Navigating Affective (In)securities: Forced Migration and Transnational Family Relationships

Abstract

This chapter examines the affective everyday (in)securities of families who are trying to be reunited with family members in Finland. The data concerns families of forced migrants who have gained residency in Finland on humanitarian grounds (compassionate grounds) or based on international protection (subsidiary protection, asylum). Scholarship on transnational families suggests that maintaining family ties across borders has emotional dimensions that are manifested through gendered care and normative expectations. In addition, family separation is intensely emotional. In this chapter, we use the concept of affect to investigate everyday insecurity. We understand affect broadly as bodies’ capabilities to affect or be affected by other bodies and connect this process to transnational flows of emotion. The data consist of interviews with 55 forced migrants from Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Ethiopia who are currently living in Finland, but who have family members waiting for family reunification outside the EU. Our analysis is based primarily on interviews with the sponsoring family members, but we also include six interviewees who described the experience of waiting abroad. Our results show that everyday insecurities are related to affects in three ways: through judgement, affective disparity and transnational flows of affect.