Calibrating Comfort in the Care-Control nexus of Humanitarian Borderwork

This article presents a well-researched contribution to humanitarian and migration studies. The article is well-situated within critical scholarship and presents a compelling analysis of the often-overlooked role of comfort in humanitarian borderwork. By examining Brazil’s military-humanitarian response to Venezuelan migration, the author introduces comfort as an analytical lens to explore the interplay between care and control in humanitarian spaces. The study’s methodological approach, including participant observation and fieldwork reflections, enriches the analysis and provide empirical insights on inherent power relations that shape who has access to comfort and who does not.

Addressing the following minor issues would further strengthen the paper’s impact and value:

• The article presents a clear-cut opposition between those who provide aid and those who receive it. While it is established that military personnel and humanitarian workers have greater access to comfort compared to ‘beneficiaries’, is there a difference in terms of the narrative surrounding the (non-)provision of comfort to Venezuelan migrants? What are the implication in terms of claims (if any) and practices on the ground (of migrants as well as humanitarian actors)?

• The article primarily relies on ethnographic observations (the maps drawn by the author are particularly useful), but the methodology also references interviews. The paper would perhaps benefit from including quotes from these mentioned interviews. The voice of migrants and humanitarian actors does not currently emerge from the paper.

• The conclusions could be enriched by discussing the research limitations and outlining the paper's contribution to existing literature on humanitarian borderwork and implications of the findings for future studies.

Ask for minor revision

1) The author draws on a broad theoretical corpus, integrating perspectives from migration sociology, critical humanitarian studies, and the literature on mobility governance. The work is grounded in key references such as Didier Fassin, Polly Pallister-Wilkins, and Miriam Ticktin, successfully positioning itself within an established debate while introducing a novel element.
2) The article presents an original analysis of the concept of comfort in humanitarian contexts, a topic often overlooked in the literature on migration governance and humanitarian action. The author highlights how (dis)comfort is strategically employed in mobility control and management processes. This approach connects the issue of the right to adequate housing with the security logics that regulate refugees.
3) The research combines participant observation, informal interviews, and spatial analysis of humanitarian camps in Brazil. The use of hand-drawn maps and ethnographic descriptions enriches the analysis, making it more immersive. Additionally, the reflection on the author’s own privileged position, acknowledging that studying comfort is a luxury compared to the fundamental concerns of migrants, demonstrates a commendable methodological awareness.
4)A convincing discussion of the care-control nexus. The article effectively demonstrates that humanitarian infrastructures are not merely instruments of aid but also of containment. The idea that comfort is selectively distributed (reserved for humanitarian workers and military personnel while refugees receive only the bare minimum) is a strong argument that enriches the debate on humanitarian space as a governance mechanism.

1)Although the article analyzes comfort as a material and political element, its definition remains elusive from an affective/emotional perspective.

The article should be accepted for publication because it makes an original and well-structured contribution to the debate on humanitarianism and mobility governance, addressing a topic often overlooked in academic literature: the role of comfort in the processes of controlling and assisting migrants. The study is not only theoretically significant but also has practical implications for the design of humanitarian infrastructures and reception policies. The analysis of comfort as a governance mechanism could be useful in rethinking more inclusive and dignified strategies for refugee management. Moreover, it may have important implications beyond the contexts analyzed in this article, for instance, in examining governmental reception systems in different national settings and in analyzing the production of (dis)comfort in contexts where pro-migrant volunteers operate.

Publish (meets expectations and criteria for this Journal)