Border Deaths


Book Description

Border deaths are a result of dynamics involving diverse actors, and can be interpreted and represented in various ways. Critical voices from civil society (including academia) hold states responsible for making safe journeys impossible for large parts of the world population. Meanwhile, policy-makers argue that border deaths demonstrate the need for restrictive border policies. Statistics are widely (mis)used to support different readings of border deaths. However, the way data is collected, analysed, and disseminated remains largely unquestioned. Similarly, little is known about how bodies are treated, and about the different ways in which the dead - also including the missing and the unidentified - are mourned by familiars and strangers. New concepts and perspectives contribute to highlighting the political nature of border deaths and finding ways to move forward. The chapters of this collection, co-authored by researchers and practitioners, provide the first interdisciplinary overview of this contested field.




Forensic Science and Humanitarian Action


Book Description

Widens traditional concepts of forensic science to include humanitarian, social, and cultural aspects Using the preservation of the dignity of the deceased as its foundation, Forensic Science and Humanitarian Action: Interacting with the Dead and the Living is a unique examination of the applications of humanitarian forensic science. Spanning two comprehensive volumes, the text is sufficiently detailed for forensic practitioners, yet accessible enough for non-specialists, and discusses both the latest technologies and real-world interactions. Arranged into five sections, this book addresses the ‘management of the dead’ across five major areas in humanitarian forensic science. Volume One presents the first three of these areas: History, Theory, Practice, and Legal Foundation; Basic Forensic Information to Trace Missing Persons; and Stable Isotopes Forensics. Topics covered include: Protection of The Missing and the Dead Under International Law Social, Cultural and Religious Factors in Humanitarian Forensic Science Posthumous Dignity and the Importance in Returning Remains of the Deceased The New Disappeared – Migration and Forensic Science Stable Isotope Analysis in Forensic Anthropology Volume Two covers two further areas of interest: DNA Analysis and the Forensic Identification Process. It concludes with a comprehensive set of case studies focused on identifying the deceased, and finding missing persons from around the globe, including: Forensic Human Identification from an Australian Perspective Skeletal Remains and Identification Processing at the FBI Migrant Deaths along the Texas/Mexico Border Humanitarian Work in Cyprus by The Committee on Missing Persons (CMP) Volcán De Fuego Eruption – Natural Disaster Response from Guatemala Drawing upon a wide range of contributions from respected academics working in the field, Forensic Science and Humanitarian Action is a unique reference for forensic practitioners, communities of humanitarian workers, human rights defenders, and government and non-governmental officials.




Europe's Migration Crisis


Book Description

Rejecting the assumption that migration is a 'crisis' for Europe, Squire explores alternative responses which provide openings for a renewed humanism.




Fatal Journeys, Identification and Tracing of Dead and Missing Migrants


Book Description

The second volume in IOM's series on migrant deaths, Fatal Journeys has two main objectives. First, it provides an update of global trends in migrant fatalities since 2014. Data on the number and profile of dead and missing migrants are presented for different regions of the world, drawing upon the data collected through IOM's Missing Migrants Project. Second, the report examines the challenges facing families and authorities seeking to identify and trace missing migrants. The study compares practices in different parts of the world, and identifies a number of innovative measures that could potentially be replicated elsewhere.




Migrant Deaths in the Arizona Desert


Book Description

Migrant Deaths in the Arizona Desert addresses the tragic results of government policies on immigration. The book's central question is why are migrants dying on our border? The authors constitute a multidisciplinary group reflecting on the issues of death, migration, and policy.




Deported to Death


Book Description

What happens to migrants after they are deported from the United States and dropped off at the Mexican border, often hundreds if not thousands of miles from their hometowns? In this eye-opening work, Jeremy Slack foregrounds the voices and experiences of Mexican deportees, who frequently become targets of extreme forms of violence, including migrant massacres, upon their return to Mexico. Navigating the complex world of the border, Slack investigates how the high-profile drug war has led to more than two hundred thousand deaths in Mexico, and how many deportees, stranded and vulnerable in unfamiliar cities, have become fodder for drug cartel struggles. Like no other book before it, Deported to Death reshapes debates on the long-term impact of border enforcement and illustrates the complex decisions migrants must make about whether to attempt the return to an often dangerous life in Mexico or face increasingly harsh punishment in the United States.




