The Banality of Border Deaths: Unpacking and Disrupting European Apathy.
Every year, thousands of border crossers die while seeking safety and freedom in Europe. Why do Europeans fail to grieve or protest these recurring deaths at their doorstep? While media neglect and compassion fatigue are often evoked, we challenge these explanations and instead foreground racialised, colonial, and abstract depictions of non-European migrants. We argue that border deaths are framed in ways that constrain responses by erasing politics and responsibility, appealing to compassion rather than justice, and distributing moral outrage unequally. Building on Judith Butler's work, we reflect on the potential for disrupting hegemonic normative and epistemological frames that render refugee deaths ungrievable. Drawing on long-term fieldwork with activists, migrants, and citizens across European borderlands, we show how practices of mourning and memorialization can disrupt public apathy by reasserting the value and singularity of refugee lives and reframing their deaths as politically produced losses that demand grief and accountability.
