Migrant Deaths Research Articles

Death on the US-Mexico Border: Performance, Immigration Politics, and Jose Casas’s 14

Jimmy Noriega looks to theatrical performance as a method for engaging the subject of “illegal” immigration and, in particular, the death of undocumented migrants. He argues that theatre can provide an avenue by which to generate both a private and public discourse that allows for a more nuanced and fair treatment of migrant death, which is especially significant in comparison to the representations offered by the typical media coverage. Rather than focus on several texts, this essay analyzes one play—<i>14</i> by José Casas (2003)—and the ways it engages with mass migrant death and the myriad of responses to it.

Reframing the debate: The art of Lampedusa

Abstract This article considers the art that has been produced in relation to the subject of migrant deaths at sea, with a focus on artworks that refer to the island of Lampedusa and its long history of the subject. Now that the world’s media are at last paying attention to the subject of migrant deaths, the small islands of Lampedusa and Lesbos are in danger of being ‘invaded’ by more than just migrants – artists are on their way in ever-increasing numbers. The ‘migration crisis’ has become the latest hot topic for artists, but art on the subject of migrant deaths at sea is often controversial, dividing both critics and audiences. Written from the perspective of an artist, this article explores the complexities of making and presenting art about this extremely sensitive issue.

Understanding Nepalese Labor Migration to Gulf Countries

ABSTRACTThis work explores the reasons Nepalese emigrate for employment to Persian Gulf countries, despite potential risks of doing so. The authors obtained data from questionnaires administered to Nepalese who reside in rural areas. The data suggest that Nepalese realize the dangers associated with the Gulf. However, Nepalese emigrate because of limited opportunities in Nepal, an obligation to improve their families’ well-being, and the allure of Gulf nations. Although migrant deaths are a concern for the Nepali government, findings suggest that many Nepali accept risks associated with Gulf employment. Thus, Gulf migration is unenviable until the Nepali economy can support its population.

The Role of the Anthropologist in the Identification of Migrant Remains in the American Southwest

This article focuses on the role of the forensic anthropologist in the identification of migrant remains in the American Southwest. These migrant cases present a unique set of circumstances that necessitate a regional approach to identification. The Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner (PCOME), located in Tucson, Arizona has developed best practices that facilitate high identification rates of migrant deaths. These best practices have provided a foundation for other agencies that are faced with similar issues; namely, developing specific protocols for migrant deaths, working with nongovernmental humanitarian organizations, and sharing information have maximized identification efforts. In 2012, Texas surpassed Arizona in the number of migrant deaths. The Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State (FACTS) began identification efforts for migrant remains found in Brooks County, Texas in 2013. Informed by best practices from the PCOME, FACTS has made successful identifications. Descriptions of the processes at both the PCOME and FACTS are described in detail.

Dying to live: migrant deaths and citizenship politics along European borders: transgressions, disruptions, and mobilizations

Migrants and refugees continue to die as they attempt to cross into Europe. This article explores the issue of ‘dying to live’ to draw attention to the disturbing fact of these deaths in relation to the state, biopolitics, and citizenship, but also to the growing mobilization around refugee and migrant deaths along European borders. The article examines transnational activism in solidarity with migrants, refugees and their families in response to deaths at Europe’s borders as one example of the many political struggles for greater rights undertaken by refugees, migrants, and solidarity activists emerging across Europe and elsewhere. An examination of struggles around rights of the dead and in response to migrant and refugee deaths suggests that they can be transgressive of the logic of modern citizenship.

Information seeking, technology use, and vulnerability among migrants at the United States–Mexico border

ABSTRACTThrough interviews with migrants and migrant aid-workers at a shelter in the border town of Nogales, Mexico, we examine how undocumented migrants are seeking, acquiring, understanding, and using information prior to, and during, migration across the United States–Mexico border. Our study examines migrants' perceptions of humanitarian service and the use of so-called “border disturbance technologies” by activists to help prevent the death of migrants in the desert, finding that migrants appreciate water-caching efforts but generally distrust technologies they feel could subject them to surveillance by border agents. Exploratory in nature and based on a small sample, our findings are not necessarily representative of the broader population, but provide rich evidence of the prevalence of word-of-mouth information seeking and use of cell phones over other information technologies, and explore the ambivalent nature of information technology use in the vulnerable setting of life at the border. In particular, we find that mobile phones help migrants meet their communication needs, but also increase their exposure to crime and abuse.

