TY - JOUR

T1 - Documenting Attachment:

T2 - Affective border control in applications for family reunifi cation

AU - Jeholm, Sofie

AU - Bissenbakker, Mons

PY - 2020/1/12

Y1 - 2020/1/12

N2 - From 2002 to 2018, Denmark was the only country in the world to enforce a migration law demanding that couples seeking family reunification in Denmark documented their combined “attachment” to the Danish nation. This article investigates the practice of documenting such national attachment through the socalled “application packets”. Investigating the attachment requirement as a migration political tool with affective investments and implications, we suggest that the documentation process can be understood as a performative process in which the application packets lay out a trajectory of “happy objects” (Ahmed2010): the application, family reunifi cation, a residence permit and ultimately the nation itself. Although the applicants are urged to orient themselves towards the Danish nation as a happy object with the promise of a possible future in Denmark, this promise may have cruel implications for the applicants. Suggesting that an interdisciplinary meeting point between the fields of migration studies and cultural/discursive studies may form as fruitful, this article invites readers to think about the biopolitics of border control inaffective terms

AB - From 2002 to 2018, Denmark was the only country in the world to enforce a migration law demanding that couples seeking family reunification in Denmark documented their combined “attachment” to the Danish nation. This article investigates the practice of documenting such national attachment through the socalled “application packets”. Investigating the attachment requirement as a migration political tool with affective investments and implications, we suggest that the documentation process can be understood as a performative process in which the application packets lay out a trajectory of “happy objects” (Ahmed2010): the application, family reunifi cation, a residence permit and ultimately the nation itself. Although the applicants are urged to orient themselves towards the Danish nation as a happy object with the promise of a possible future in Denmark, this promise may have cruel implications for the applicants. Suggesting that an interdisciplinary meeting point between the fields of migration studies and cultural/discursive studies may form as fruitful, this article invites readers to think about the biopolitics of border control inaffective terms

UR - http://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/documenting-attachment

U2 - 10.2478/njmr-2019-0039

DO - 10.2478/njmr-2019-0039

M3 - Journal article

VL - 9

SP - 480

EP - 496

JO - Nordic Journal of Migration Research

JF - Nordic Journal of Migration Research

SN - 1799-649X

IS - 4

ER -