Border harm and affective injustice: The politics of anger at the Melilla border, Spain

This article examines protests in a detention center in Melilla, Spain-a site where structural violence intersects with the everyday harms of confinement. Adopting a justice and dignity-centered perspective, we analyze grassroots forms of resistance emerging at the border. The study focuses on the protests of Tunisian migrants and explores the role of emotions under specific conditions of oppression. Grounded in theories of affective injustice and in dialogue with community psychology scholarship on detention and resistance, we expose the emotional harms produced by confinement and the affective capacities that enable detainees to manifest their agency. In particular, we highlight the transformative potential of restorative anger. When collectively recognized, anger created a cross-border community between Spain and Tunisia-one in which each act of resistance built upon the next, in a chain reaction that challenged the logic of nation-states and border regimes. These findings advance our understanding of how affective border harms operate, while demonstrating that emotions can mobilize communities that transcend borders and structural hierarchies. We conclude by emphasizing the emotional dynamics of detention and their capacity to foster justice and liberation, and reflect on community psychology's potential to generate critical knowledge on border detention.