Abstract
The tragic shipwreck off the island of Lampedusa on 3 October 2013 spurred the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to take up the issue of border deaths by setting up the Missing Migrants Project (MMP), which compiles and monitors data on border deaths worldwide. By the summer of 2015, the project was online and increasingly cited as the source of data on border deaths. This chapter provides a critical analysis of the MMP and the IOM’s emergence as an authority on border deaths. It argues that taking up the issue of border deaths and incorporating it into the main tasks of the IOM’s new Global Migration Data Analysis Centre, as well as IOM Country Offices, has aided the IOM in presenting itself as both a technical and humanitarian actor. This has helped the IOM in gaining political legitimacy and in strengthening its position as the leading global player in the field of migration and border management. The chapter aims, firstly, to raise the question of how the MMP, while not being an official death count, has become a leading authority on border death data. Secondly, the chapter asks how the IOM presented the MMP to the public and stakeholders. Thirdly, the chapter critically analyses the IOM’s ‘neutral’ politics of counting.
Paolo Cuttitta’s and Tamara Last’s contribution to this chapter was carried out as part of the research project ‘Border Policies and Sovereignty: Human Rights
and the Right to Life of Irregular Migrants’ led by Thomas Spijkerboer and funded by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO) through a VICI grant (number 453-12-004). The authors would like to thank Theodore Baird for useful comments and suggestions.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Tamara Last was the co-author of the Mediterranean chapter of the first Fatal Journeys report edited by the IOM and an invited expert at the first, second, and fourth workshops on deceased migrants convened by the IOM.
- 2.
Framing refers to the use of a discourse which ‘names, interprets, and dramatizes’ particular social issues (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, 897). Frames are mobilised through persuasive forms of communication in order to achieve certain ends. Framing is considered ‘an essential component of norm entrepreneurs’ political strategies, since, when they are successful, the new frames resonate with broader public understandings and are adopted as new ways of talking about and understanding issues’ (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998, 897). Actors resort to frames to secure their own interests or maintain a powerful status (Payne 2001).
- 3.
Interview with Tara Brian (Research Officer at the IOM Regional Office for the Middle East and North Africa, Cairo, formerly at the IOM Migration Research Division, Geneva), Skype, 6 July 2017.
- 4.
Interview with Tara Brian, Skype, 6 July 2017.
- 5.
E-mail Frank Laczko (Head of the IOM Migration Research Division), 4 February 2015.
- 6.
Interview with Tara Brian, Skype, 6 July 2017.
- 7.
- 8.
One of the objectives of IOM staff working on the MMP was to expand the sources of death data from a dependence on news reports. To this end, an internal reporting mechanism for dead and missing migrants was established between IOM Country Offices and IOM’s MRD (now GMDAC). However, the mechanism was rarely used by IOM Country Office staff and, when it was, their original sources of information was also (local) news reports (Interview with Tara Brian, Skype, 6 July 2017).
- 9.
A few years before IOM, UNHCR staff decided to keep track of deaths by tallying casualties reported in the news. The collected data are for internal use only. The only death data that UNHCR shares with the public are aggregated counts and the occasional statistic in its press releases and reports. IOM and UNHCRexchangedata to test consistency. The coordination with UNHCR began with the creation of GMDAC in September 2015 after they noticed the variation in their numbers reported for 2014. Weekly informal consultations were established between GMDAC staff working on the MMP and UNHCR staff keeping track of death statistics. This exchange is not consistent; for instance, cooperation was suspended for a few months over the summer of 2017 (personal communications with Julia Black, MMP Project Coordinator, 29 September and 30 November 2017).
- 10.
The Global Migration Data Portal ‘serve[s] as a unique access point to timely, comprehensive migration statistics and reliable information about migration data globally’ and claims not only to provide data but to help the public, policymakers, and journalists to explain and navigate information about migration. See: https://migrationdataportal.org/about
- 11.
The first pilot versions of the interactive online platform of the MMP were launched in September 2014.
