Far from a crisis that could not be predicted and that cannot be resolved, the so-called Mediterranean migration crisis of 2015–2016 can be understood as a foreseeable result of the production of death and vulnerability, whereby those who escape across the Mediterranean Sea by boat are either left to perish en route or are rescued only to arrive to EU territory as casualties or survivors. This chapter builds on the analysis in Chapter 1 in order to develop further understanding of this process, specifically by exploring the policy mechanisms and power dynamics through which death and vulnerability are rendered normal (i.e. regular and accepted). It examines policy developments within the EU in terms of different mechanisms of prevention, rescue and containment, to highlight the ways in which instruments that monitor, filter and channel migration expose people on the move to various harms without recourse to rights. Showing how such harms are perpetuated across both the security and humanitarian domains, the chapter draws on works that analyse the co-constitution of border security and humanitarianism to emphasise the ways in which a form of humanitarian government is implicated in a politics that seeks to secure home. However, it also draws attention to the limits of an approach that overlooks the importance of humanitarian politics, which involves more far-reaching contestations over what it means to be human. Highlighting the challenges that are posed to a humanitarian politics where the Mediterranean Sea itself plays a crucial role in practices of governing migration, the chapter concludes by exploring how different dynamics of power become blurred through a form of biophysical violence that operates directly on the biological functions of migrating bodies.

This chapter shifts from an analysis of the governing practices through which death and vulnerability are produced and normalised, to an exploration of the ways in which such practices are grounded in racialised processes of dehumanisation. Specifically, it considers the ways in which pervasive processes of animalisation, as well as the pervasiveness of death and vulnerability, relate to contemporary and longer-standing debates surrounding human dignity. It is in a context marked by what Chapter 2 referred to as the toleration of biophysical violence that an appeal to the dignity of people on the move has been mobilised with particular potency. This chapter considers the potential of human dignity as a critical conceptual framework for contestations over what it means to be human, while also reflecting on the ways in which the concept’s mobilisation by various governing authorities further marks the toleration of biophysical violence and perpetuates the normalisation of death and vulnerability. Situating the concept within a modern European tradition of humanism, the chapter shows how human dignity invokes a longer-standing tension between the hierarchical differentiation of worthy and unworthy people on the one hand, and the universal levelling of all people as equal on the other. By exploring the ways in which such tensions play out through racialised practices of governing migration that dehumanise people on the move, the chapter highlights the ongoing significance of a modern European tradition of humanism to conceptions of dignity mobilised during the so-called Mediterranean migration crisis. Concluding Part I of the book by drawing attention to the failure of governing practices to fully master various unruly social and physical forces, the chapter suggests that the ‘Mediterranean migration crisis’ might be understood as nothing less than a breakdown of modern European humanism itself.

This chapter turns to a second pro-migration activist intervention, the Sea-Watch initiative, which is a German-based association operating search and rescue in the central Mediterranean between Libya and Italy/Malta. By situating the intervention in relation to existing mechanisms of rescue charted in Part I of the book, the chapter shows how Sea-Watch is important in challenging biopolitical, thanatopolitical and zoopolitical dynamics of governing migration through death and vulnerability, in which rescue itself serves as a condition of ultra-precarity. Drawing on research carried out in Lampedusa and Malta, it highlights how Sea-Watch invokes dignity in the midst of danger by undertaking rescue operations at sea in terms that both respect the unruly forces of the sea, while also engaging people on the move as guests who are worthy of respect. Yet it also shows how the intervention is characterised by various ambiguities, which reflect both contestations over conceptions of the sea and a seafaring tradition, as well as the difficulties of escaping transactions with businesses that benefit from the production of death and vulnerability. Despite this, the chapter argues that Sea-Watch remains critical in its enactment of a politics of witness in a context marked by a failure to protect life at sea. Playing an important role in raising awareness of the situation in the central Mediterranean as well as in coordinating sea rescues and monitoring rights violations directly, Sea-Watch’s efforts to operate in solidarity with people on the move enacts a response to the so-called crisis that is orientated towards more hopeful political horizons. It is precisely because of this, the chapter concludes, that organisations such as Sea-Watch have faced increasing difficulties over time in undertaking search and rescue operations.

THE SILENT CONTRACT

The strongmen govern through strength, not through rules. But what do the politics of strength look like? Why strength? On the whole, European states, which are based on rules, function like well-oiled machines. Their bureaucracies are vast and capable of reaching into the smallest pockets of society. There are rules for the tiniest minutiae of our lives: from the emission levels of diesel cars, to urban planning laws, to the percentage of cacao in chocolate bars. What do we need strength for?

