| Abstract | This article introduces a Special Issue exploring the ‘emotional turn' in migration studies, focusing on how transnational movement shapes and is shaped by human emotion. Moving beyond traditional, politically or economically driven frameworks that favour abstraction and rationalization, the authors conceptualise ‘emotional diasporas' to highlight how identities and senses of belonging are dynamically constructed in transnational spaces. Derived from a doctoral symposium at the University of Westminster's HOMELandS Research Centre, this collection brings together nine articles that utilise ‘emotional ethnography’ – including lifeworld histories, material culture, and creative practice-based methods – across diverse migrant communities. By incorporating multilingual and multicultural perspectives, the volume challenges Eurocentric narratives and dismantles rigid nation-state paradigms. Ultimately, the text argues for the critical value of emotional knowledge in understanding social justice, exclusion, and inclusion, offering a nuanced alternative framework for analysing the complex everyday lived realities of contemporary mobile subjectivities. |
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