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Emotions in the Crisis: Mobilising for Refugees in Germany and Sweden

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Book cover Solidarity Mobilizations in the ‘Refugee Crisis’

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology ((PSEPS))

Abstract

This chapter analyses the role of emotions in the mobilisations of support for refugees in Germany and Sweden. While it charts the field of pertinent forms of mobilisations in both countries, the analysis focuses on the predominant form of mobilisation during the so-called refugee crisis—welcome initiatives. In both countries, compassion has been a formative emotion for welcome initiatives. Compassion, in turn, can be traced in the discursive construction of the ‘refugee crisis’ and the first-hand experience of it on the ground. A second formative context for some of the emotional bases of welcome initiatives can be found in nationalism, which welcome discourse has been tangled up with. Differences in the emotional regime of nationalism also explain some of the differences between the Swedish and German mobilisations. In the former, there was also a current of greater politicisation and feelings of political solidarity.

I would like to thank Margit Mayer for a stimulating conversation and for sharing with me the draft of an article (Mayer 2017). This also brought some of the available literature to my attention.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Hochschild (1979, p. 567) argues that framing rules and feeling rules mutually imply each other.

  2. 2.

    The discourse of humanitarianism is explicitly depoliticising and has compassion as one of its key feeling rules (Kleres 2015b).

  3. 3.

    In my use of the term ‘emotional climate’, I lean on Jack Barbalet (1998) but employ the term in a more discursive way than he does. Emotional climates are thus established by how widely shared discourses produce emotions narratively (cf. Kleres 2011).

  4. 4.

    Fears differed between the two countries, however. In Germany, this was a fear of national coherence under threat by too many racialised others. This is symbolised by the moral panic precipitated by the New Year’s Eve sexual assaults in 2015/2016 in Cologne. In Sweden, this was the fear of a system breakdown, that is, the notion that the institutions of the Swedish welfare state—a pillar of Swedish nationalism (Ruth 1984; Trägårdh 2002, 2016)—would quite possibly collapse.

  5. 5.

    Cited and translated from: https://www.bundesregierung.de/Content/DE/Mitschrift/Pressekonferenzen/2015/08/2015-08-31-pk-merkel.html (accessed 4 September 2017).

  6. 6.

    Landesamt für Gesundheit und Soziales—Regional Office for Health and Social Affairs.

  7. 7.

    For a scholarly articulation of this nationalism, see, for example, Kronenberg (2016). In line with research on nationalism and emotion, I understand nationalism as being inextricably emotional rather than a mere ideology (e.g. Berezin 2001, 2002; Billig 1995; Ismer et al. 2015; Scheff 1994). This is also based in the argument about blurring the distinction between reason and emotion sketched out in the methods section of this chapter.

  8. 8.

    Shame and pride are the emotional apprehensions of social devaluation vs. valuation (e.g. Simmel 1992; Scheff 1988; Katz 1999).

  9. 9.

    The decision of the government that all refugees need to register in Malmö, the point of entry for many given the city’s link with Denmark over the Öresund Bridge, had a demobilising effect, too. Effectively, it meant that many refugees arrived at train stations in other cities.

  10. 10.

    This must be balanced against a total population of less than ten million.

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  1. Institute for Protest and Movement Research, Berlin, Germany

    Jochen Kleres

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  1. Scuola Normale Superiore, Istituto di Scienza Umane E Sociali, Florence, Italy

    Donatella della Porta

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Kleres, J. (2018). Emotions in the Crisis: Mobilising for Refugees in Germany and Sweden. In: della Porta, D. (eds) Solidarity Mobilizations in the ‘Refugee Crisis’. Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71752-4_8

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