ABSTRACT
This chapter explores emotional dynamics connected to labour migrations in historical and contemporary settings both at the individual and societal levels. It examines the role of emotions in the life experience of migrants, in the negotiation of transnational family life, in the construction of the self in motion, as well as in the adjustment of the emotional languages, styles and practices that immigrants learned in their places of origin to the ways feelings were expressed and performed in their new locations. In addition, the chapter discusses the perception of migrants and the politics of migration in the receiving societies, analysing how audiences were mobilised in emotional terms to facilitate migration or to legitimise restrictions against a collective alien who endangered the nation's integrity.
