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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how death and burial are managed under military occupation when family members are in exile or unable to act. Focusing on Crimea, it explores representation, silence, and the conditions under which a death can be considered socially “proper”.

Paper long abstract

This paper offers an ethnographically grounded account of how “a proper death” becomes conditional under military occupation. It draws on long-term engagement with Crimea under Russian occupation and focuses on moments when a person dies while family members are in exile, cannot enter the peninsula, or avoid visible involvement. Death turns into a practical problem of representation. Someone must be recognised as entitled to act and carry the death through procedures that make burial possible.

Religious repression in occupied Crimea is well documented. Religious belonging does not, by itself, organise access to burial in everyday practice. Islam, for example, remains institutionally legible within Russian frameworks of governing religion. The paper therefore treats religion as a channel through which death is made administratively workable, rather than as the main explanation of vulnerability.

The core argument is that occupation governs death through conditions sensed and navigated in ordinary life. “Proper” is used here in a narrow, local sense: a death that can be completed without drawing unwanted attention. This depends on who is able to speak, who can sign, which forms of mourning can appear, and how silence is maintained around politically sensitive loss.

When family members are absent, responsibility shifts to neighbours, distant relatives, local religious actors, or administrative intermediaries. This alters who has control over the death and its aftermath. The paper shows how sovereignty is exercised through everyday decisions around burial and mourning, and how it is navigated through silence and delegation.