Border Deaths and Disappearances: How Intimate Memorializing Practices Challenge State Neglect

In the Mediterranean region, the European border regime causes thousands of deaths and disappearances, which are often unacknowledged by official institutions that fail to take responsibility. This leaves families of deceased and missing migrants in a state of struggle. Some families manage to learn what happened to their loved ones and perform funeral rites, often without support from authorities. Others, however, remain in a state of uncertainty, unable to determine whether their relatives are alive or dead, forcing them to live with the ambiguity of considering their loved ones as missing.

This presentation is based on fieldwork conducted in Morocco with families of deceased and disappeared Moroccan migrants. It explores the private lives of family members of dead and missing migrants, examining intimate practices of memory. On one hand, I will discuss personal practices of commemorating death, focusing on the experience of a family whose relative died while attempting to reach Europe. On the other hand, I will delve into both intimate and public practices of remembering disappearance, looking at the experience of a family whose relative disappeared after leaving in a zodiac.

In both cases, families create personal and collective rituals to cope with border-related deaths and disappearances. These rituals shape intimate and social discourses about these phenomena, highlighting how the state neglects their plight. In cases of disappearance, such practices notably give the missing material and social presence, challenging the oblivion to which the state has consigned them. This presence transcends the private sphere, allowing the politicization of the right to dignified death and mourning. Indeed, by examining memorializing practices in border-related deaths and disappearances in Morocco, this presentation underscores the political significance of intimate and social rituals in the face of state neglect.