Chapter 1 Migrant Deaths: An International Overview
in the sea (Moorehead, 2014). In February 2013, 151 Tunisian families signed a petition to the EU asking for actions to be taken to trace their missing relatives and some travelled to Italy to encourage exchange of information between the Italian and Tunisian governments (ibid.).
1.7 Way forward: Better monitoring, data collection and analysis Better monitoring and collection of data on migrant deaths is not merely a technical challenge. To date, there has been a lack of political will across States to collect and share such data in a systematic fashion. National authorities have not given priority to collecting this data, given that the migrant death count is often perceived by civil society groups as an indication of the consequences of tougher border controls. Furthermore, the receiving States have not been under pressure to produce better information because irregular migrants usually attract little public sympathy, and an emotional distancing from the suffering of the victims leaves deaths less noticed. In a visit to Lampedusa, following the shipwreck on 3 October 2013, Pope Francis condemned what he called a “globalization of indifference” declaring the Global North cared little for the suffering of others. Irregular migrants may be seen as threats to social cohesion and national economies and as criminals and even potential terrorists.15 Dehumanization, write Weber and Pickering (2011:59), “produces exclusion, not only from a particular moral community, but also from all bonds of human empathy and protection.” The lives of those dying are in a way deemed less important (ibid.:62). Public demand for greater accountability is limited, and the political incentive for documenting border-related deaths is weak. Furthermore, political will to record deaths may be low as greater investigation into the lives of those who die carries implications for States to assume responsibility and, where necessary, be held accountable. As Caroline Moorehead notes: “To test for the identities of bodies washed up at sea would be to acknowledge a humanitarian dimension to the tragic lives of those forced to flee their own countries – even if the cause of flight is acute poverty” (Moorehead, 2014:70). 1.7.1 Who should be counting? Numbers are inherently political, particularly when there is a degree of uncertainty in them, as is the case with border-related deaths. This uncertainty is not only because information is often missing or non-verifiable, but because 36 15
For an example of how the media may play a role forming and perpetuating these attitudes, see: Esses, Medianu and Lawson, 2013.
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