Does bare life become bare bodies upon Death? On the biopolitics of migrant deaths in the Mediterranean and drawing of lines between mournable and unmournable psychosocial bodies

Eda, Luke

Abstract

Starting from the premise that dead bodies are beyond the reach of sovereign power and power has a grip on it only in statistical terms (Foucault, 2003), dead bodies in migration whether Alan Kurdi’s or Valeria Martínez and father’s indicate the powerful symbolism and cultural cosmologies that transnational migrant dying carries that often comes back to haunt societies. Drawing upon Giorgio Agamben’s biopolitical concept of ‘bare life’ (Agamben, 1998), Judith Butler’s concept of ‘grievability’ (Butler, 2004) and Bauman’s concept of ‘wasted lives’ (Bauman, 2004), this paper reflects on the contemporary politics of inclusion and exclusion in the nation-state system founded on doctrines of nationalism (Arendt, 1958) and how life that counts and those that do not count in the registry of states also determines the hierarchy of bodies that counts as mournable and those ‘unmournable’ upon death (Teju Cole, 2015). Using the left-to-die boat case in which 63 migrants died in the Mediterranean as an explication tool, the paper asks if the bodies of people who were perhaps administered and governed as bare lives in life by sovereign power translates into bare bodies upon death such as to explain, at least in part, the drawing of lines between mournable and unmournable bodies within the power relations structure of sovereign states. Building on (Verdery, 2000; Mountz, 2015), the paper argues that sovereign power failing to recognise the life of some people as liveable in their lifetime prevents the recognition of their bodies as mournable bodies upon death. Such poignant reality points to the fact that our human empathy towards unmournable bodies has limits and it indicates the existence of a hierarchy of values we place on human beings both in life and in death based on some factors such as colour, race, class, nationality and the likes. The paper highlights the significant connection between contemporary migration governance/policies of many states across the world and the treatment of migrants depicted as the embodiment of bare life fated to the juridical status “killable” while still living and bare migrant bodies fated to the status “unmournable” when they are lost in migration.

• Presentation Conference Type: Presentation / Talk
• Conference Name: Association of Pyschosocial Studies (APS) International Conference
• Start Date: Jul 9, 2021
• End Date: Jul 10, 2021
• Deposit Date: Dec 9, 2022
• Keywords: Missing Migrants, Psychosocial Bodies, Mournable and Unmournable Bodies, Biopolitics, Migration Policy
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/10230021
• Related Public URLs: https://www.psychosocial-studies-association.org/aps-2021-conference-2/