Loving and forgiving? : Emotions and emotion work in the youth organization Equmenia

This article examines how members of a Christian youth organization in Sweden relate to and reflect upon emotional aspects of their involvement, looking at how they describe the emotional atmosphere within the groups they belong to and their role in creating and sustaining this, but also their experiences of not feeling comfortable in certain situations. The empirical material consists of interviews with youths aged 15–23, and the theoretical framework is centred on emotion work and feeling rules. The findings show how the emotional expectations tend to be communicated not only implicitly, but also explicitly, and how an emotional atmosphere and emotion work that can be expected to create affective bonds between the members and strengthen group cohesion, in somecases might have rather the opposite effect.