The Politics of Compassion

Ala Sirriyeh is a Lecturer in Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology at the University of Liverpool. She works in migration and refugee studies, with a focus on the experiences of children and young people. She wrote Inhabiting Borders, Routes Home (Routledge, 2013) based on her PhD research. From 2017-2018 she held a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for a research project titled Undocumented Young Immigrants, Political Activism and Citizenship in the USA.

A crisis of compassion
The emotional politics of immigration and asylum
Emotion, colonialism and immigration policy
The intolerable death of Alan Kurdi
Victims, villains and saviours
Withholding compassion
Outrage, responsibility and accountability
Self-care and solidarity: the undocumented immigrant youth movement
Conclusion