Databases and the New Afterlives of the Dead by Migration
Bases de données et nouvelles vies des morts par migration
Résumé
The desire to “respect” and/or denounce European Union border deaths has led a number of
collectives - emanating in particular from civil society - to develop databases to find the graves of people who died during the crossing and to set up investigations with a view to their identification. During fieldwork carried out in Catania (Sicily), where around 260 bodies have been buried since 2015, and on the French-Italian lower border area between the provinces of Imperia and the department of the Alpes Maritimes, where we have recorded so far around forty migrants who died accidentally since 2015, we have observed the emergence of diverse forms of “connectedness” (Carsten 2000) with the dead. In this presentation we would like to raise a set of questions relating to this somewhat less visible (and maybe less public) dimension of the databases. What does the database do in the everyday lives of the persons involved in its construction/use (activists but mainly undertakers, civil registry employees, police agents, etc.)? How does it intervene in the relationship between the dead and the living? In so doing we propose an exploration of the ways in which the emotions that emerge upon contact with the database contribute to the visibilisation of border deaths, and to the production of new afterlives for the dead by migration.
Domaines
Sciences de l'Homme et Société
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