Calibrating Comfort in the Care-Control nexus of Humanitarian Borderwork

People seeking safety through migration often move through spaces of humanitarian care, including shelters, camps, and transit sites. Despite differences in resources and infrastructure, issues with overcrowding and poor thermal conditions persist globally. These concerns are directly linked to the degree in which comfort is considered in the design of humanitarian and emergency spaces. Drawing on research regarding Brazil’s military-humanitarian response to Venezuelan migration, this paper explores the often-overlooked role of comfort in humanitarian borderwork. By studying the operations and spatialities of two sites that provide care to incoming migrants and refugees, I argue that comfort can be used as a lens to examine the function of care and control in humanitarian borderwork. In doing so, this research highlights how (dis)comfort works through both care and control to (re)produce differential and restrictive mobilities. Challenging the normalisation and invisibilisation of discomfort in displacement contexts reveals the need to further consider the everyday, mundane implications of care.