Borders of Affect:

Mobilizing Border Imagery as Civic Engagement

Presented by: Vyom Veer Singh Nagar

Introduction
• How artistic depictions of immigration detention influence
American college students' emotions and sense of empathy.

• It shows how a qualitative study with representations of

aesthetic kind, and some empathy for migrants, which
promotes civic participation among these students.

• A new term is introduced “Border Affects," a component of

affective mapping that is created by and, in turn, reproduces
a cultural imaginary that places the citizen's relationship to
migration and has the capacity to both undermine and
encourage empathy.
Civic Engagement
• Universities in the US have embraced their role over the last 20 years in fostering
civic engagement: engagement with issues of public interest. One way that students
interact with political issues, including immigration, is through civic engagement.
• College students are the perfect group to study how affect and empathy may affect
their perspectives on social issues since they are at a point in their intellectual
development where their identities as civic actors are developing.
• Representations created by artists, activists, collectives, and collaborations draw
attention to migrant problems and how immigration policies affect them.

Study Conducted
• It was investigated through a qualitative study how college students reacted to
artistic depictions of immigrant detention in the US.
• Through open dialogues concerning immigrants, undocumented people, borders,
and the United States, students' perspectives were gathered.
• Participants were instructed to observe the four depictions and then provide an
open-ended comment on how they felt about each.
• Participants' opinions on immigration policy were also solicited.
Exhibits:
• Torn Apart/Separados
• A series of stories told through the
medium of data visualization.
• To shed light on the landscape of
immigrant detention in the US.
• The omnipresence of immigrant
detention facilities throughout the
US, not just, as many assume, at the
U.S.–Mexico border.
• View of the unseen oppressions and
• Detention Nation Depicting the
Prison-Style Accommodations in
Detention Centers
• Both a physical exhibition and a
virtual one, Sin Huellas draws on
audio-visual materials and words
from detainees’ letters to depict
facilities in which migrants are held
by the U.S. government and to
encourage viewers to confront what
they call the “U.S. Immigrant Prison
Complex”.
indignities of migrants.
• Don’t Look Away
• A pop-up installation created by the
Refugee and Immigrant Center for
Education and Legal Services (RAICES)
• Installed in cities in the US to raise
awareness of child detention
• Inside the cages, dolls covered in
mylar blankets evoke detained child
migrants, while recordings of a
detained child added a sonic
component to the installation
• Jennifer Lopez and Shakira’s Super
Bowl LIV Halftime Show Depicting
Children in Cages
• An excerpt of a performance from
the National Football League’s 2020
Super Bowl LIV halftime show,
featuring Jennifer Lopez and Shakira
• The segment of the show opens with
an image of children sitting in
illuminated cages, led by Lopez’s
daughter Emme Muniz
• Lopez then walks down the stage in a
cape depicting the U.S. flag, which
she opens to reveal a Puerto Rican
flag as she sings, “Let’s get loud,
Latinos.”
Results: Border Affects
• The study's findings imply that regardless of a participant's political
affiliation, political position, or stance on immigration, the artistic
representations cause border affects—clearly negative affective
reactions.
• As a result, these representations contribute to the important effort of
using aesthetic techniques to highlight the needs of migrants.
• The replies from participants most often contained the following
codes:
(1) disgust; (2) anger; (3) sadness; (4) confusion; and (5) fear.
• Only three of the 97 replies from participants contained positive
emotional codes.
• It is noteworthy that the existence of negative affective reactions
persisted regardless of political affiliation or immigration policy,
indicating that the artistic representations are effective at eliciting
affective reactions.
Representation, Affect, and Empathy

•These negative effects imply that political identities,

particularly polarized ones, are associated with a propensity to
read the representations through the prism of preconceived
political beliefs and attitudes on immigration.
•The phenomena sparked by the widely circulated photos
of Alan Kurdi, a three-year-old Syrian kid who was found
dead on a beach in Bodrum, Turkey, in 2015, is consistent
with the outcome.
•The creative depictions of children in cages, like those of
Kurdi, seem to arouse "moral spectatorship," a group reaction
to human misery, as well as a kind of virtual voyeurism of the
migrant body.
•Although acknowledging "guilt" across divisions in this
study has led to some degree of empathy for the predicament
of children, it is still unclear if this empathy actually results in
action.
Conclusion
• In addition to serving a "world-configuring function," borders
are constantly "subject to fluctuating and unpredictable patterns
of mobility" and frequently "crystallize.“
• Instead of a base-map, the border affects expressed by
participants provide a way to comprehend how the border exists
in the contemporary imaginary. They also serve as a means of
knowing the border and creating a mental model of migration.
• As a result, it can be seen as creating a cognitive phenomena of
the border, mediated through the elements that affect how a
person views the world: their political identities, their social
places, their identities, and their personal viewpoints on
migration. Or to put it another way, our mental map of the
border is formed by border impacts.
 References:
• https://www.apa.org/education-career/undergrad/civic-
engagement
• https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/
immigrants-in-the-united-states
• https://xpmethod.columbia.edu/torn-apart/volume/2/ref
lections.html
• http://www.detentionnation.com/
• https://www.raicestexas.org/2020/02/03/dont-look-awa
y/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Alan_Kurdi
Thank You
Vyom Veer Singh Nagar
220201131

Course: Business Communication I

Course Instructor: Dr. Archana Shrivastava