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Protecting the self Against Shame and Humiliation: Unwanted Migrants’ Emotional Careers

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Die Ambivalenz der Gefühle

Abstract

A growing interest in the emotions of migration has accompanied the expansion of the academic field of emotion studies and the sociology of emotions. Focus has been on place-oriented emotional attachments (to homelands and ‘host lands’) of migrants, and on interactions between migrants and locals; on the emotion work of labour migrants with legal, semi-legal or illegal status. Scholars have discussed for instance migration and aspects of humiliation in the integration process or experiences of humiliation through the media representation of a shamed nation; the national politics of compassion and repression; the assumed connection between economic migration and happiness; the sense of discomfort and the erosion of trust in migrants experiencing racism; emotional flows and nodes in the social construction of diaspora; or the meaning of resilience to migrants in transition.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.vr.se/etik.4.3840dc7d108b8d5ad5280004294.html, Accessed 2 December 2014

  2. 2.

    According to the Italian Interior Ministry in 2009 the overwhelming amount of boat migrants to Lampedusa came from Eritrea or Somalia, with an increase of almost 150 % between 2007 and 2008. See www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=29651&Cr=boat+people&Cr1=, Accessed 19 February 2009

  3. 3.

    In particular the centre in Lampedusa has been critiqued for being over-crowded. In January 2009 about 1400 persons stayed in the centre, where there are places for 800 Loewe, P. (2009) ‘Flyktingar på Italiensk ö bröt sig ut’, 24 Dagens Nyheter, January 2009.

  4. 4.

    Asylum seekers could also choose to live outside of organized accommodation, e.g. with family or friends already in Sweden, but this option entailed withdrawal of parts of the economic support (Andersson 2010).

  5. 5.

    Sistema di protezione per richiedenti asilo e rifugiati.

  6. 6.

    www.lanstyrelsen.se, accessed 13 April 2010

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks Erik Andersson and Jochen Kleres for comments on earlier drafts of this chapter.

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  1. Göteborg, Schweden

    Åsa Wettergren

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  1. Åsa Wettergren
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Correspondence to Åsa Wettergren .

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  1. Universität Göteborg, Göteborg, Sweden

    Jochen Kleres

  2. Universität Kassel, Kassel, Germany

    Yvonne Albrecht

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Wettergren, Å. (2015). Protecting the self Against Shame and Humiliation: Unwanted Migrants’ Emotional Careers. In: Kleres, J., Albrecht, Y. (eds) Die Ambivalenz der Gefühle. Springer VS, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-01654-8_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-01654-8_12

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