The focus on the everyday in this Special Issue reveals different kinds of emotional practices, their political effects and their political contestation within both micro- and macro-politics in international relations. The articles in this Special Issue address the everyday negotiation of emotions, shifting between the reproduction of hegemonic structures of feelings and emancipation from them. In other words, the everyday politics of emotions allows an exploration of who gets to express emotions, what emotions are perceived as (il)legitimate or (un)desirable, how emotions are circulated and under what circumstances. Consequently, we identify two thematic strands which emerge as central to an interrogation of ‘everyday’ emotions in international relations and which run through each of the contributions: first, an exploration of the relationship between individual and collective emotions and, second, a focus on the role of embodiment within emotions research and its relationship with the dynamics and structures of power.

Refugee camps and reception and identification centres (RICs) have long been imagined as ‘the best’ or ‘most suitable’ places for displaced people by states and border management authorities. In contrast, informal housing often provided by activist groups, is frequently framed as a part of the urban ‘badlands’. Drawing on research carried out between 2015 and 2019 in key spaces in Greece and Serbia along the so‐called ‘Balkan Route’, this article engages with the concept of the ‘badlands’ as a lens through which to consider the different types of housing made available for refugees in key urban centres. Following Dikeç (2007), Neely and Samura (2011), and Shabazz (2015), we examine how sites of refugee accommodation are imagined through the lenses of place, space and race and how this shapes policy responses. We ask: what are the main divergences and variations between formal refugee housing and informal sites? Why, given the poor conditions of most refugee camps, are they still viewed as the ‘best’ solution to housing? What role do policy decisions play in ‘othering’ spaces, places, groups and individuals? We examine the spatial effects of multiple policy levels and interventions (EU, national, local, grassroots) on refugee accommodation.

The collective editorial discusses inequalities that scholars in Europe and the Americas world have paid attention to during 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic has unevenly and unpredictably impacted on societies. The critical reflections reveal that the continuing ramifications of the pandemic can only be understood in place; like other large-scale phenomena, this exceptional global crisis concretizes very differently in distinct national, regional and local contexts. The pandemic intertwines with ongoing challenges in societies, for example those related to poverty, armed conflicts, migration, racism, natural hazards, corruption and precarious labor. Through collective contextual understanding, the editorial invites further attention to the unequal geographies made visible and intensified by the current pandemic.

Inspired by the idea of safe citizen, articulated by Weber (2008) this article queries the possibilities of safety in an age of securitization. It challenges the cosmopolitan worldview and its iteration of a global cosmopolitan citizen. It champions an account of affective citizenship, narration and attends to the trauma of exile. It offers an account of exile before suggesting an institutional design premised on politicization. This design, it is argued, facilitates moments of storytelling fostering individual empowerment. This unorthodox rendering of agency allows the traumatized exile to negotiate the world as it is, not as it could be, as a potential 'safe' citizen.

No abstract