Counting Migrants’ Deaths at the Border: From Civil Society Counterstatistics to (Inter)Governmental Recuperation

Abstract

Migrant deaths in border-zones have become a major social and political issue, especially in the context of the Euro-Mediterranean refugee/migrant crisis. While media, activists, and policy makers often mention precise figures regarding the number of deaths, little is known about the production of statistical data on this topic. This article explores the politics of counting migrant deaths in Europe. This statistical activity was initiated in the 1990s by civil society organizations with the purpose of shedding light on the deadly consequences of “Fortress Europe” and of challenging states’ control-oriented political strategies. In 2013, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) started to count migrants’ deaths: while this intergovernmental organization seems to follow up on civil society initiatives, it actually works with different political objectives. Rather than criticizing states, IOM aims at conciliating the control of irregular migration with the prevention of deaths. IOM’s statistics on border deaths illustrate the humanitarianization of the border, as denunciation of migrants’ deaths and life-saving activities become integrated in border management and border control. In producing statistics on border deaths, IOM depoliticizes this data and challenges the critical framework that was central to earlier civil society initiatives. Finally, the article explores ways in which statistics on border deaths are being repoliticized to challenge European states’ immigration policies.

Commemorating the deadly other side of externalized borders through “migrant-martyrs”, sacrifices and politizations of (irregular) migration on the international migrants' day in Mali

“…Usually, the appropriate procedure for a burial is to wait until twenty-four hours after the death. In the case of death at sea or high costs of repatriation of the body, the burial time limit of twenty-four hours is rarely respected (Baron, 2015;Heller & Pécoud, 2018;Schmoll, Thiollet, & Wihtol de Wenden, 2015). Thousands of anonymous deaths have not received a proper Muslim funerary rite.…”

Regards croisés sur la migration de retour

“…Ces programmes jouent également un rôle dans notre appréhension de l'échelle du phénomène : en effet, le manque de données chiffrées sur la migration de retour, surtout dans des contextes où la production de données migratoires n'était pas une priorité, amène souvent à décrire le phénomène à partir des chiffres de ces retours encadrés par des politiques, disponibles auprès d'organisations comme l'OIM. Cette dernière a certainement contribué à rendre ce phénomène plus visible -comme elle l'a fait pour d'autres phénomènes comme les morts aux frontières (Heller, Pécoud, 2019)et, ce faisant, à imposer l'image du migrant de retour « super entrepreneur » (Naudé, Siegel, Marchand, 2017) qui ne correspond cependant pas à la majorité des profils de retournés. Lorsque des enquêtes spécialisées sur la migration de retour enregistrent le fait d'avoir été aidé par un programme, on se rend alors compte de la faible proportion de ces cas par rapport à l'ensemble des migrants de retour : dans l'enquête TEMPER Sénégal, moins de 7 % des 600 migrants de retour de France ou d'Espagne interrogés avaient bénéficié d'un tel programme, tandis que dans l'enquête ECM2, seuls 26 % des migrants équatoriens de retour d'Espagne ayant cherché un appui avaient bénéficié d'une telle aide.…”

Death at the Border: Revisiting the Debate in Light of the Euro-Mediterranean Migration Crisis

“…Despite the ongoing interest, there remains considerable uncertainties concerning the numbers of victims, not to mention other important issues, like, for example, the differences in mortality rates of the different routes followed by the migrants (Steinhilper & Gruijters, 2018). As Heller and Pécoud (2019) show, such lack of data is connected to political indifference: States do not collect data on border deaths because they are largely unconcerned, or because they prefer silencing a reality that would question their border control practices. It was therefore up to civil society organizations to monitor and count border deaths, often with very little resources and with the objective of forcing states to admit the existence of these casualties and to amend their immigration policies.…”