A boat’s afterlife: multiple translations of migratory debris
| Published date | 01 September 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13540661231172294 |
| Author | Anna Finiguerra |
| Date | 01 September 2023 |
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JR
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https://doi.org/10.1177/13540661231172294
European Journal of
International Relations
2023, Vol. 29(3) 628 –650
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/13540661231172294
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A boat’s afterlife: multiple
translations of migratory debris
Anna Finiguerra
Queen Mary University of London, UK
Abstract
Over the past decade, images of boats crossing or sinking in the Mediterranean have
become extremely familiar to European publics. What is less familiar is the processes
through which those boats are re-purposed, becoming artistic or even commodified
goods once they reach a port of landing. Caught between being considered waste
and valuable objects, these debris have been moved and re-purposed with scarce
acknowledgement of the political work that these practices perform. This paper argues
that practices of translation transform objects into waste or valuables and reveal crucial
fault lines in the politics of migration – such as the limits of a politics of posthumous
commemoration and the de-politicisation of border deaths. Translation works through
a wide variety of professional practices and the assembling of value, which informs the
staging of materials as waste or as valuables. By analysing the case of the art installation
Barca Nostra, this article rethinks the role of migratory debris and the multiplicity of
meaning attributed to them by highlighting how they must be read simultaneously as
waste and objects of value to fully understand how practices of translation contribute
to the de-politicisation of border deaths, leaving state violence in the Mediterranean
unchallenged.
Keywords
Materiality, migration, border deaths
Introduction
Migratory movement is an intrinsically material process. It works through bodies as well
as objects and infrastructure that both enable movement and hinder it (Pallister-Wilkins,
2022; Squire, 2015; Walters, 2015). In particular, the passage of people forced into
Corresponding author:
Anna Finiguerra, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK.
Email: a.finiguerra@qmul.ac.uk
1172294EJT0010.1177/13540661231172294European Journal of International RelationsFiniguerra
research-article2023
Article
Finiguerra 629
dangerous or illegalised routes often leaves behind traces (Hamilakis, 2017; Soto, 2018;
Sundberg, 2008). These are not only mundane items and personal belongings but also
objects which have come to be closely associated with migration across harsh environ-
ments, for instance, black water bottles in the Sonoran desert (Squire, 2014) or orange
life vests in the Mediterranean sea (Wagner Tsoni, 2020). Such debris is understood as
both waste littering public spaces and materials rife for re-use and re-purposing (Wagner
Tsoni, 2020). Many initiatives seek to give these materials new life by converting them
into other objects (Mora-Gámez, 2020), into souvenirs for tourists and objects of wor-
ship (Kushner, 2016), or even into displays in museums and art exhibitions (Gatta, 2016;
Zucconi, 2019).
In so doing, material debris become part of a public conversation on the issue of
migration in often surprising and contradictory ways. The varying attribution of value to
these objects (from none to incalculable cultural and historical import) has been shown
to support a number of political practices, spanning from the production of the category
of the ‘human’ (Squire, 2014) to the reconfiguration of notions of belonging (Soto, 2018;
Sundberg, 2008; Wagner Tsoni, 2020). However, their status as objects of value which
deserve to be displayed and are fully ‘in place’ in public space is often contested and
subject to change. Such is the case of the art installation Barca Nostra, exhibited in 2019
at the Venice Biennale. This artwork, a ready-made piece composed of the wreck of a
fishing vessel involved in one of the deadliest shipwrecks in the Mediterranean to date,
has undergone a wide number of transformations from a vessel to forensic evidence, to
waste before being converted into a piece of art on display. At each point in the time of
its afterlife, its status remains open to dispute, as actors question the univocality of its
value, demonstrating the complexity which underlies the transformation of a vessel sunk
in the Mediterranean into a work of art worthy of display.
The open debates about the value, the rightful role and appropriateness for display of
this object provide an interesting entry point into particular political processes which
govern the management of migration and the justification of policies which result in
border deaths. As actors claim ownership of the wreck and imbue or empty it of value,
they also re-produce particular political framings which shape political discourses on
migration. While a significant amount of literature in International Relations has dis-
cussed the materiality of migration, or the importance of artistic displays, material cul-
ture and the circulation of everyday objects to the study of international politics (Bide,
2021; Callahan, 2020; Danchev, 2009; Harman, 2019; Sylvester, 2015), little attention
has been paid to the processes which turn material debris into waste or art.
More precisely, while a burgeoning interdisciplinary literature (Soto, 2018; Squire,
2014; Sundberg, 2008; Wagner Tsoni, 2020) has tackled the political importance of
migratory debris, there has been scarce engagement with the processes through which
mundane objects are transformed from waste to art and vice versa. This gap is important
for two interconnected reasons. First, migratory debris are not univocally one or the
other, but they become imbued with particular meanings through their movement across
particular spaces and their relations to particular social formations. Actors are purpose-
fully engaged in these transformations, and their varying attribution of value reveals
much about the political stakes they attribute to the treatment of migratory debris and to
migration itself. Second, this in turn has consequences for how these objects intervene in
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