Borders of Affect: Mobilizing Border Imagery as Civic Engagement

Abstract

Abstract This article discusses how aesthetic representations of immigrant detention generate affects and empathy in U.S. college students. It describes a qualitative study that suggests that aesthetic representations provoke affective responses and, to some degree, empathy for migrants, in turn contributing to these students’ civic engagement. These responses speak to the presence of what I term “border affects,” a dimension of affective cartography that is produced by and, in turn, reproduces a cultural imaginary that situates the citizen’s relationship to migration and has the power to both override and promote empathy. These affects suggest that the southern border is not an ontological category that is implicitly known, extant, or eternal but a cognitive phenomenon filtered through experience.