The project explores the claim about the increasing importance of human rights discourse in the context of migration as manifested in affective responses – Rechtsgefühle – to visual and verbal images. Affective responses to law and legal practices are significant because they influence implicit attitudes towards moral and legal norms, including those of human rights. The project examines how visual images of migration, including photographs, cartoons and drawings, and verbal images, like the trope “Flüchtlingswelle” (a wave of refugees), transport pro- and anti-migration sentiments in Germany and the United States. These legal affects contribute to viewers’ implicit condonation or critique of prevailing processes of vetting persons as worthy or unworthy of the right to migration. The project maps out 1) how specific image topoi contribute to viewer’s Rechtsgefühle, their subjective attitudes towards refugeeism and migration and 2) how images function as platforms that viewers can use to reflect on their affectively driven attitudes to human rights norms.
DFG Programme
Research Units