Mare Nostrum, or On Water Matters

This dialogue between two performance academics, whose childhood memories are intertwined with memories of the sea, aims to consider the role of performance as response to or reflection on the numerous deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea, while tracing echoes and resonances of the migration crisis in the Australian context.In the wake of the cessation in late 2014 of Italy’s European Commission-supported Operation Mare Nostrum migrant search-and-rescue programme, and with escalating numbers of deaths in the Mediterranean over recent months, theatre and performative protest interventions are occurring with greater frequency. We discuss two of the most prominent modes of representation and response. The first is the narrative or storytelling mode, based upon testimonies or fictionalized stories of survivors, rescuers and other witnesses to maritime migration. Works such as Anders Lustgarten’s Lampedusa (Soho, London 2015), and Case Farmakonisi, or The Trial of Water (Athens Festival, 2015) depend on narrative imagination and the ability of audience members to envisage the invisible, to witness the unknowable.The second is what we call the ‘synecdoche’ mode, which uses techniques of protest and site-responsive installation art across Europe, employing visual and embodied grammars to trigger affective engagement in public places. Works such as Die Toten Kommen [The Dead are Coming] (summer 2015) by activist collective Center for Political Beauty raise a key dilemma that our dialogue also begins to probe: amidst this most urgent of contemporary crises, what is that we look to performance and activism for (ethically, aesthetically and politically)? Why is it important that migrants’ deaths occur under the watch of a community of European nations whose maritime technologies have, over the last five centuries, directly enabled the extensive exploitation of lands and peoples outside Europe? What may be the structural and psychological explanations for a collective failure of empathy (not just mere concern or compassion) by those of us who do not know what it means to be abjectly ‘at sea’ in a neoliberal world? What does performance that sits at the border of our earth-bound existence and the infinite sea—‘mare nostrum’ with its many unknowns—invite us to perceive, and what does it permit us to ignore?

Neoliberalism confronts Latinos: Paradigmatic shifts in immigration practices

How has the proliferation of neoliberal ideas altered undocumented immigration policy? I argue three neoliberal principles – privatization, efficiency and personal responsibility – have impacted the implementation of American immigration policy, increasing the detention, abuse, and death of undocumented migrants. This change disproportionately affects Latinos, as they are more likely to either know an undocumented person, or be one themselves. Using an historical structural approach, this work problematizes the inevitability of privatization, discusses the influence of efficiency on the record number of deportations, and criticizes the principle of personal responsibility using the deaths of migrants at the border and in detention. This work is of special importance for Latinos as they disproportionately bear repression, abuse and death at the hands of a neoliberal immigration system.

MODERN TRENDS OF EUROPEAN UNION’S MIGRATION POLICY

Background research consists in exacerbating migration crisis in Europe, accompanied by many thousands of illegal border crossings of the EU, the death of migrants suffering a disaster in the Mediterranean Sea while trying to reach European coast, as well as changes in the asylum system. The subject of research is the migration policy of the European Union, reacting to new threats and challenges of the migration crisis. The aim of the article is to examine the decisions taken by the EU institutions and documents, as well as analysis of joint international activities of EU Member States in solving the current migration problems. Method of research is a theoretical analysis of the effect of migration on the economic and social life of the EU; comparative method for estimating the effectiveness of the European countries documents aimed to resolve migration problems. The results showed that the EU’s migration policy has achieved some significant results, such as the solution of the problem on rescue of migrants in distress in the Mediterranean Sea, or the security of the external borders of the EU. But in general, it should be noted, low efficiency and productivity of EU migration policy, which is associated with a number of economic, political and geopolitical factors. Field of application results. The results can serve as a basis for further development and improvement of the immigration policy of the EU.

Deaths, Visibility, and Responsibility: The Politics of Mourning at the US-Mexico Border

Between 200 and 500 people have died every year along the United States-Mexico border since the late-1990s. The void of responsibility for migrant deaths is exemplified by the lack of care for and visibility of these bodies during the processes of recovery, identification, and burial. Many of the bodies, mostly those unidentified, are buried in cemeteries, potter’s fields, or even private ranches near the United States-Mexico border, often far removed from the public eye and with limited possibilities for identification by their relatives. Activists and migrant rights organizations try to fill the voids and pressure for state accountability by politicizing the remains of the dead migrants, and by challenging the boundaries of grievability. Interventions like these can be understood as a disturbance of a consensus, a politics of dissensus in Jacques Rancière’s sense.

