Paper Short Abstract:

Civil search and rescue organizations engage in political activism and provide humanitarian assistance to migrants and refugees on the deadly central Mediterranean route. In recent years, they have faced increasing repression and criminalisation. Some NGOs developed inconspicuous and pragmatic everyday grassroots humanitarian practices, which have proven to be an effective strategy for maintaining good relationships with state authorities. This observation prompts reflections on what it means to decentre humanitarianism.

Paper Abstract:

The central Mediterranean route has often been described as the deadliest migration route. When the end of the Mare Nostrum rescue operation in 2014 left a research gap, civil search and rescue (SAR) organizations established to provide humanitarian assistance and critical monitoring of the situation at sea. There are now around 20 SAR NGOs active in the Mediterranean Sea, some of which position themselves as humanitarians, while others reject the label in favour of political activists. Over the last seven years, SAR NGOs have faced increasing repression and criminalisation in the context of securitisation and militarisation of the Mediterranean border. There is a research gap on how the different types of SAR NGOs (humanitarian and political) have responded to these developments. In my PhD project, I analyse the relations between state and civil actors in search and rescue. Participant observation on Italian shores and in ports is combined with interviews with activists and representatives of the Italian Coast Guard and document analysis. In this contribution, I argue that in the context of shrinking humanitarian spaces in the Mediterranean and increasingly repressive and restrictive border regimes, inconspicuous and pragmatic everyday grassroots humanitarian practices have proven to be an effective strategy. By staying out of major media discourses and keeping their (critical) voices low, NGOs following this approach manage to maintain unproblematic relations with state authorities. In making this argument, I contribute to the question of what it means to decentre humanitarianism for the Mediterranean Sea and for border spaces in general.