Border Deaths at Sea under the Right to Life in the European Convention on Human Rights


Book Description

This book focuses on border deaths at sea. It unravels how the interplay of the law of the sea and rules on jurisdiction widen the opportunity for states to make and enforce rules outside their territory, and questions whether this is also accompanied with an obligation to respect the right to life under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) when doing so. By embarking upon the challenge of analysing a cross-border phenomenon in which direct encounters between state agents and the victims are few through the lens of legal obligations, the book unearths avenues for arguing that the ECHR is applicable to border deaths on the high seas and showcases the Court’s creativity in bridging the gap between the Convention and people in need of protection. Furthermore, it demonstrates that the ECHR is applicable to border deaths occurring within the territorial seas of states. It discusses the right to life, as well as the specific obligations of states in respect to border deaths at sea, and demonstrates that in many instances, EU policies fall short of the standards set under the right to life. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners in migrant rights, international human rights law, public international law including, refugee and migration law, maritime law, and security studies.




Violent Borders


Book Description

This engaging analysis of the refugee crisis explores how borders are formed, policed—and used to inflict violence on the poor. “In an era of terrorism, global inequality, and rising political tension over migration, Jones argues that tight border controls make the world worse, not better.” —Boston Globe Forty thousand people have died trying to cross between countries in the past decade, and yet international borders only continue to harden. The United Kingdom has voted to leave the European Union; the United States elected a president who campaigned on building a wall; while elsewhere, the popularity of right-wing antimigrant nationalist political parties is surging. Reece Jones argues that the West has helped bring about the deaths of countless migrants, as states attempt to contain populations and limit access to resources and opportunities. “We may live in an era of globalization,” he writes, “but much of the world is increasingly focused on limiting the free movement of people.” In Violent Borders, Jones crosses the migrant trails of the world, documenting the billions of dollars spent on border security projects and the dire consequences for countless millions. While the poor are restricted by the lottery of birth to slum dwellings in the ailing decolonized world, the wealthy travel without constraint, exploiting pools of cheap labor and lax environmental regulations. With the growth of borders and resource enclosures, the deaths of migrants in search of a better life are intimately connected to climate change, environmental degradation, and the growth of global wealth inequality.




Crossing with the Virgin


Book Description

Over the past ten years, more than 4,000 people have died while crossing the Arizona desert to find jobs, join families, or start new lives. Other migrants tell of the corpses they pass—bodies that are never recovered or counted. Crossing With the Virgin collects stories heard from migrants about these treacherous treks—firsthand accounts told to volunteers for the Samaritans, a humanitarian group that seeks to prevent such unnecessary deaths by providing these travelers with medical aid, water, and food. Other books have dealt with border crossing; this is the first to share stories of immigrant suffering at its worst told by migrants encountered on desert trails. The Samaritans write about their encounters to show what takes place on a daily basis along the border: confrontations with Border Patrol agents at checkpoints reminiscent of wartime; children who die in their parents’ desperate bid to reunite families; migrants terrorized by bandits; and hovering ghost-like above nearly every crossing, the ever-present threat of death. These thirty-nine stories are about the migrants, but they also tell how each individual author became involved with this work. As such, they offer not only a window into the migrants’ plight but also a look at the challenges faced by volunteers in sometimes compromising situations—and at their own humanizing process. Crossing With the Virgin raises important questions about underlying assumptions and basic operations of border enforcement, helping readers see past political positions to view migrants as human beings. It will touch your heart as surely as it reassures you that there are people who still care about their fellow man.




OD


Book Description

The history of an unnatural disaster—drug overdose—and the emergence of naloxone as a social and technological solution. For years, drug overdose was unmentionable in polite society. OD was understood to be something that took place in dark alleys—an ugly death awaiting social deviants—neither scientifically nor clinically interesting. But over the last several years, overdose prevention has become the unlikely object of a social movement, powered by the miracle drug naloxone. In OD, Nancy Campbell charts the emergence of naloxone as a technological fix for overdose and describes the remaking of overdose into an experience recognized as common, predictable, patterned—and, above all, preventable. Naloxone, which made resuscitation, rescue, and “reversal” after an overdose possible, became a tool for shifting law, policy, clinical medicine, and science toward harm reduction. Liberated from emergency room protocols and distributed in take-home kits to non-medical professionals, it also became a tool of empowerment. After recounting the prehistory of naloxone—the early treatment of OD as a problem of poisoning, the development of nalorphine (naloxone's predecessor), the idea of “reanimatology”—Campbell describes how naloxone emerged as a tool of harm reduction. She reports on naloxone use in far-flung locations that include post-Thatcherite Britain, rural New Mexico, and cities and towns in Massachusetts. Drawing on interviews with approximately sixty advocates, drug users, former users, friends, families, witnesses, clinicians, and scientists—whom she calls the “protagonists” of her story—Campbell tells a story of saving lives amid the complex, difficult conditions of an unfolding unnatural disaster.