Sensing the political: activist sentiment in the European long summer of migration

Self-organized groups across Europe, working autonomously from the state and official humanitarian organizations, played a crucial role in supporting asylum-seekers during the European Long Summer of Migration in 2015/2016. Researchers have focused on how humanitarian work and political activism overlapped in these groups, but not so much on how the distinction between the two forms of action was maintained. Based on my activist research on two leftist autonomous groups, the Antiracist Front without Borders (Protirasistična fronta brez meja) from Ljubljana, Slovenia, and the Lager Mobilisation Network from Berlin, Germany, I use the concept of activist sentiment to show how and why this distinction mattered to political activists, and how it manifested particularly in their various affective encounters with asylum-seekers.