Challenging ungrievability for people missing at sea. Search infrastructures, spaces of public mourning, and claims for justice

Abstract

ABSTRACT Since the so-called refugee crisis, the central Mediterranean Sea has been identified as the deadliest border in the world. As the border studies debate has shown, these deaths reflect the structural violence of border regimes and demand due forms of political accountability and responsibility. However, dominant power structures differentially shape the visibility and grievability of those who are missing and dead at the border. Keeping this complexity as a background, and drawing on examples from Lampedusa and Tunisia, we investigate the politics of challenging Butler’s “ungrievability” – the lack of access to preconditions, spaces and times of private and public mourning and commemoration. We critically discuss the interplay between three components of this political arena: the search infrastructures of the missing and dead at sea; the creation of “spaces of commemoration” through place-making, time-marking and collective actions; the claims for justice and political accountability for those deaths.