Bringing the Dead Back into Society: An Interview with Mercedes Doretti

The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (Equipo Argentino de Antropologia Forense, EAAF) was one of the world’s first professional war crimes exhumation groups to produce evidence against governments and military personnel involved in human rights violations. In 2009, cofounder Mercedes Doretti expanded the EAAF’s work by establishing the Border Project in response to the large number of cases of disappeared migrants along the migrant trail from Central America to the United States, exposing the full extent of migrant deaths and disappearances in the region. In this interview, Doretti addresses the role of forensics in processes of mourning, the difficult question of the rights of the dead, and the ethical and political aspects of the EAAF’s work that can exceed the original mandate of providing scientific evidence and identification.

Debating Human Rights, by Daniel P.L. Chong

Reviewed by : Gillian McFadyen, Aberystwyth UniversitySince beginning of 2015 alone, international news has been dominated by debates on human rights, be it migrant deaths on Mediterranean sea, threat of Boko Haram and Islamic State to regions in Africa and Middle East, attacks on right to freedom of speech and freedom of religion as in case of Charlie Hebdo and Bangladeshi bloggers, or recent and vote on gay marriage in Ireland. Human rights are continuously being challenged, debated, and in many instances, threatened. Although we are heading into seventh decade since signing of Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948, human rights remain a contentious issue within international politics.Accordingly, Daniel P.L. Chong's Debating Human Rights is a welcome intervention. The ethos of book is to challenge dialogue surrounding human rights by offering critical and creative engagement with how we understand, implement, and uphold them. Chong reminds us that the boundaries of what we call 'human rights' are still shifting and open to interpretation (242). Through his work, he challenges traditional approach and aims to create new spaces to debate.The book is divided into four parts: global human rights system; civil and political rights; economic and social rights; and a concluding part on advancing human rights through debate. Across these four parts, Chong has written 14 chapters, allowing book to cover a wide array of content that is historical, theoretical, and empirical in nature. The first seven chapters address global human rights system and provide reader with a brief overview of main histories, institutions, philosophies, and responsibilities within human rights debates. Part two, on civil and political rights, has four chapters that treat in depth a key human rights debate. One chapter is dedicated to terrorism, one to freedom of speech, one to right to an abortion, and one to female circumcision. Part three, on economic and social rights, includes chapters dedicated to food, housing and health care, transnational corporations, right to health, and a final discussion on states and foreign aid. The concluding part raises a call to advance human rights through debate (241). The disputes surrounding human rights are still as important, 70 years on from UDHR, and Chong emphasizes that many roadblocks to progress remain; thus need to continue debating human rights.Each chapter provides an introduction to a human rights and then adopts two opposing arguments, which Chong describes as more than opinions; they are making theoretical and empirical claims about how world really works (3). In developing arguments, Chong tends to ground debates within standard international relations theories: realism, liberalism, and constructivism. …

