border marches reveal affective infrastructures of care and hospitality that extend beyond the humanitarian border enacted by the state.

About the speaker

Dr Billy Holzberg is Lecturer in Social Justice at King’s College London. Interested in the sexual, intimate and psychic life of power, his current research examines what role affect and emotion play in reproducing and contesting the European border regime.

He holds a PhD from LSE’s Department of Gender Studies and has been a post-doctoral fellow at LSE’s Sociology Department and a visiting scholar at Columbia University’s Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality.

To be a part of this online event, please email Dr Maren Elfert to receive the link.