Abstract:
Seeing, and seeing with, objects discarded by migrants
The dominant visuality of the border has for the past two decades been crowds of migrants in various formations: in boats and reception camps, at ports and fences. In 2013 fatality metrics became another dominant representation of the border when the International Organization for Migration (IOM) began publishing death numbers. Critical border activists had counted border deaths before, but the IOM ensured that the figures became a routine part of the daily news. The knowledge of the ongoingmass deaths at the borders of Europe triggered private rescue operations but also European governments’ attempts to prevent migrants from leaving Libyan shores. Knowing about the deaths nevertheless did not shock the European publics at large but arguably further sanitised the violence of the border and distanced the European spectator from the suffering migrant. For many, dying has become a normalised condition of the bordering of Europe.
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