Migrants and Refugees: Christian Faith and the Globalization of Solidarity

Abstract This article examines how Pope Francis's Evangelii Gauclium, WCC's Together towards Life, and Third Lausanne Congress' Cape Town Commitment bring out three interrelated and overlapping dimensions of mission. When viewed in age of migration, these include a threefold process of denunciation, annunciation, and promotion. Evangelii Gauclium speaks of denunciation of a globalization of indifference that has made us unresponsive to plight of migrant poor. Together towards Life speaks about annunriation of God of life through a renewed commitment to justice and peace. The Cape Town Commitment speaks about promotion of reign of Jesus' kingdom through love and service, especially for those like migrants who are poor and marginalized. Underneath collective vision of these three voices, a more fundamental migration urges churches to move from established institutional comfort zones into new territories of risk, vulnerability, and possibility. While divisions remain, new strategies are emerging to engage in a common faith, a common humanity, and a common care for those considered least and last in human community. ********** In spring of 2011, a group of sub-Saharan migrants departed by boat from Libya in hope of fleeing violence in their homeland and finding refuge on European shores. As they departed coast of Africa and headed north, they were intercepted by Italian authorities, who escorted their ship to a nearby port. En route, ship's rudder broke, boat drifted, and it crashed into rocks on nearby island of Lampedusa. Many of migrants jumped into water, but because they were unable to swim, many of them drowned. In recent years tiny island of Lampedusa has become almost synonymous with maritime disasters involving migrants and refugees. Newspaper headlines give us a window into scale of human tragedy: New Migrant Boat Disaster Off Lampedusa; (1) Die as Burning Boat Capsizes Off Italy; (2)700 Migrants Feared Dead in Mediterranean Shipwreck. (3) The International Organization of Migration estimates that in 2014, more than 3,000 migrants died in Mediterranean region in places like Lampedusa. Add to these more than 40,000 documented migrant deaths globally since year 2000--although actual numbers are most certainly higher than these official estimates--and loss of life comes into even sharper focus. (4) Stories abound from around world about migrants who die in deserts, freeze in mountains, suffocate in train boxcars, and drown in rivers and seas. The scope of issue has become so widespread, and its implications so far reaching, that some scholars have referred to our own times as the age of (5) Not only does migration affect sending communities, but it shapes contours of mission as well. As church seeks to be a voice of life at this time in history, it must continually ask, what is relationship between bad news associated with these events and good news of gospel? This article seeks to look at responses of various Christian communities to growing challenges posed by international migration. In particular it will look at Evangelii Gaudium (EG) by Pope Francis, Together towards Life (TTL) by World Council of Churches (WCC), and The Cape Town Commitment (CTC) by Lausanne Movement. These documents not only share common vision of reaching out to person of Christ in person of immigrant, but they also point to how migration is transforming our understanding of Christian faith, Christian discipleship, and Christian mission today. My argument here is that amidst growing fragmentation of society manifested in phenomenon of migration, heart of Christian message speaks of call to globalize solidarity, beginning with most vulnerable and neglected members of human community. …

Making Immigrants Visible in Lampedusa: Pope Francis, Migration, and the State

In July 2013, the recently elected Pope Francis chose Lampedusa for his first pastoral visit. A tiny island, part of the Sicilian region yet closer to Tunisia than to Italy, Lampedusa has at times become hyper-visible in the media and national discourses surrounding immigration while at other times it is ignored — part of Italy’s geographic and social margins. I trace stories of migration to Lampedusa through the objects and speech employed by Pope Francis. I examine the once discarded wooden migrant boats and their transformation into visible representations of migration. During the papal Mass, these sacred, liturgical objects born from trash became part of Pope Francis’ visual challenge to the invisibility of migrant deaths. I explore the genealogies of the liturgical objects used at Mass, specifically the altar, chalice, ambo, and ferula, to understand how discourses of migration and religion intersect to challenge Italian state practices of migration management.

James C. Hathaway and Michelle Foster. The Law of Refugee Status

issue of refugees is testing Europe's soul, the former prime minister of Italy, Enrico Letta, recently warned. As is often the case when souls are tested transnationally, international law with its limits and moving boundaries, and the wavering commitment of states towards its good faith implementation, seemingly offers a framework that is too weak to provide solutions. With increasing numbers of migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, old debates on asylum, jurisdiction, responsibility and burden sharing are intensifying. Yet while human tragedy is currently bringing refugee law and policy to the forefront of global attention, this is a field that remains a lesser stepchild of international law. The claims made by migrants seeking protection under the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (Refugee Convention) have created a staggering body of state practice emerging from the interpretation by national courts of what is the earliest universal human rights treaty. The first edition of James Hathaway's The Law of Refugee Status, alongside Guy Goodwin-Gill and Jane McAdam's The Refugee in International Law, is one of the essential texts on every refugee lawyer's bookshelf. Now in its second edition, co-authored by Hathaway and Michelle Foster, The Law of Refugee Status is likely to maintain its standing. The authors acknowledge that, apart from its analytical framework, their book bears little resemblance to its predecessor. The dramatically revised second edition of The Law of Refugee Status provides a marker of the broader transformation in international law that has occurred in the twenty-three years between the two editions. Most central among the developments in the intervening period is the role of national courts, as they have increasingly been called upon to interpret international norms and treaties. The emerging body of jurisprudence, while not authoritative outside the respective national jurisdictions

Material Interventions on the US-Mexico Border: Investigating a Sited Politics of Migrant Solidarity

As changing border enforcement policies reshape patterns of migrant traffic across the US–Mexico border, the rapid increase of migrant deaths along the border has led to the development of solidarity organizing that provides humanitarian aid and alters the physical environment of the most deadly migration corridor along the US–Mexico border. Through their presence in this space, volunteers working with the organization No More Deaths are drawn in by the power of the events that take place around them and that they themselves take part in. Based on 12 weeks of participatory research with No More Deaths, this article follows the trajectories of individual activists who have become enmeshed in a material context that demands their intervention. This description treats the border space as an autonomous site, imbued with seductive potential that allows it to disrupt or reconfigure individual conceptions of political agency.

