Managing Migrant Border Deaths in Southern Italy: Medico-Legal, Ritual and Burial Practices

Abstract This chapter addresses the pressing contemporary political and social issue of migrant death as a result dangerous irregular migration routes across Mediterranean, local provision for dead in southern Italy. Drawing on concept bordering (non)grievability, it details evolving Italian governance responses to border dead. It goes examine mortuary burial practices, with particular attention their visibility, roles state, municipalities, clergy residents. Its contrasts initial integration within cemeteries subsequent dedicated sections or grounds, showing how each these tactics can serve make socially politically invisible, through poor documentation burials, immobilizing assimilation cemeteries, marginalization peripheral grounds