Affective constructions of justice: ISIS-families and the law in the Finnish public debate

Abstract

This article examines the political process and public debate in Finland concerning the Finnish women and children held captive in the refugee camp of Al-Hol in north-east Syria. The article studies the role of affect in the process of constructing justice in these debates. It argues that the debate demonstrates an affective process of bordering, in which a non-belonging and essentially non-Finnish identity was affectively constructed to the mothers, who were depicted as “converts” and “jihadists”. Emotions such as compassion were mobilised in the process with ambiguous outcomes. On the one hand, reference to compassion served the conservative agenda of attaching rights to worthiness, on the other hand reference to compassion towards the figure of the innocent child served to isolate the children from their mothers. In the legal context, the affectively constructed identities of the mothers as non-belonging were relevant to how the issue of rights and legal obligations of the state became perceived as something belonging to the realm of national law or international law.