EU feels presented a paper on emotions and Othering dynamics in a European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Joint Session on ‘Emotions and norms in EU crisis diplomacy’ held in Edinburgh (and online) from April 20^th-22^nd.  

Our paper proposes a theorisation of Othering and emotion norms, drawing on feminist, postcolonial and Intergroup Emotion theories. We use this theoretical framework to explore European Parliament debates on EU security and defence policy. Tracing how different ‘Others’ are constructed in parliamentary discourses, for example Russia, China and the USA, we find that the emotional characteristics of Othering discourses change over time (for example a shift in representations of Russia as a non-threatening and potentially cooperative partner in the early 2000s to a threatening Other after the annexation of Crimea in 2014).  

The EU feels team received a great response to the paper during the session, with constructive critical responses and questions. The Joint Session was a friendly and productive environment in which to present our research. We will continue to explore the important themes of Othering and emotion norms in EU politics in future papers and will provide further updates as the project develops!  

For more information on this paper, you can contact Rosa Sanchez Salgado at r.m.sanchez@uva.nl, Hanna Muehlenhoff at h.l.muehlenhoff@uva.nl, or Andrew Telford at a.j.telford@uva.nl.