Introduction

Most people seek asylum in nation-states that neighbour their own. Consequently 80% of the global refugee population are in the majority world (UNHCR, 2015a). Undocumented immigrants contribute approximately US$11.8 billion in state and local taxes in the US (Ewing, 2015). Academics, journalists and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) regularly provide ‘hard’ facts like these on the experiences and impacts of immigration and asylum. Their evidence has made a clear case for loosening up immigration controls and implementing a more humane approach to refugee and migrant settlement. Yet there is little evidence that this has produced a substantial shift in government policies or in public opinion. In 2016, a UN summit of heads of state and government on large movements of refugees and migrants was held in New York (UN, 2016). It was billed as ‘a watershed moment to strengthen governance of international migration and a unique opportunity for creating a more responsible, predictable system for responding to large movements of refugees and migrants’ (UN, 2016); it produced little concrete action. The main outcome was an abstract declaration that refugee camps should be an exception, refugee children should have a right to education, and that the welfare of refugees is a global responsibility. Yet, as this was declared, construction began on yet another border wall, this time in Calais (France) to prevent migrants and refugees in camps there from traveling on to the UK (Travis and Chrisafis, 2016). Meanwhile, refugees continued to languish in camps on the edges of Europe, and in Australia's offshore detention centres.

Research-based evidence alone has not pushed governments into action or transformed public opinion. Furthermore, it has been argued, especially in the aftermath of the Brexit vote in the UK and the election of Donald Trump in the US in 2016, that we have entered a ‘post-truth’ world where ‘facts’ have lost their status and credibility (Davis, 2016) and where feelings trump facts (Ioanide, 2015). This chapter begins with a review of the role of emotions in social and public life, and how this has been understood in sociology and the social sciences and philosophy more broadly. There is a focus on how the relationship between emotion and reason has been theorised and how emotion is defined in this book.