Precarious Borders: Frames of Migration and the Potentiality of Affect

In this paper, I theorize how the framing of migrants as threats to Western (European) life has increased the precarity of refugees and migrants and exacerbated right-wing politics of fear and hate, also drastically affecting non-white Europeans. To this end, I draw on Judith Butler's theory of precariousness. Her rich theory helps to understand and critique the interacting affective processes at play. Yet, when it comes to emancipatory politics, there is a need to critically assess the centrality of equal grievability. It is imperative to attend to historical and structural specificities, as the (European) migration context illustrates. Taking the political potentiality of the sensitivity of the subject, as well as the collectivity, seriously, I finally make the case for mobilizing productive affective dispositions to support radical social change.