Paper details

Paper authors	Otto Wolf
In panel on	Navigating Empathy in Humanitarian Education
Paper presenter(s) will be presenting	In-Person / Online

Abstract

Using an affective framework, this paper explores the role of shame in stimulating non-migrant citizen solidarity with asylum seekers and refugees in South Yorkshire and across the UK. Combining research on shame with ongoing discussions of solidarity and influential work by Bourdieu, the productive potential of affect is discussed. This paper argues that shame is an affect capable of creating a ‘rupture’ in an individual or organisation’s habitus, forcing a reckoning with behaviours that fall into structures of racial domination. Findings from fifteen research interviews with active individuals in migrant justice organisations are analysed in relation to shame and solidarity. Data is from a wider project, utilising participatory methods alongside in-depth interviews looking to understand the work of organisations supporting asylum seekers, refugees and migrants. This paper develops the burgeoning theoretical field of affect within Geography and Sociology, arguing for shame as a useful affect in challenging implicit racial hierarchies in the process of creating transformative solidarity. As an activist researcher, this theoretical development is part of a wider desire to interrogate the nuances of solidarity and, therefore, inspire myself and other activists to understand spaces most impactful in its formation.

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