Join us for the launch of Billy Holzberg’s Affective Bordering: Race, Deservingness and the Emotional Politics of Migration Control. This new book examines how affect and emotions work to secure and contest contemporary border regimes.

In times of heightened global displacement and intensified nationalisms, the question of borders has moved to the centre of social and political analysis. What often remains unacknowledged in these theorisations, however, is that bordering is not merely a political, economic or symbolic practice; it is also an affective one that operates at the level of emotion and attachment. 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.

The evening will begin with a short presentation by the author, Dr Billy Holzberg, introducing the book’s exploration of how affect and emotions work as a site of border making. Following this, a panel discussion will reflect on the book’s key themes and their broader implications, offering an opportunity for rich dialogue and debate on the connection between affect, borders and racism.

The panel includes:

• Dr Yener Bayramoğlu, Lecturer of Sociology, University of York

• Dr Abeera Khan, Lecturer in Gender and Sexuality, SOAS

• Dr Helidah Ogude-Chambert, Departmental Lecturer in Migration and Development, Oxford University

The discussion will be chaired by Prof Yasmin Gunaratnam (Professor of Social Justice, King’s College London). The event will feature an open Q&A session and conclude with a wine reception, providing a space for informal conversations and connections. Join us for an engaging discussion and a celebration of this important contribution to critical studies on affect, borders, and migration.

For more about the book, visit Manchester University Press. We look forward to seeing you there!

About the speakers:

Dr Billy Holzberg is Lecturer in Social Justice at the Centre for Public Policy Research at King’s College London. He is an interdisciplinary scholar of social justice with a focus on the intersections of sexuality, race, and migration. Blending transnational queer and feminist theory, affect theory, and critical migration studies, his work explores the affective and sexual dynamics that shape growing nationalisms and intensified border regimes.

Dr Yener Bayramoğlu is Lecturer of Sociology in the Department of Sociology at the University of York. He is a media sociologist, and an ethnographer whose current research explores the role of digital media in everyday practices of belonging. He explores how digital media technologies turn into self-empowering tools for migrants, refugees and LGBTIQ+ people, as well as how social media accelerates the circulation of racism, antisemitism and disinformation.

Dr Abeera Khan is Lecturer of Gender and Sexuality at the Centre for Gender Studies at SOAS, University of London. She is a writer and educator whose knowledge production and pedagogy is concerned with the interrelatedness between empire, gender, race and sexuality. Her work provides critical interventions in queer of color critique, particularly regarding the category of ‘queer Muslim’.

Dr Helidah Ogude-Chambert is Departmental Lecturer in Migration and Development at the Oxford Department of International Development. Her interdisciplinary scholarship is situated within migration/mobilities studies, decolonial feminist thought, discourse and affect studies, and race-critical theories. She uses critical theories, mixed methods, and historical ways of thinking to understand how political elites manipulate emotions and public discourse in ways that normalize migrant precarity and justify state practices of cruelty and racialised expulsion. She is currently working on her book project titled Strange Fish: The UK Government and Media’s Industrialization of Black Death at Sea.