Une petite histoire au potentiel symbolique fort ». La fabrique d’un cimetière de migrants inconnus dans le sud-est tunisien

• Published in: Critique internationale (Paris. 1998) no. 83; pp. 61 - 86
• Main Author: Zagaria, Valentina
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: French
• Published: Presses de Sciences Po 01-06-2019; 01-04-2019
• Subjects: thema: Corps migrants aux frontières méditerranéennes de l’Europe
• ISSN: 1290-7839; 1777-554X

From the summer of 2015, as Europe faced the so-called “refugee crisis”, increasing numbers of mainly European journalists, researchers, film-makers, photographers and activists began travelling to the Tunisian coastal town of Zarzis. They all wished to report on the existence of a burial place established for the victims of the European Union’s border. They were welcomed by local actors, and in particular by Chamseddine, a former fisherman who over the years became deeply involved in these burials. Told through one man’s charitable commitment to provide dignity to those who died at the EU’s liquid border, the cemetery was framed as a place epitomising both the deadly effects of migration policies, and the compassion of simple citizens in the face of horror. Various groups and individuals also took steps to contribute to the cemetery’s upkeep. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Zarzis between 2015 and 2017, this article explores the conceptual and practical acts of ‘fixing’ surrounding the cemetery. These resulted in turning it into a focal symbol triggering moral and political discourses of empathy and hope, but also of blame and responsibility, bringing to the fore the colonial and neo-colonial legacies of the «refugee crisis».