The strongman's answer is that government is not always an efficient and reliable machine. Institutions of government can break or lose their relevance. Great civilizations and states view themselves as eternal. They place themselves at the centre of the world and blindly assume they will remain there forever. But Machiavelli's warning is that they are wrong. If we take the long view, the greatest challenge of order is its evanescence. States are vulnerable to crises, to wear and tear and decay. And when institutions are weak, dysfunctional or at risk, the politics of strength takes over. Formally, rules and constitutions may still exist. A machinery of government may still exist, on paper. But if these structures no longer possess political agency, the ability to govern or change things, strength provides an answer.

One of the sources for the politics of strength is what I call the “silent contract”, an informal and covert bargain between the strongman and an elite of powerbrokers recruited by the strongman to help manage the nation's public affairs. It is this band of helpers that, in part, gives the strongman his power, his ability to create and lead an often highly effective system of government in the shadow of the state. And as I will argue in this chapter, the character of this shadow system of government, and the personal and informal ties that hold it together, can be best understood as the ancient principles of feudalism and the obligations between a lord and his vassals.

This chapter opens the book by critically interrogating the framing of the situation in the Mediterranean during 2015–2016 as a ‘migration crisis’. It creates distance from a politics of crisis by exploring the articulation of the situation as such along various lines: as a crisis of the Schengen Area, as a crisis of solidarity, as a crisis of sovereignty, as a crisis of values or social cohesion, as a crisis of security, as a humanitarian crisis, and as a crisis of international protection. In so doing, the chapter draws attention to the multiple ways in which the crisis has been constituted in such terms, highlighting how each articulation reflects distinctive political concerns and diverse governing authorities rather than representing an uncontestable reality. By contrast to an approach that questions the specific way by which crisis is framed, the chapter goes on to question a politics of crisis and its effects more fundamentally. It draws on scholarship that interrogates the framing of crisis narratives as well as a form of governing through crisis, to highlight the ways in which crisis politics detract from an understanding of the foreseeable and preventable dimensions of the situation in the Mediterranean in 2015–2016. In so doing, the chapter concludes that the framing of the ‘Mediterranean migration crisis’ in such terms reflects a situation in which death and vulnerability are produced through policies that cut across both security and humanitarian domains and whereby people on the move are abandoned in the face of concerns to maintain the security of home. This, it suggests, can be understood as nothing less than a continued attempt to re/colonise the Mediterranean in a context marked by longer European histories of colonial violence.

In June 2015, the body of a thirty-four-year-old Syrian woman who had perished at sea was exhumed from her grave in Sicily with the permission of her family, and reburied in Berlin. Part of a political demonstration called ‘The Dead are Coming’, the burial was led by an imam, and was marked by the absence of German politicians, whose names were taped to a row of empty chairs as mourners looked on.2 The reburial was the first in a series organised by a Berlin-based art group called the Centre of Political Beauty, which sought to bring the bodies of those who had drowned in the Mediterranean to ‘the heart of Europe’.3 Describing border deaths as a result of ‘our inaction’ and claiming to give the deceased ‘the dignity that they deserve’, the group stress that it is ‘not just about saving their dignity’ but also that of European populations.4 The Centre of Political Beauty advocates a form of ‘aggressive humanism’ that must ‘hurt provoke and rise in revolt’.5 Just as Antigone refused to be swayed by authorities in marking the death of her ‘dearest brother’ during 442 BC, activists as part of the group seek to ‘do wrong in order to do right’. In a situation whereby border deaths across the Mediterranean are perceived to be met with widespread indifference, the group advances a humanist intervention that ‘assaults’ a form of ‘political apathy’ which is deemed to be deadly. As such, ‘The Dead are Coming’ can be understood as nothing less than an insistent attempt to reaffirm dignity in a situation where it has become lost to both the dead and the living.

REACHING BREAKING POINT

The strongman and his guest nip at their water. They are talking, listening, joking even. At least they pretend to be. It is June 2013 and Germany's Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin of Russia are sharing the stage at Russia's premier economic forum in Saint Petersburg, the country's great Window on the West. The setting is sublime. The stucco-fronted Neva embankments glow in the pink orange hue of the midnight sun, leaving the city frozen in a no man's land between day and night. It is a world that inexhaustibly fuels encounters in cafés, parks and restaurants.

In reality, the encounter between both leaders is less enjoyable. A row is brewing over German artworks looted by the Red Army in 1945. The relationship has been bad tempered for some time: frustrating, infuriating and sometimes barely manageable. A sense of foreboding ought to have filled the Saint Petersburg air. Instead, light-heartedness prevails. People have become used to Western and Russian politicians squabbling. Plus ça change.

But as summer slips into autumn, and autumn into winter, something does change. It happens where it always would happen: in the borderlands of Ukraine. The casus belli is an ordinary EU trade and partnership deal, about to be inked by Kiev. It is a bilateral agreement in the standard Brussels mould, part of its neighbourhood strategy towards the east. Yet the agreement triggers a chain of events that ends Europe's post-Cold War security architecture and claims over 13,000 lives.