- 12.
Interview with Tara Brian, Skype, 6 July 2017.
- 13.
For an overview on use and sources of border death data in academic literature, see Last and Harte (2018).
- 14.
MMP staff often write the substantive texts of press releases that MCD distribute. The number of press releases citing MMP was counted by searching www.iom.int for ‘MMP’ and ‘Missing Migrants Project’ and then filtering the results by selecting ‘press releases’. The results were reviewed to ensure they made reference to the MMP.
- 15.
The second was published two years later (Brian and Laczko 2016), while the first part of the third volume appeared in September 2017.
- 16.
The first data point in the database of the Missing Migrants Project dates from 6 January 2014. The database is available at https://missingmigrants.iom.int/downloads.
- 17.
Interview with Tara Brian, Skype, 6 July 2017. Notes from the meeting by Tamara Last.
- 18.
Paolo Cuttitta and Tamara Last co-hosted the VU meeting.
- 19.
No IOM representative attended this first event. ICRC organised a second meeting in October 2015, at which the IOM was represented by Tara Brian. Tamara Last was an observer at both ICRC meetings.
- 20.
E-mail Frank Laczko, 4 February 2015.
- 21.
Along the same line, the IOM’s attempt to put the issue of border deaths on the agendas of countries of origin and transit can also be seen as a move aimed at strengthening the IOM’s role on the global scene through the appropriation of the issue of border deaths. While border deaths have been discursively appropriated by destination countries (Cuttitta 2018b) as part of the ‘humanitarianization’ of the border (Walters 2011), these countries are now trying to export this issue to countries of origin and transit, as part of the broader process of externalization (Zaiotti 2016) of migration and border management. The IOM has long been an essential instrument for the implementation of the externalization policies of rich destination countries to countries of origin and transit (Lavenex 2016; Wunderlich 2012). The IOM, for example, is helping the Libyan authorities with both capacity building in search and rescue (SAR) and offering technical assistance after SAR operations (IOM 2016b). Assistance to improve SAR capabilities has long been offered to the Egyptian authorities as well, although these have not been accepted so far (Interview with IOM officer, Cairo, 1 March 2017). In Niger, the IOM is carrying out ‘search and rescue missions’ in the desert with the local state authorities (IOM 2017a). Border deaths and SAR have become such an important issue for donor states that ‘at some point, we started using it to justify our request for funding for our project proposals, even when the original aim of the project was not specifically related to search and rescue’ (Interview with IOM officer, Tunis, 8 February 2016).
- 22.
- 23.
Systematic cooperation with IOM Country Offices in data collection and verification now exists in some Mediterranean countries, such as Turkey, Greece, Italy, Libya, and Tunisia (interview with Tara Brian, Skype, 6 July 2017; personal communications with Julia Black, 29 September and 30 November 2017).
- 24.
- 25.
- 26.
In November 2018, the Associated Press published their own tally of migrants dead or missing worldwide from 2014 to 2018 (Hinnant and Janssen 2018). They presented their tally as ‘almost double the number found in the world’s only official attempt to try to count them, by the UN’s International Organization for Migration’, demonstrating not only the perception that MMP generates official statistics but also that they are the main competition for emerging data collectors.
- 27.
‘Methodology’, Missing Migrants Project, https://missingmigrants.iom.int/methodology
- 28.
- 29.
Interview with Tara Brian, Skype, 6 July 2017.
- 30.
The spectacle of border deaths data mentioned by Heller is reflected in the IOM’s use of hashtags to spread the fatality figures while simultaneously popularising the IOM brand.
- 31.
Interview with Tara Brian, Skype, 6 July 2017.
- 32.
Works Cited
Almukhtar, S., et al. 2015. What’s Behind the Surge in Refugees Crossing the Mediterranean Sea. The New York Times, May 21.
Andersson, R. 2016. Hardwiring the Frontier? The Politics of Security Technology in Europe’s ‘Fight against Illegal Migration’. Security Dialogue 47 (1): 22–39.
