Marcelo Borges is the holder of the Migration studies – Franco-American Commission / Iméra Chair for the 2025-26 academic year.
His research project at Iméra, the Institute for Advanced Study of Aix Marseille Université, brings together the perspective of migration history and the history of emotion to uncover the emotional dynamics that contributed to shaping the experiences of migrants and their families and the ways that migrants were perceived by diverse societies over time.
The analysis sheds light on how emotions associated to migration were constructed, negotiated, and deployed by different actors over time and how emotional practices have varied according to factors like gender, age, and race in different sociocultural and political contexts.
To learn more, view his resident page by consulting the link below
Transcript generated by artificial intelligence (Whisper speech recognition model), not yet checked by a human. It may contain errors, particularly in proper nouns, specialised terminology and passages in other languages. Where there is any doubt, the recording prevails.
Video transcript
Click a timestamp to play the video from that point.
0:09 My name is Marcelo Borges. I am originally from Argentina, and I've lived in the US for 30 years now. I am a history professor at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in the US. I'm a social historian interested in particularly in transatlantic migrations in the 19th and 20th century. I am also a Latin Americanist by training, and my research focuses on epistolarity, that is the use of correspondence as a historical source, and also on history of emotions, as a lens to understand the migration experience. It was during my earlier work with migrant letters, letters exchanged by migrants and
0:48 their families, that I became interested in emotions. I realized that a lot of the earlier work of social historians, including my own, that were mostly interested in topics like social networks, labor strategies, or ethnic life, were living completely out of the picture the emotional aspect of the migration experience. And from there, I brought in my perspective to also consider how emotions play a role and how migrants were perceived by society at large, politically, for example, how migrants as mobile individuals were treated in particular ways, culturally, politically, and socially.
1:29 At IMERA, I hold the Franco-American Commission IMERA Chair in Migration Studies. And during my residence here, I am working on a book project. The working title is Emotions and Migrations in a Globalized World. The book considers how emotions have impacted the migration experience of individuals, families, and societies, and also how impacted how migrants have been perceived by societies of origin and destination over time. The book covers a long time period from the last quarter of the 19th century to the beginning of the 21st century.
2:06 So the first level of analysis looks at individuals, families and societies, and how also migrants see themselves as individuals connected to more than one place, and how that shaped their identities. It also explores how the migration experience is not just exclusive related to those who move, but also impacts the people who stay behind, and also it impacts across generations through memory or commemoration. Some of the emotional manifestations that are analyzed in that first level include things like love of family, gendered ideas of responsibility, filial obligation, guilt and
2:50 nostalgia. The second level of analysis looks at migration at the social and political level, and it considers specifically how migrants have been treated by popular culture, the media, politicians, and how that impacted policy and politics. So this has resulted in different migration regimes, ways of policing and controlling migration, and also applying sort of ideas of desirability according to factors like gender, ethnicity, race, and class. There are several emotional manifestations that are considered in this second level of
3:29 policy and politics. For example, the fears of invasion, the fears triggered by ideas of contamination of culture or society or demographic replacement. On the other hand, it also considers this in a more positive light, discussing how migrants sometimes are presented as deserving of care and protection. And the final part considers movement itself, migrants in transit, and the emotions associated with that, but also with the impossibility to move, that is, emotions associated with immobility. So Imerat provides a perfect setting for this project, and I'm very happy to be a part of
4:14 this stimulating community. As an interdisciplinary institute, it brings people with different backgrounds, that provides different perspectives, new questions that will enrich this project. I am also happy to collaborate with local scholars and with people from the community at large who are interested in the topic of migration. Plus, being in Marseille is a great opportunity to reflect on issues related to emotions and migrations because Marseille is a city that has been shaped by the experience of migration, by cultural exchanges and by global connections.