What we witness in Ukraine is more than a shooting war; it is Europe's ethos of rules sparring with Putin's ethos of strength, specifically its proviso that special areas and “spheres” exist – forbidden space – where a duellist may not strike, compete or interfere. The domestic affairs of states, in particular elections, most obviously belong to this forbidden sphere. However, as observed already, for the duellist the ban on interference by rivals often extends beyond his own borders and into the strongman's neighbourhood.

THE AGE OF THE ENCOUNTER

Donald Trump leaned back in his chair and demonstratively folded his arms before his chest. Fixing his glaring eyes on hers, he impatiently listened to her pitch. It wasn't the first time he had heard it, nor would it be the last.

He had rebuffed her petitions on countless occasions and was determined to continue to do so for as long as it would take. Yet this time, in the stately Manoir Richelieu in Charlevoix, Québec, things were different. They had used the summit to gang up on him, the gesticulating Emmanuel Macron, the softly pleading Theresa May, his boyish Canadian host Justin Trudeau and Japan's Shinzo Abe. Their aides swarmed around him like flies. They had set a diplomatic trap worthy of the great French Cardinal himself. And he had walked right into it.

Worn down by their persistence, Trump bitterly signalled his assent to the summit's final communique. He had heard enough. Slowly he rose from his chair. Then he stopped, reached into his suit pocket, and nonchalantly threw two Starburst candies on the table. “Here, Angela”, he said. “Don't say I never give you anything.” He had never placed great stock in the art of losing.

Hustling his way back to the safety of Airforce One, Trump regained his poise. He weighed his options, and decided to rescind his agreement after the fact. “I have instructed our US Reps not to endorse the Communique”, he tweeted, before launching another angry missive calling his host Trudeau “very weak and dishonest”. Not so bad for a day's work.

It was June 2018 and over a year into Trump's presidency. For the Europeans, the G7 summit was a fiasco. Since his election in November 2016, they had fought to keep Trump inside the global club of democracies, papering over the deep fissure that had opened up across the Atlantic.

THE STRONGMAN's TWO CONTRACTS

He did not wear a fake beak, a newspaper later joked. But he was dressed in baggy white overalls, big black goggles and black gloves. The birds, robed in their own white and black plumage, needed to recognize him as one of their own. They were to follow his lead as he, Vladimir Putin, president of the Russian Federation, took to the skies in a motorized hang-glider.

It was autumn on the Siberian steppe. The skies were leaden. The first snow would be falling soon. The plan, concocted by the president's image-makers: to lead the flock of cranes, hatched and raised in captivity, into the air and start their natural migration cycle to warmer places further south. They only had to follow the big bird. He knew where to go.

The stunt was pregnant with political symbolism, an attempt to highlight Putin's prowess as the nation's leader. And that proved to be its undoing. Because when Putin took off, the cranes stayed put. On his first attempt, one bird followed. Later, five. The other birds looked on in bemusement. Strong winds, an ornithologist explained apologetically. But it could not stop people from mocking the publicity stunt as a spectacular failure.

Inadvertently, Putin had underlined something pertinent about the nature of power and strength. While, obviously, there are mechanisms for coercing compliance in all states, the power of a leader also depends on his ability to secure uncoerced compliance. Putin's aides on the ground could have scared the cranes into the air by flapping their arms around. His security detail could have fired their handguns into the air or unleashed a pack of dogs. But while this would surely have chased all birds in the air, such force would have profoundly altered the meaning of the stunt. The use of force would have merely accentuated the limits of Putin's power.

This chapter examines a third pro-migration activist intervention, which involves the dressing of unmarked graves at cemeteries in which the bodies of those who died en route are buried. It situates the intervention in relation to existing instruments of containment charted in Part I and shows how grave dressing challenges biopolitical, thanatopolitical and zoopolitical dynamics of governing migration through death and vulnerability by accounting for the lives of those who have died at sea. The chapter draws on research carried out in Lampedusa and considers how cemetery activism invokes dignity in death through the naming of the deceased and the marking of graves as sites of loss and mourning. In so doing, it shows how such interventions go beyond an action for the dead alone, albeit in terms that bring to bear tensions between and within a politics of pity and a politics of empathy. By exploring different strands of cemetery activism, the chapter highlights the critical importance of those interventions that involve a refusal of racialised processes of dehumanisation and that extend practices of mourning beyond commemoration in terms that render visible the normalisation of death and vulnerability. It shows how such interventions enact dignity in death through a politics of responsibility that directly challenges authorities for a failure to account for the lives of those lost or disappeared. Grave dressing in this regard not only draws attention to the problems of a politics orientated towards the security of home, but also recreates home in more hopeful terms, through the enactment of a politics of collective responsibility for deaths at sea in solidarity with both the living and the dead.