Andrijasevic, R., and W. Walters. 2010. The International Organization for Migration and the International Government of Borders. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 28 (6): 977–999.
Ashutosh, I., and A. Mountz. 2011. Migration Management for the Benefit of Whom? Interrogating the Work of the International Organization for Migration. Citizenship Studies 15 (1): 21–38.
Betts, A. 2012. The Migration Industry in Global Migration Governance. In The Migration Industry and the Commercialization of International Migration, ed. T. Gammeltoft-Hansen and N. Nyberg Sorensen, 45–63. London: Routledge.
Brachet, J. 2015. Policing the Desert: The IOM in Libya Beyond War and Peace. Antipode 48 (2): 272–292.
Brian, T., and F. Laczko, eds. 2014. Fatal Journeys. Tracking Lives Lost during Migration. Geneva: IOM.
———, eds. 2016. Fatal Journeys, Volume 2: Identification and Tracing of Dead and Missing Migrants. Geneva: IOM.
Caillault, C. 2012. The Implementation of Coherent Migration Management Through IOM Programs in Morocco. In The New Politics of International Mobility Migration Management and Its Discontents, ed. M. Geiger and A. Pécoud, 133–154. Osnabrück: IMIS.
Chouliaraki, L., and P. Musarò. 2017. The Mediatized Border. Technologies and Affects of Migrant Reception in the Greek and Italian Borders. Feminist Media Studies 17: 535. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2017.1326550.
Crawley, H. 2016. Managing the Unmanageable? Understanding Europe’s Response to the Migration ‘Crisis. Human Geography 9 (2): 13–23.
Crawley, H., F. Düvell, K. Jones, S. McMahon, and N. Sigona. 2016. Destination Europe? Understanding the Dynamics and Drivers of Mediterranean Migration in 2015. Unravelling the Mediterranean Migration Crisis (MEDMIG) Final Report, at http://www.medmig.info/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/research-brief-destination-europe.pdf
Cuttitta, P. 2018a. Repoliticization Through Search and Rescue? Humanitarian NGOs and Migration Management in the Central Mediterranean. Geopolitics 23 (3): 632–660.
———. 2018b. Delocalization, Humanitarianism, and Human Rights. The Mediterranean Border Between Exclusion and Inclusion. Antipode 50 (3): 783–803.
European Parliament. 2013. European Parliament Resolution of 23 October 2013 on Migratory Flows in the Mediterranean, with Particular Attention to the Tragic Events off Lampedusa. 23 October. 2013/2827 (RSP).
———. 2016. Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. Draft Report on the Situation in the Mediterranean and the Need for a Holistic EU Approach to Migration. 19 January. 2015/2095 (INI).
Finnemore, M., and K. Sikkink. 1998. International Norm Dynamics and Political Change. International Organization 52 (4): 887–917.
Frontex. 2017. Risk Analysis for, 2017. Warsaw: Frontex.
Geiger, M., and A. Pécoud. 2010. The Politics of International Migration Management. In The Politics of International Migration Management, ed. M. Geiger and A. Pécoud, 1–20. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Georgi, F. 2010. For the Benefit of Some: The International Organization for Migration and its Global Migration Management. In The Politics of International Migration Management, ed. M. Geiger and A. Pécoud, 45–72. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Georgi, F., and S. Schatral. 2012. Towards a Critical Theory of Migration Control: The Case of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). In The New Politics of International Mobility Migration Management and Its Discontents, ed. M. Geiger and A. Pécoud, 193–221. Osnabrück: IMIS.
GMDAC. 2017. About GMDAC, at https://gmdac.iom.int/about-gmdac
Hall, N. 2015. Money or Mandate? Why International Organizations Engage with the Climate Change Regime. Global Environmental Politics 15 (2): 79–97.
Heller, C. 2015. Liquid Trajectories: Documenting Illegalised Migration and the Violence of Borders. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London.
