The centrality of emotions in the politics of immigration is a theme we have returned to a number of times in our series. Our first book, Ala Sirriyeh’s excellent The Politics of Compassion, explored how emotion is central to understanding how and why we have the immigration policies we do. The main concern of Sukhmani Khorana’s Mediated Emotions of Migration, instead, is to explore, through a series of case studies ranging from Jacinda Ardern’s response to the terror attacks on mosques in Christchurch in 2019, to the analysis of the social media persona of US politician Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and refugee storytelling and creative agency, the conditions and possibilities for empathy to inform and promote action on migration-related injustice and prejudice. It offers insights into the kind of interventions that have transformative potential and makes suggestions on how to harness it.

This book invites us to see the ambivalence of emotions as constructive potential and argues that mediated stories about migrants and migration, even when they have nothing or little to do with reality, impact the affective environment and policy landscape migrants find themselves in as well as the extent to which their own agency is recognised. Three emotions, in particular, are the focus of Khorana’s examination, namely empathy, aspiration and belonging. Central to stories on migration, they are powerful, contested and often appropriated by different actors in the public sphere and used to promote and trigger a range of political and policy responses.

Through the lens of emotions Khorana brings different bodies of literature in conversation and uses her case studies to identify connections and insights at the intersection of migration studies, social movement and media studies.