Emotional and Affective Labor as Tools for Racial Justice in Border Policing

• In Event: The Moral Worlds of Immigration Bureaucrats III

Abstract

This paper explores the potential for mobilizing emotions as a form of resistance within racialized border policing by presenting two comparative case studies: border agents working in the Dutch borderlands and those operating along the US-Mexico border. It aims to examine whether emotional and affective labor can be leveraged to disrupt and reconfigure the unequal processes of migration control, despite the deeply racialized foundations of these systems and the powerful forces of organizational socialization within policing institutions. Drawing from the literature on emotional and affective labor, which highlights how individuals manage empathy, care, and
emotional regulation in professional settings-especially in marginalized workforces-and ethnographic fieldwork in the Netherlands and the United Stattes this paper argues that these concepts have been underutilized in understanding and potentially transforming racialized border policing. Through a review of relevant scholarship and empirical fieldwork with border agents in both the Netherlands and the United States, the paper investigates the emotional dynamics underpinning the enforcement of racialized border policies. In particular, it examines how border agents often suppress empathy, internalize suspicion, and enforce racial hierarchies in their interactions with migrants. By critically engaging with these emotional dimensions, the paper asks whether opportunities exist to disrupt these processes through the reconfiguration of emotional responses and practices. It positions emotional labor not only as a tool for navigating oppressive structures but also as a potential site of resistance and transformation. Ultimately, this approach seeks to contribute to broader efforts in reimagining border policing, suggesting that, despite its historical roots in violence and exclusion, the system may hold potential for internal change. The answer might be that this is impossible.

Authors

• Irene Vega, UC Irvine

• Maartje van der Woude, Professor of Law and Society, Universiteit Leiden