Death in Migration

Foregrounding Loss, Grieving and Memory Out of Place

Paolo Boccagni author Thomas Lacroix author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Bristol University Press

Publishing:26th Feb '26

£80.00

This title is due to be published on 26th February, and will be despatched as soon as possible.

Death in Migration cover

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 mobilisations or collective mourning, death becomes not an endpoint, but a powerful force shaping how migration is lived, governed and remembered.

‘Death and migration are deeply linked, and Boccagni and Lacroix illuminate with sensitivity and analytical depth the layered intersections of death, migration, place, meaning, ritual, borders, bureaucracies and belonging to reveal the politics of community building, practices of memorialization and the hierarchies of risk. Death in Migration is a comprehensive, original and moving contribution that resonates emotionally and intellectually while charting new directions for future research.’ Cecilia Menjívar, University of California, Los Angeles


‘Death is a shared human condition. Yet, in light of the constant devaluation of migrant life, also migrant death seems to hold less and less value. In Death in Migration, Paolo Boccagni and Thomas Lacroix confront us with this bleak and worrying reality. But they also powerfully show how communities of care have emerged that refuse to forget our existential commonality and that struggle for equality in life and in death.’ Maurice Stierl, University of Osnabrück

ISBN: 9781529243512

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

176 pages