Recognising Effective Legal Protection to People Smuggled at Sea, by Reviewing the EU Legal Framework on Human Trafficking and Solidarity between Member States

The death toll of migrants at sea is on the increase. The EU and its Member States are not addressing the situation by widening the EU legal framework on human trafficking to persons smuggled at sea. People smuggled at sea are extremely vulnerable at the hands of their smugglers and suffer serious abuse of their human rights from their journeys through the desert, on the boats and when they reach their final destination. They become victims of human trafficking and they should not be neglected anymore by the EU and its Member States. However, all EU proposals lack of concreteness as Member States do not want to support and host migrants at sea on their territories. They are reluctant to launch solidarity between each other as requested by the Lisbon Treaty and by doing this, they are indirectly responsible for the death of many migrants at sea and for the abuse of their human rights. This article proposes alternatives to explore that could change the situation if Member States show their willingness to cooperate with each other.

Responsibility, Emergency, Blame: Reporting on Migrant Deaths on the Mediterranean in the Council of Europe

In 2011, at least 1500 migrants perished in the Mediterranean en route to Europe. In one notable case, 63 of 72 passengers on a refugee dinghy died in the course of a 2-week drift. Despite communicating distress, they were left to die by passing military vessels and maritime authorities. This article analyzes the inquiry into this case conducted within the Council of Europe as a revealing instance of international human rights supervision. Through a focus on the practice of human rights reporting in instances of multiple institutional and moral failures, it shows how the rapporteur arrived at a politically acceptable account of who was responsible for the boat's tragedy. Distinguishing between the concepts of responsibility as duty and responsibility as guilt, the article considers the implications of privileging the former over the latter. It argues for a human rights practice that embraces a robust notion of responsibility that combines both.

Structural Violence and Migrant Deaths in Southern Arizona: Data from the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner, 1990–2013

This article analyzes numeric trends and demographic characteristics of undocumented border crossers (UBCs) who have perished in southern Arizona between 1990 and 2013 in the area covered by the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner (PCOME) in Tucson, Arizona. Of 2,413 UBC decedents investigated during this period, 95 percent died after 1999 and 65 percent after 2005. The rate of UBC deaths in the Tucson Border Patrol Sector has been consistently high, with an average of nearly 163 deaths investigated per year between 1999 and 2013. The increase in border enforcement during the mid-to-late 1990s, which led to a shifting of unauthorized migration flows into more desolate areas, coincided with an increase in migrant remains investigated by the PCOME. Despite a decrease in the number of unauthorized crossers traversing the area as measured by the number of Border Patrol apprehensions in the Tucson Sector, the number of remains examined for every 100,000 apprehensions nearly doubled between 2009 and 2011. These findings suggest that migrants are being forced to travel for longer periods of time through remote areas in an attempt to avoid detection by US authorities, thus increasing the probability of death. The typical UBC decedent can be described as a male near the age of 30 from central or southern Mexico who perished in a remote area of southern Arizona after attempting to cross into the United States. Nevertheless, the share of non-Mexican UBCs in the region has increased notably over time. The findings show other important differences in UBC decedent characteristics across time periods, which speak to the dynamic nature of unauthorized migration as a social process. The authors contend that these deaths and demographic changes are the result of structural and political transformations over the past two decades. They argue that the tragic, yet mostly preventable, migrant deaths in southern Arizona constitute a form of structural violence.

NAFTA’s Highway of Death

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsChristine KovicChristine Kovic is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Houston–Clear Lake. She has conducted research in Mexico and the United States in the field of human rights for the past 20 years. Her current research addresses the intersection of human rights and immigration, with emphasis on Central American migrants crossing Mexico in the journey north and on the human rights and organizing efforts of Latin@s in the United States. She supported the foundation of the South Texas Human Rights Center to promote policies, laws and practices to prevent migrant deaths in the context of border militarization (http://southtexashumanrights.org).books and arts