“Você no sabe o que es se sentir humilhada asi”: humiliation, hostile affects and other affective regularities of the refuge government

Abstract

The objective of this article is to investigate humiliation as an affective regularity of refugee governance and to defend the centrality of affects in the analysis of this governance. The text is based on the author’s ongoing doctoral research. The research consists of constructing an ethnography, resulting from the author’s dual role as a researcher and manager at LGBT+ Movimento, an organization focused on the migrant and refugee LGBTI+ community. From this methodological approach, the study focuses on the experiences of several trans and lesbian women supported by the organization between 2020 and 2022.In the first part of this article, it examines how a series of administrative reconfigurations, prompted by the organization’s growth and formalization, challenge the model of intimacy-based management, generating conflicts. In the second part, it highlights that affects are not new elements in the field of migratory and humanitarian studies; however, it is argued that the spectrum of affects expands when considering the experiences of subjects in their encounters with administrative apparatuses.In the final part, it presents the case of Maritza, a Venezuelan trans woman, and analyzes the micropolitical dimensions of the emotions linked to humiliation, in order to demonstrate how this affect begins to operate as a mechanism of governance, regularly participating in the lives of migrant and refugee subjects. Lastly, it suggests that the affective regularities experienced by Maritza and other migrants and refugees are connected to certain administrative traditions that have historically been present in programs aimed at this population in Brazil.