This special issue of NJMR contributes to the field of Nordic migration research by investigating the intersections between migration, affect and biopolitics. Affective biopolitics is a term that grapples with how the construction, policing and maintenance of borders increasingly occur through the structuring and production of emotion or ‘affects’. The point is not that affect replaces racism as the caesura between life and death (Foucault 2003). Rather, affective biopolitics examines the connections between affect and racism (Ahmed 2000, 2004b, 2010) which allow for bio- and necropower (Mbembe 2003) to expose some populations to death while other populations are afforded mobility and access to rights and resources.