The treatment of illegalized migrants in Western liberal states has been often characterized by a duality of compassion and repression. Within this dyad, repression is said to be applied with the right hand of the state by the police, border control, refugee status determination units, etc., and compassion with its left hand by social workers, medical staff, as well as civil society organizations and humanitarian agencies. Drawing on the toil of deportation caseworkers in the Netherlands, this article argues that compassion is prevalent not only among those who show benevolence and support illegalized migrants but also among many who work on the repressive side of the divide. However, expressions of compassion by deportation caseworkers do not seem to mitigate an otherwise repressive bureaucratic work. Instead, compassion often helps caseworkers to furnish a comfort zone in which emotions can be discharged and from which caseworkers neutralize potentially disruptive affective dynamics by experiencing them as intrinsic to the law they implement. Compassion not only fails to produce vertical commonality with deportable migrants in vulnerable positions; it also willfully fosters the self‐image of civil servants as humane and sensitive actors as they effectively implement controversial state policies.

中文翻译：

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压制性的同情心：被驱逐出境的工作人员在与非法移民的相遇中提供一个情绪舒适区

西方自由主义国家对非法移民的待遇通常具有同情和压迫的双重性。在这个二分法中，据说镇压是由警察，边境管制局，难民地位确定单位等在国家的右手施加的，社会工作者，医务人员以及民间社会对左手的同情组织和人道主义机构。本文以荷兰遣返案件工作者的辛勤劳动为依据，认为同情不仅在表现出仁慈和支持非法移民的人中普遍存在，而且在许多从事压制这一鸿沟的人中也很普遍。但是，驱逐案件的工作人员表达同情心似乎并不能减轻原本压制性的官僚工作。代替，同情心通常可以帮助案例工作者提供一个舒适的区域，在其中可以释放情绪，并通过体验作为执行法律的内在因素来消除潜在的破坏性情感动态。同情心不仅不能与处于弱势地位的可驱逐移民产生垂直共性；当公务员有效地执行有争议的国家政策时，它也会故意培养公务员作为人道和敏感行为者的自我形象。