Borrelli, Lisa Marie

Tracing the circulation of emotions in Swiss migration enforcement: organizational dissonances, emotional contradictions and frictions
2024

Migration enforcement is an emotional field displaying conflicting positions and tensions between bureaucrats and migrants, and within and between organizations. This article conducts an in-depth analysis of emotions within organizational encounters and the role that emotions play between organizations and in the outcome of cases. It examines how emotions directed towards other agencies shape an organizational work ethos and professional standing. Using ethnographic data collected in Swiss migration offices, social services offices and legal counselling offices, this article discloses how such actors ‘feel’ each other and therefore indirectly show how they ‘feel’ the ‘state’ and its policies regarding the creation of migrant subjects and their integration and belonging. While social workers and legal advisors often understand migration policies as restrictive towards migrant individuals, migration officials find themselves in the role of the state defender. Studying their emotions thus facilitates an analysis of the discrepancies between different agencies in the realm of migration administration and of their emotional dissonance, which characterize the migration regime.