Affective Vernaculars of Diasporic Belonging

This chapter puts to work the notion of music as a site of intensity and articulation by exploring the embodied and affective registers through which uncertainty, marginality, and destitution materialised and were negotiated by making, listening, and sharing music in the group. By advancing the notion affective vernaculars of diasporic belonging, the chapter offers two related arguments. The first discusses the relevance for scholarly analyses and praxis in domains of forced migration and sanctuary, to address the mundane, sensory, and affective reconfigurations of sociality, belonging, and solidarity that people from diverse origins shaped while encountering and addressing the slow violence of the asylum apparatus. Relatedly, the second argument discusses the relevance of mundane domains of sociality, such as music-making and leisure more widely, as (in)visible registers and practices where the effects of the politics of asylum are lived, felt, materialised, and negotiated by people seeking asylum and their allies.