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.

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 the Centre for International Studies, Sciences Po and member of the Convergence Institute for Migration, Paris.