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

Abstract

The non-governmental organizations (NGOs) rescuing migrants off the coast of Libya have been increasingly criminalised. We investigate the discursive underpinnings of this process by analyzing all the articles on sea rescue NGOs published between 2014 and 2019 by two major Italian newspapers located at opposite sides of the political spectrum: Il Giornale and La Repubblica. Our discourse analysis shows that the media salience of non-governmental sea rescue increased enormously following the first public allegations against humanitarians and peaked in 2019 after some standoffs between some NGOs and the Italian government, when the number of migrants rescued at sea had already dropped to a minimum. This inflated and heavily politicised media coverage contains both direct and indirect criminalisation discourses. Though sometimes directly accused of colluding with human smugglers and profiting from irregular migration, sea rescue NGOs have more often been indirectly criminalised through the same framing devices typically used to stigmatise irregular mobility at large, namely associational links, metaphors, frame-jacking, and othering.

A People’s Sea: Palestine and Popular Thalassopolitics in the Mediterranean Sea

“…41 Criminalization, of course, necessitates a first step: framing humanitarian actors as 'criminals, extremists or merely foreigners'. 42 State externalization of control creates extraterritorial zones of abandonment and thanatopolitics when coupled with the expansion of media technology where human rights are blurred. 43 The legal fluidity and the distance of maritime space from the loci of collective awareness have constructed 'a thousand little Guantanamo' spaces where states can act without constraints mandated by courts, international and national law, human rights protection groups, and the public.…”

Saving migrants’ lives at sea: Improving search and rescue operations

“…Humanitarian organizations at sea have also been stigmatized by policymakers and media for assisting smuggling activities-although these charges have been dismissed at court processes-constituting another challenge for them to conduct SAR activities (Cusumano & Villa, 2021). The media's framing of their SAR operations is also linked to the political stance related to migratory arrivals (Cusumano & Bell, 2021).…”

“…• Framing of SAR activities performed by humanitarian organizations within the media is linked to political considerations (Cusumano & Bell, 2021). No evidence of a "pull factor" related to humanitarian organizations' operations at sea (e.g, Cusumano & Villa, 2019).…”

“…Meanwhile, the study by Cusumano and Villa (2019) investigated whether the SAR activities conducted by humanitarian organizations acted as a “pull factor” in the Central Mediterranean. It found no evidence for this case, and instead identified weather conditions and Libya's political instability as the main drivers for the crossings.…”

“…To date, the literature on SAR has mostly focused on the allocation of resources to specific operational procedures (e.g., Basdemir, 2000;Razi & Karatas, 2016). Meanwhile, studies on MBS in general, and the Mediterranean Sea case Production and Operations Management in particular, have concentrated on aspects ranging from the impact of MBS on tourism (Pappas & Papatheodorou, 2017), humanitarian organizations' SAR operations (Cusumano, 2017a(Cusumano, , 2017b(Cusumano, , 2018, whether these operations increase the attempted crossings (Cusumano & Villa, 2019), and the implications of migratory policies on the migrants' journeys (Squire et al, 2017).…”