Heller, C., and A. Pécoud. 2020. Counting Migrants’ Deaths at the Border: From Civil Society Counter-statistics to (Inter)Governmental Recuperation. American Behavioral Scientist. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764219882996.
Heller, C., and L. Pezzani. 2016. Ebbing and Flowing: The EU’s Shifting Practices of (Non-) Assistance and Bordering in a Time of Crisis. Near Futures Online 1 (1), at http://nearfuturesonline.org/ebbing-and-flowing-the-eus-shifting-practices-of-non-assistance-and-bordering-in-a-time-of-crisis/
Hinnant, L., and B. Janssen. 2018. 56,800 Migrant Dead and Missing: “They Are Human Beings”’. AP News, November 2, at https://www.apnews.com/e509e15f8b074b1d984f97502eab6a25
IOM. 2014a. IOM Releases New Data on Migrant Fatalities Worldwide: Almost 40,000 Since 2000. 29 September 2014, at https://www.iom.int/statements/iom-releases-new-data-migrant-fatalities-worldwide-almost-40000-2000
———. 2014b. IOM Investigates Reports of Deliberate Drowning of 500 Migrants in Mediterranean. 16 September 2014, at https://www.iom.int/news/iom-investigates-reports-deliberate-drowning-500-migrants-mediterranean
———. 2015a. IOM Fears Over 300 African Migrants Drown En Route to Europe. 11 February 2015, at http://missingmigrants.iom.int/iom-fears-over-300-african-migrants-drown-en-route-europe
———. 2015b. Missing Migrants Update | Mediterranean Update. 29 July 2015, at https://www.iom.int/infographics/missing-migrants-update-mediterranean-update-29-july-2015
———. 2016a. “Dangerous Journeys”: International Migration Increasingly Unsafe in 2016: IOM. 23 August 2016, at https://www.iom.int/news/dangerous-journeys-international-migration-increasingly-unsafe-2016-iom
———. 2016b. Libya Plan of Action 2016–2017. 15 August 2016, at https://www.iom.int/sites/default/files/country/docs/Libya/IOM-Libya-Plan-of-Action-2016-2017.pdf
———. 2016c. Fatal Journeys, Vol. 2: New Global Report from IOM. 14 June 2016, at https://www.iom.int/news/fatal-journeys-vol-2-new-global-report-iom
———. 2017a. UN Migration Agency Search and Rescue Missions in Sahara Desert Help 1,000 Migrants. 8 August 2017, at https://www.iom.int/news/un-migration-agency-search-and-rescue-missions-sahara-desert-help-1000-migrants
———. 2017b. Mediterranean Migrant Arrivals Reach 54,715 in 2017; Deaths: 1,332. 19 May 2017, at https://www.iom.int/news/mediterranean-migrant-arrivals-reach-54715-2017-deaths-1332
———. 2017c. Mediterranean Migrant Arrivals Reach 25,170, Deaths: 559. 24 March 2017, at https://www.iom.int/news/mediterranean-migrant-arrivals-reach-25170-deaths-559
———. 2017d. World Fatalities of Migrants, Refugees Approach 7,500 in 2016 as Three-Year Total Tops 18,501. 6 January 2017, at https://www.iom.int/news/world-fatalities-migrants-refugees-approach-7500-2016-three-year-total-tops-18501
Jacob, E. (2016). Plus de 5000 personnes migrantes sont mortes en Méditerranée en 2016. Le Figaro, October 26.
Last, T., and J. Harte. 2018. Data on Border Deaths Along Southern EU External Borders. In Deaths Along Southern EU Borders, T. Last. PhD thesis, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. At https://research.vu.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/69433330/chapter+4+Data+on+border+deaths+along+southen+EU+borders.pdf
Last, T., and T. Spijkerboer. 2014. Tracking Deaths in the Mediterranean. In Fatal Journeys: Tracking Lives Lost during Migration, ed. T. Brian and F. Laczko, 85–106. Geneva: IOM.
