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Authors' Workshop "Civil Search and Rescue in the Mediterranean" on March 7 & 8 2024 in Münster
On 7 and 8 March 2024, the authors' workshop "Civil Search and Rescue in the Mediterranean" took place in Münster. This Mini-Conference was organised by Lena Laube, Mareike Gebhardt and Maria Ullrich in preparation for the publication of an issue of the same title in the Journal for Critical Migration Research movements. The Issue will be published in summer 2025.
Detailed workshop report
As an introduction, Mareike Gebhardt presented her paper on democratic theory with the working title "Another Solidarity is Im-Possible: Saving (Black) Lives between Radical Democracy and Colonial Continuities". The programme continued with the contribution "Searching: Attending to a politics of neglect and extractivism through a migration drama in Zarzis" by Amade M'Charek (University of Amsterdam) and Khaled Tabbabi (FTDES). The third and final paper presentation of the first workshop day was given by Laila Riedmiller (FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg) under the german working title “Rettung als Ausdruck kultureller Selbstaufgabe? Zivile Seenotrettung als Feindbild der extremen Rechten”(“Rescue as an expression of cultural surrender? Civil sea rescue as an enemy of the extreme right”). The presentation of these three works in progress was followed by an academic-activist intervention by Maurice Stierl (University of Osnabrück) and a short report on a planned interview with a captain of the Italian coastguard by Paolo Cuttitta (Paris Sorbonne XIII) and Luca Queirolo Palmas (University of Genoa).
The second day of the workshop continued with further interventions and workshop reports from the activist-academic spectrum: filmmaker Sarah Hüther gave an insight into her feminist documentary film project on female activism in the Mediterranean. Charlotte Weiß (Sea-Eye) presented the work of the so-called land crews. Going on, Khalid Abaker gave a presentation on his activist book project about his escape across the Mediterranean and Adrian Pourviseh showed the first sketches of a comic strip on civil sea rescue, which will also appear in the movements issue. Under the title "Handling Dead Bodies at Sea. Deathcare and Necropolitics in the Mediterranean Border Death Regime", Sarah Spasiano presented a part of her ongoing work of her ZivDem dissertation project. Concluding the workshop, Lena Laube and Maria Ullrich presented their planned contribution "What do the boats symbolise? A country comparison on rationales and motivations for supporting search and rescue activities on the high seas", in which they outlined preliminary results of the field research conducted by ZivDem 2023 in Germany, Spain and Italy.
