Over the past decade, images of boats crossing or sinking in the Mediterranean have become extremely familiar to European publics. What is less familiar is the processes through which those boats are re-purposed, becoming artistic or even commodified goods once they reach a port of landing. Caught between being considered waste and valuable objects, these debris have been moved and re-purposed with scarce acknowledgement of the political work that these practices perform. This paper argues that practices of translation transform objects into waste or valuables and reveal crucial fault lines in the politics of migration – such as the limits of a politics of posthumous commemoration and the de-politicisation of border deaths. Translation works through a wide variety of professional practices and the assembling of value, which informs the staging of materials as waste or as valuables. By analysing the case of the art installation Barca Nostra, this article rethinks the role of migratory debris and the multiplicity of meaning attributed to them by highlighting how they must be read simultaneously as waste and objects of value to fully understand how practices of translation contribute to the de-politicisation of border deaths, leaving state violence in the Mediterranean unchallenged.

(In)visibility is a central concept in debates on mobility and migration. It has been perceived as both resource and obstacle to transformative political practices. The aim of this article is to unpack how events tied to migration have been labelled simultaneously visible and invisible. This is not merely a contradiction but a sign of how knowledge about migration is produced in complex, multiple and contrasting ways. To assess these processes, however, scholars cannot rely on the language of (in)visibility as it comes short in articulating both the situatedness of processes of knowledge production and their multiplicity. This article proposes the language of ‘making present’ as an alternative, which enables us to track how different (in)visibilities have diverse political consequences. The conceptual contribution of the article is fleshed out by analysing two empirical cases: the construction of the Gateway to Europe and instances of migrant self-narration on the same site.