A Contested Crisis: Policy Narratives and Empirical Evidence on Border Deaths in the Mediterranean

Abstract

Death and suffering of migrants at Europe's Mediterranean Sea border has become one of the defining moral and political issues of our time. While humanitarian organisations argue that deaths result from Europe's policy of exclusion and closure, those employing a deterrenceoriented narrative have argued for even stricter border controls. Perhaps because of its contentious nature, the debate is often devoid of systematic information on the drivers and dynamics of border deaths. This study contributes to our understanding of border deaths in the Mediterranean region in three ways: it describes and evaluates recent data sources on migration and mortality; it provides a descriptive statistical analysis of absolute and relative mortality risks between 2010 and 2016; and it assesses the relationship between European border policy and border deaths. Our findings challenge the dominant deterrence-oriented policy narrative and highlight the failure of European authorities to address the ongoing humanitarian crisis.

Guilt by association? The criminalisation of sea rescue NGOs in Italian media

“…In October 2014, the Italian Navy maritime rescue mission Mare Nostrum was replaced by the EU-funded European Border and Coast Guard (still known as Frontex) operation Triton, which had a much narrower mandate and operational area. In May 2015, the European Council also launched the military operation EUNAVFOR Med, focused on disrupting human smuggling (Baldwin-Edwards and Lutterbeck 2019; Perkowsky and Squire 2019;Steinhilper and Gruijters 2018).…”

Narratives in power and policy design: the case of border management and external migration controls in Italy

“…In the literature on migration, whereas narratives have been extensively discussed (e.g., Boswell et al, 2011;Greussing & Boomgaarden, 2017;Steinhilper & Grujters, 2018;D'Amato & Lucarelli, 2019), few studies have applied the NPF (e.g., McBeth & Lybecker, 2018). In developing a research framework to study the role of narratives in migration policy-making, Boswell et al (2011) conceptualize them as made of three components: (i) a set of claims about the policy issue to be addressed; (ii) a set of claims about the causes of the issue; and (iii) a set of claims about how the identified policy measures will solve the issue.…”

“…Even the operation Mare Nostrum 3 has been considered to be a contributory factor to the increase in the number of landings (Presidency of the Council of Ministers & Ministry of the Interior, 2017). However, there is no empirical evidence supporting the argument of the 'pull factor' (Heller & Pezzani, 2017;Steinhilper & Grujters, 2018).…”

“…This article aims at sharpening existing theoretical and conceptual tools to expand our empirical understanding of the role of narratives in policy design. Investigating the relationship between narratives and policy design is particularly relevant in the field of migration, in that the development of migration policies-and the related policy instruments-often builds upon arguments that are not always grounded in evidence about causeand-effect relationships (Cornelius & Salehyan, 2007;Heller & Pezzani, 2017;Steinhilper & Grujters, 2018;Cusumano & Villa, 2020;Zaun & Nantermoz, 2021).…”

Death and Migration: Migrant Journeys and the Governance of Migration During Europe’s “Migration Crisis”

“…In 2015, for every 53 people who crossed via the Central Mediterranean route, one died on the way across that same stretch of sea (Crawley and Sigona 2016). In the following years, despite a decline in arrivals, the sea journey became even deadlier, with the mortality rate rising from 0.3 percent in 2015 to 2.1 percent in August 2018 (IOM n.d;Steinhilper and Gruijters 2018).…”