Death in Migration - (Global Migration and Social Change) by Paolo Boccagni & Thomas LaCroix (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

What happens when death becomes part of the journey of international migrants?

This book examines how mortality is woven into the experience of displacement and migration. From perilous border crossings to the business of repatriation and contested burial grounds, it reveals the hidden geographies and politics that underpin the death of migrants in transit or abroad. Drawing together diverse research across disciplines, it offers a cohesive framework for understanding the industries, rituals and emotional labour surrounding migrant death.

Whether through bureaucratic processes, artistic productions, activist mobilizations or collective mourning, death becomes not an endpoint, but a powerful force shaping how migration is lived, governed and remembered.

Review Quotes

'Death and migration are deeply linked, and Boccagni and Lacroix illuminate with sensitivity and analytical depth the layered intersections of death, migration, place, meaning, ritual, borders, bureaucracies and belonging to reveal the politics of community building, practices of memorialization and the hierarchies of risk. Death in Migration is a comprehensive, original and moving contribution that resonates emotionally and intellectually while charting new directions for future research.' Cecilia Menjívar, University of California, Los Angeles

'Death is a shared human condition. Yet, in light of the constant devaluation of migrant life, also migrant death seems to hold less and less value. In Death in Migration, Paolo Boccagni and Thomas Lacroix confront us with this bleak and worrying reality. But they also powerfully show how communities of care have emerged that refuse to forget our existential commonality and that struggle for equality in life and in death.' Maurice Stierl, University of Osnabrück

'With erudition and pedagogy, this book offers an extensive overview of contemporary approaches to displaced death and of the intricate, material and symbolic entanglements between death and migration. An essential read for scholars in death studies and those working on displacement.' Carolina Kobelinsky, CNRS - Université Paris Nanterre

About the Author

Paolo Boccagni is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Social Research at the University of Trento.

Thomas Lacroix is CNRS Director of Research in Geography at Centre for International Studies, Sciences Po and member of the Convergence Institute for Migration, Paris.