Last, T., et al. 2017. Deaths at the Borders Database: Evidence of Deceased Migrants’ Bodies Found along the Southern External Borders of the European Union. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 43 (5): 693–712.
Lavenex, S. 2016. Multilevelling EU External Governance: The Role of International Organizations in the Diffusion of EU Migration Policies. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 42 (4): 554–570.
Macdonald, F. 2015. Can Social Media Save Migrants? at https://www.true212.com/insights/digital-africa/2015/04/can-social-media-stop-tragedy-mediterranean/
Mannik, L. 2016. Introduction. In Migration by Boat. Discourses of Trauma, Exclusion and Survival, ed. L. Mannik, 1–21. New York: Berghahn.
Marcoaldi, M. 2016. Migranti, il padre del piccolo Aylan: “Un anno dopo, si continua a morire in mare”. La Repubblica, September 2.
Payne, R.A. 2001. Persuasion, Frames and Norm Construction. European Journal of International Relations 7 (1): 37–61.
Pécoud, A. 2015. Depoliticising Migration: Global Governance and International Migration Narratives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
———. 2016. The Politics of Counting Migrants’ Deaths in the Mediterranean. Political Power and Social Theory. The Blogpages, https://www.politicalpowerandsocialtheory.com/the-refugee-crisis
Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat. 2014. Going West: Contemporary Mixed Migration Trends from the Horn of Africa to Libya & Europe. Nairobi: Regional Mixed Migration Secretariat.
Ritaine, E. 2015. Quand les morts de Lampedusa entrent en politique: Damnatio Memoriae. Cultures & Conflicts 99 (100): 117–142.
Rygiel, K. 2016. Dying to Live: Migrant Deaths and Citizenship Politics Along European Borders: Transgressions, Disruptions, and Mobilizations. Citizenship Studies 20 (5): 545–560.
Spijkerboer, T. 2007. The Human Costs of Border Control. European Journal of Migration and Law 9 (1): 127–139.
———. 2017. Wasted Lives. Borders and the Right to Life of People Crossing Them. Nordic Journal of International Law 86 (1): 1–29.
Squire, V. 2017. Governing Migration through Death in Europe and the US: Identification, Burial and the Crisis of Modern Humanism. European Journal of International Relations 23 (3): 513–532.
Squire, V., et al. 2017. Crossing the Mediterranean Sea by Boat. Mapping and Documenting Migratory Journeys and Experiences. Final Project Report, at https://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/research/researchcentres/irs/crossingthemed/ctm_final_report_4may2017.pdf
Tazzioli, M. 2015. The Politics of Counting and the Scene of Rescue Border Deaths in the Mediterranean. Radical Philosophy 192: 2–6.
Townsend, M., and T. McVeigh. 2016. Migrant Death Toll Expected to Exceed 10,000 in 2016. The Guardian, September 17.
UN. 2016. Agreement Concerning the Relationship Between the United Nations and the International Organization for Migration, at http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/70/976
Walters, W. 2011. Foucault and Frontiers. Notes on the Birth of the Humanitarian Border. In Governmentality: Current Issues and Future Challenges, ed. U. Bröckling, S. Krasmann, and T. Lemke, 138–164. New York: Routledge.
Wunderlich, D. 2012. Europeanization Through the Grapevine: Communication Gaps and the Role of International Organizations in Implementation Networks of EU External Migration Policy. Journal of European Integration 34 (5): 485–503.
Zaiotti, R., ed. 2016. Externalizing Migration Management. Europe, North America and the Spread of ‘Remote Control’ Practices. New York: Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Al Tamimi, Y., Cuttitta, P., Last, T. (2020). The IOM’s Missing Migrants Project: The Global Authority on Border Deaths. In: Geiger, M., Pécoud, A. (eds) The International Organization for Migration. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32976-1_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32976-1_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-32975-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-32976-1
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)