Thinking through the death of migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea: mourning and grief as relational and as sites for resistance

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the issue of the death of migrants and invites us to recognise bodily vulnerability and precariousness when confronted with the faceless and nameless dead migrant. It explores mourning and grief as a political relational act between strangers (us and the dead migrant) in very difficult moments. There is an obliteration of identity which is furthered by the responses of receiving countries, whose struggle with masses of need causes them to deny individual stories of suffering and to respond with the opening and closing of borders, a large-scale system response that means nothing to the individual migrant story. Westernised societies have developed a ‘forgetful memory.’ We turn to the work of Judith Butler to help us start thinking of the possibility of a relational theory based on Butler’s theory of grief and mourning.