Affective constructions of justice

Abstract

This article examines the political process and public debate in Finland concerning the Finnish women and children held captive in the refugee camp of Al-Hol in north-east Syria. The article studies the role of affect in the process of constructing justice in these debates. It argues that the debate demonstrates an affective process of bordering, in which a non-belonging and essentially non-Finnish identity was affectively constructed to the mothers, who were depicted as “converts” and “jihadists”. Emotions such as compassion were mobilised in the process with ambiguous outcomes. On the one hand, reference to compassion served the conservative agenda of attaching rights to worthiness, on the other hand reference to compassion towards the figure of the innocent child served to isolate the children from their mothers. In the legal context, the affectively constructed identities of the mothers as non-belonging were relevant to how the issue of rights and legal obligations of the state became perceived as something belonging to the realm of national law or international law. Este artículo examina el proceso político y el debate público de Finlandia sobre las mujeres y niños finlandeses en cautividad en el campo de refugiados de Al-Hol, al nordeste de Siria. El artículo estudia el rol del afecto en el proceso de construcción de justicia en estos debates. Se argumenta que el debate pone de manifiesto un proceso afectivo de construcción de fronteras, en el cual se construyó afectivamente para las madres una identidad no perteneciente y básicamente no finlandesa, al ser retratadas como “conversas” y “yihadistas”. Se movilizaron emociones como la compasión, con resultados ambiguos. De una parte, la alusión a la compasión sirvió a los propósitos del programa conservador de conectar derechos con valor personal; de la otra, la alusión a la compasión por la figura del niño inocente sirvió para aislar a los hijos de sus madres. En el contexto jurídico, las identidades de las madres, construidas afectivamente como no pertenecientes, fueron importantes porque hicieron que los derechos y las obligaciones jurídicas fueran percibidos como pertenecientes a la esfera del derecho nacional o internacional.

Introduction

“…Marginalised minorities are more like to come into contact with state institutions, for example with regard to welfare, housing, child protection, education, healthcare, or the criminal justice system (Malheiros 2002, Vinnerljung et al 2008, Walker 2008, Blom et al 2016, Petintseva 2018, Webster 2018, Leerkes et al 2019). These encounters with the state (Jones 2012) can be characterised by processes of inclusion and exclusion, in which issues like securitisation (Ragazzi 2016), belonging (Mustasaari 2021, this special issue), or discrimination can play a role. In Mustasaari's contribution to this special issue, she analyses the role of affective constructions of justice in the Finnish public debates on ISIS-families.…”

“…In Mustasaari's contribution to this special issue, she analyses the role of affective constructions of justice in the Finnish public debates on ISIS-families. Mustasaari suggests there is a "connection between the way in which the women and children in Al-Hol are depicted as undeserving of basic fundamental rights and the process through which ethnic minority families in Finland become further ethnicized and racialized" (Mustasaari 2021(Mustasaari , this special issue, p. 1041. Building on the work of Yuval-Davis, Wemyss, and Cassidy (2019) on bordering as an affective practice, Mustasaari shows how, despite being Finnish and white, in these debates the ISISfamilies are excluded from belonging to the Finnish nation and are recast as foreign and dangerous subjects.…”