Affective regimes of care beyond humanitarian crisis

Heike Drotbohm, alongside with Hansjörg Dilger, is editor of the themed section “Affective Regimes of Care beyond Crisis” and, within this section, author of the chapter "Along the twilights of care. Continuities of technomoral politics in São Paulo’s pro-migrant activism" in the 2024 issue of Focaal - Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology.

Heike Drotbohm & Hansjörg Dilger:
Rethinking affects of care through power. An introduction
This introduction outlines the contemporary emergence of new forms of informal crisis-related care, which both complement and contradict classical forms of humanitarian assistance. It traces the spread, blurring, and differentiation of novel forms of non-state assistance and support against the backdrop of increasingly widespread criticism of large-scale international aid. Tackling regimes of care beyond the exceptionality of a crisis notion, the introduction then summarizes how the three contributions and the commentary to this theme section employ the lens of affect for exploring how these highly intersubjective forms of encounter are experienced, performed, and reflected on.

Drotbohm, Heike; Dilger, Hansjörg 2024: "Rethinking affects of care through power. An introduction." In: Focaal. Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 98: 1-13.

Heike Drotbohm
Along the twilights of care. Continuities of technomoral politics in São Paulo’s pro-migrant activism.
This article explores central dimensions of different forms of asymmetric care that fall between the competences of overlapping civil society organizations. Based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in São Paulo, Brazil, the article follows migrants arriving and integrating across different nodes of reception, including church-based NGOs, humanitarian organizations, and activist housing projects. Overlaps between these different forms of reception, care, and control do not arise only when migrants refer to different organizational structures. Instead, numerous formal and organizational similarities complicate a clear separation of these domains of asymmetric care. By concentrating on incidents when the encounters between migrant activists and Brazilian activists are disturbed, this article traces the mutual irritation of differently positioned actors, who calibrate their moral claims and produce new understandings of “worthiness.”

Drotbohm, Heike 2024: "Along the twilights of care. Continuities of technomoral politics in São Paulo’s pro-migrant activism." In: Focaal. Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 98: 15-30.