Ecologies of Remembrance: The Material Afterlives of Unidentified Death
Wednesday, September 11, 2019 - Thursday, September 12, 2019The news media around the Mediterranean are frequently dominated by the aftermath of maritime disasters in which dozens, sometimes hundreds of migrants die on the perilous crossing to southern Italy from North Africa. Whilst migrant death is a recurring subject in academic study and journalism, scarcely any research is carried out on the ground into the material and symbolic treatment of unidentified human remains. Yet the social afterlife of human remains is of immense importance in the case of migrant deaths because of the ways in which they bring into focus the webs of relations in which migrants are caught, bringing together transnational kinship networks, local landscapes, local communities and solidarity groups and wider political motivations and actions.