Book Review - Marcelo J. Borges, Sonia Cancian, and Linda Reeder (eds.) Emotional Landscapes: Love, Gender, and Migration Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2021, 280 pp.

Abstract

The essays gathered in the volume Emotional Landscapes: Love, Gender, and Migration, edited by Marcelo J. Borges, Sonia Cancian, and Linda Reeder, give a valuable insight into the multifaceted migration experience imbued with emotions. Attending to subtle and variable affective languages, the authors “painted” compelling “emotional landscapes,” historically contingent and shaped transnationally by love and an array of other emotions accompanying people on the move, such as loss, nostalgia, hope, and joy. Love, gender, and migration are interwoven in all the narratives. Love as a driving force of migration, its meaning, the main bond overcoming distance, and an affective underpinning of public discourse pursuing political interests. Changeable in time and space, the meanings of love entail various ways of emotional expression and reshape gender norms.