Syrians´ Sea Migration to Europe: ´´I Carved out My Chest to Remove My Heart and Replace It with a Stone. That Is How I Make Decision to Take the Boat´´

As the Mediterranean Sea has been recognised as the deadliest migration route in the world, ongoing journeys raise questions about the risk perceptions held by refugees and other migrants who took the journey or planned to do so. Based on narrative interviews with Syrians settled in Sweden, this study delves into their post-factum reflections on the migration decision-making process. It examines how private risk perception, stemming from participants' experiences in the world, interfered with expert risk assessment based on universal calculative methods. Although the latter logic might not support the decision that the participants made, their choice had their own rationality—it was deemed reasonable given the circumstances.

However, the decision deemed reasonable was not sufficient to alleviate anxiety in the face of risks with potentially deadly outcomes. Therefore, the participants drew on both material and non-material strategies to comprehend and manage risk. In particular, this study demonstrates the interplay between mundane and spiritual risk management strategies. It showed that spirituality was neither a last resort on which migrants unquestionably relied, nor a blinding force that hindered their rational reflection techniques. Rather, spirituality is embedded in rational cognitive practices. The latter form a basis for migration decisions, while spirituality has an auxiliary function