Emotions from Below: Affective Inequalities and the Politics of Protection

The offer of protection to citizens and migrants is never a neutral act. It is mediated by normative understandings of citizenship, belonging, and rights, as well as by the emotional dynamics that sustain these norms. From classic social contract theories to contemporary concepts of citizenship grounded in cultural heritage, the state has been positioned as the legitimate protector not only of life, property, and borders, but also of values and identities. Different citizenship statuses produce different levels of entitlement to protection and belonging - both politically and affectively.

In recent years, the rise of protective politics in Europe, framed through crises of migration, security, and identity, has intensified conflicts over whose emotions and needs are recognised as legitimate. While much attention has been paid to citizens’ fears and perceptions of insecurity, the emotional needs for protection among migrants, refugees, and other non-citizens remain understudied. This Research Topic seeks to redress this imbalance by foregrounding how emotions of insecurity, trust, fear, and belonging are distributed, represented, and governed across lines of citizenship, status, and identity. We invite contributions that investigate how affective politics shape and reproduce hierarchies of protection, recognition, and emotional legitimacy across democratic and non-democratic contexts.

This Research Topic aims to explore the emotional foundations and consequences of protective politics by asking: whose feelings of (in)security count, and whose are silenced or disavowed? We seek to advance interdisciplinary perspectives that integrate political science, social psychology, critical race, gender and migration studies to understand how emotional needs for protection are constructed, legitimised, or dismissed across different groups.The goal of this Research Topic is to investigate how emotional dynamics, social representations, and culturally embedded emotion norms shape distinct forms of entitlement to protection, including material, physical, emotional, cultural, and epistemic dimensions. It further aims to assess how these hierarchies of entitlement influence access to justice, recognition, and safety for differently positioned groups, including citizens and non-citizens. By exploring interdisciplinary approaches to the study of emotions in politics, this Research Topic seeks to develop a more comprehensive framework for understanding emotional citizenship in contexts shaped by crisis, structural inequality, and political polarisation.

We invite empirical and theoretical contributions from political science, psychology, sociology, social psychology, and feminist and postcolonial studies. Submissions may engage with, but are not limited to, the following themes:

• emotional governance and protective policies in migration, security, and welfare
• social representations of danger, belonging, insecurity, and protection
• feeling rules, emotional legitimacy, and institutional practices
• comparative analyses of citizens’ and non-citizens’ emotional needs for protection
• media and political discourse shaping emotions of insecurity, pride and solidarity
• psychological, social and political dimensions of emotion regulation, trauma, and credibility in institutional settings
• emotional consequences of protective politics for democracy, participation, and trust.

We welcome original research articles, conceptual papers, comparative analyses, methodological reflections, policy analyses, and short perspective pieces.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Conceptual Analysis
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• FAIR² DATA Direct Submission
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Registered Report
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Protective politics, Emotional governance, Citizenship hierarchies, Migration and belonging, Emotional legitimacy, (In)security and trust

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.