Challenging Borders, Claiming Care: The Emotional Advocacy of Migrant Health Activists in Ontario

This paper examines how activists in Ontario, Canada, use de/bordering strategies to navigate healthcare access for individuals with precarious immigration status-an issue often overlooked in Canadian health and immigration policy debates. Drawing on interviews with 47 activists across health and community settings, this article, part of the broader project Underground Patchworks of Access: Migrant Health Activism in Ontario and the Emotional Work of Storytelling and Deservingness, focuses on the emotional dimensions of activists' work. It argues that emotional experiences shape how activists engage in de/bordering and assess migrant deservingness. Building on Dimitriadis and Ambrosini's (2023) concept of de/bordering, the study shows that activists' emotions are central not only to their strategies but also to how they construct ideas of deservingness. Using an interdisciplinary approach combining bordering, social movement, and feminist theories of affect, this article expands bordering scholarship by highlighting the emotional as well as the structural and legal factors guiding activist discretion and strategy.