Micromobilizing Emotion

How do grassroots feminist movements convert moral shock into sustained resistance under war, repression, and exile? This article examines the diasporic wing of the Feminist Anti-War Resistance (FAR/FAS), a transnational network of Russian feminists formed in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Drawing on 56 in-depth interviews with activists in 25 countries, it conceptualizes FAS as an affective infrastructure that joins affect, meaning, and materiality to enable emotional survival and political resistance. Extending Ward’s micromobilization model, the article advances the concept of productive mediation—a feminist process that transforms morally charged emotions into politically meaningful action and sustained participation. FAS’s repertoire—symbolic performances, embodied signals, grief activism, and care-based practices—creates an emotionally resonant, low-threshold path into and back to collective action in diasporic and authoritarian settings. The analysis shows how alignment of ideology, horizontal and decentralized structure, and ritual lowers entry costs, supports withdrawal and return after burnout, and renders dissent durable. The article contributes to three literatures: affect theory and micromobilization; feminist scholarship on exile and forced migration; and research on transnational feminist infrastructures under authoritarianism. It argues that FAS does not treat emotional labor as ancillary to politics but centers it as a generative force. Rather than merely enduring the emotional fallout of war, FAS channels difficult emotions—grief, guilt, and fear—into collective feminist action, making participation emotionally bearable and sustainable over time.