Lethal borders. Moralities of violent death in the Spanish-Moroccan borderland.

Since the mid-1980s, migrants from North African and sub-Saharan countries have irregularly crossed the Strait of Gibraltar in the hope of a better future for themselves and their families. Travelling in small, poorly equipped boats without experienced captains has cost the lives of myriad bordercrossers. My dissertation focuses on those who died while crossing and addresses the people who are involved in border related deaths. The presence of a dead body and the simultaneous absence of the dead person, due to a missing identification, the lack of a proper funeral, and the deprivation of the deceased’s rights, indicate the precarious status of the dead. To illuminate this precarious status the study seeks to scrutinize ethical reflections, doubts, reasoning, and conflicts as well as diverse and diffuse feelings of people confronted with and affected by the dead. The presence of a body or the personal belongings of the unknown dead provokes ambivalent feelings and influences the whereabouts of the bodies, which in turn reveals and unsettles values and norms of the contemporary social world we live in. This project seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the moral constitution in the EU border policies and the political impact of forestalled or exposed mourning and grief of the survivors.