In this article I develop the conceptualisation of affective recognition as a means of deepening understandings of education's contribution to peacebuilding and social justice in conflict-affected contexts. Scholars have highlighted that one of the crises in peacebuilding education today is the failure to understand and harness the role of the transrational and the affective. I therefore bring together feminist theories of social justice and affective economies to analyse non-formal education programmes with young people in Cambodia and Kosovo and develop the concept of affective recognition. I contend that affective recognition demonstrates the central role of affect in enabling processes of peacebuilding and social justice through educational programmes.