Multiply vulnerable populations: mobilising a politics of compassion from the 'capacity to hurt'

Abstract

This paper reflects on the concept of insecurity defined as 'the capacity to hurt'. It begins by considering asylum seekers and refugees as hyper-precarious groups that have experienced bodily, material and psychological 'hurt' in the UK. At the same time, the paper considers how these hyper-precarious groups are perceived to have the capacity to hurt (bodily, materially, psychologically and spatially) the majority population. Having drawn out two understandings of the capacity to hurt-both the ability to be or feel hurt and the act of hurting others, we argue that a shared recognition of what it means to feel hurt (co-suffering or suffering together)-albeit to very different extremes and with very different consequences-and an understanding of the processes which drive this might be mobilised politically to challenge the act of hurting others. In doing so, we argue for a group politics of compassion to respond to increasingly insecure times