This article analyses the ‘European refugee crisis’ in the context of Northern Finland, building on the concepts of exceptionality and affect. Conventionally, exceptionality is conceptualised from the perspective of the state that does not enable analysing exceptional situations in their broader social context. A shift in focus is required to understand how people perceive and experience exceptionality and what kinds of affects this involves. Based on participatory engagement and in-depth interviews with asylum-seekers living in reception centres in Northern Finland and local residents in their neighbourhood, our analysis demonstrates that exceptionality gains diverse meanings in different contexts. We propose affective exceptionality as a conceptual tool for analysing affects in transformational situations in which people’s sense of the ‘normal’ becomes disrupted and illustrate how placing emphasis on subjects who experience and embody exceptionality in their everyday lives enables a more nuanced understanding of exceptionality, centralising the people instead of the state.

中文翻译：

---

间隔/时间：

本文基于特殊性和影响力的概念，分析了芬兰北部地区的“欧洲难民危机”。传统上，例外是从国家的角度进行概念化的，而这种观点无法在其更广泛的社会背景下分析例外情况。需要转移注意力以了解人们如何感知和体验特殊性，以及这种特殊性会带来什么样的影响。根据参与性参与和对居住在芬兰北部接待中心的寻求庇护者以及附近居民的深入访谈，我们的分析表明，特殊性在不同情况下具有多种含义。