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# Death and disappearance at border crossings: factualization devices and truth(s) accounts

Paola Diaz Lize & Anna Rahel Fischer

To cite this article: Paola Diaz Lize & Anna Rahel Fischer (2022): Death and disappearance at border crossings: factualization devices and truth(s) accounts, Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society, DOI: 10.1080/25729861.2022.2111106

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/25729861.2022.2111106

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# Death and disappearance at border crossings: factualization devices and truth(s) accounts

Paola Diaz Lize ID a,b and Anna Rahel Fischer ID c

ªThe Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies, Santiago, Chile; ᵇCentre d'études des mouvements sociaux, Paris, France (EHESS/CNRS UMR8044/INSERM U1276); ᶜInstitut d'études internationales de Montréal (IEIM), Faculté de sciences politiques et de droit, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, Canada

## ABSTRACT

In this article, we analyze three forensic and counter-forensic devices that go beyond the strictly medico-legal realm to show which concrete practices and truth-spots contribute to (re)constructing a public account of migrant deaths and disappearances along border zones. Drawing on written documents and semi-structured interviews, we examine operations led by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Europe and Africa, the work of the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner (PCOME) together with the NGO Colibrí Center for Human Rights in Arizona, and Forensic Oceanography's (FO) open-source investigations of shipwrecks of migrants in the Central Mediterranean Sea and the structural violence embedded in militarized border regimes. We argue that these practices constitute *factualization devices*, namely practices that transform lived experience of death and disappearance into an objectified reality that can be visibilized and mobilized in the public sphere as part of a counter-narrative. We demonstrate how these factualization practices are imbricated in valuation practices, i.e. practices that ascribe not only an epistemological but also an ethical, aesthetic and political value to the work of objectification, which inform the production of truth narratives.

## Morte e Desaparecimento nos passagem da fronteira: dispositivos de factualização e contas de verdade

## RESUMO

Neste artigo, analisamos três dispositivos forenses e contraforenses que vão além do âmbito estritamente médico-legal para mostrar quais práticas concretas e truth-spots contribuem para (re)construir um relato público das mortes e desaparecimentos de migrantes nas áreas fronteiriças. Com base em documentos e entrevistas semi-estruturadas, examinamos operações lideradas pelo Comitê Internacional da Cruz Vermelha (CICV) na Europa e na África, o trabalho do Escritório do Examinador Médico do Condado

## KEYWORDS

Crossing borders; death;
disappearance; factualization
devices; forensics; truth
account

## PALAVRAS-CHAVE

Cruzar as fronteiras (estudos críticos de migração); morte; desaparecimento;
factualização; investigação
forense; relato da verdade

## PALABRAS CLAVE

Cruce de fronteras; muerte;
desaparición; dispositivos de
factualización; medicina
forense; relato de la verdad

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de Pima (PCOME) juntamente com a ONG Centro Colibrí de Direitos Humanos no Arizona, e as investigações de fonte aberta da Forensic Oceanographic (FO) sobre naufrágios de migrantes no mar Mediterrâneo central e a violência estrutural dos regimes fronteiriços e Estados soberanos associados a esses eventos. Argumentamos que estas práticas constituem dispositivos de factualização, ou seja, práticas que transformam a experiência vivida de morte e desaparecimento em uma realidade objetivada que pode ser mobilizada no espaço público como parte de uma contra-narrativa. Mostramos como estas práticas de factualização estão imbricadas em práticas de valorização, ou seja, práticas que atribuem não apenas um valor epistemológico, mas também um valor ético e político ao trabalho de objetivação, que informam a produção de narrativas de verdade.

# Muerte y desaparición en los pasos fronterizos: dispositivos de factualización y relatos de verdad

## RESUMEN

En este artículo analizamos tres dispositivos forenses y contraforenses que van más allá del ámbito estrictamente médico-legal para mostrar qué prácticas concretas y truth-spots contribuyen a (re)construir un relato público de las muertes y desapariciones de migrantes en las zonas fronterizas. A partir de documentos escritos y entrevistas semiestructuradas, examinamos las operaciones implementadas por el Comité Internacional de la Cruz Roja (CICR) en Europa y África, el trabajo de la Oficina Médico Forense del Condado de Pima (PCOME) junto con la ONG Centro Colibrí, Center for Human Rights en Arizona, y las investigaciones de acceso abierto de Forensic Oceanography (FO) sobre los naufragios de migrantes en el mar Mediterráneo central y la violencia estructural encarnada en los regímenes fronterizos militarizados. Argumentamos que estas prácticas constituyen dispositivos de factualización, es decir, prácticas que transforman la experiencia vivida de la muerte y la desaparición en una realidad objetivada que puede ser visibilizada y movilizada en la esfera pública como parte de una contranarrativa. Demostramos cómo estas prácticas de factualización están imbricadas en prácticas de valoración, es decir, prácticas que atribuyen no sólo un valor epistemológico sino también ético, estético y político al trabajo de objetivación, que forman parte de la producción de narrativas de la verdad.

During the night of April 18–19, 2015, an overloaded refugee boat sank on its perilous journey from Libya to Italy, causing the deaths of 500–800 migrants, according to official accounts. While usually every civilian or military ship keeps a passenger list to determine who dies, survives or disappears in case of a shipwreck, in the case of the April 18 event no such list existed. The absence of any registration and therefore of the usual bureaucratic accounts of the crossing, stems from the fact that the journey must take place in secret, since the passengers were individuals who sought to reach Europe through the Mediterranean without papers on dangerous migratory routes.

In contrast to the migration routes that cross the central Mediterranean, the US-Mexico borders are crossed on foot through the Sonoran Desert, where the number of dead and
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disappeared has been increasing over the years. These two border areas present different local, geographic, and geopolitical characteristics: one is an ocean of water, the other is an ocean of sand. However, since the neoliberal globalization of the 1990s, these two spaces display similar dynamics that seem contradictory at first glance. On the one hand, the circulation of goods and the interconnectedness of information have accelerated. On the other hand, material and immaterial borders have multiplied, and states have pursued increasingly restrictive migration policies (Balibar 2004; Rumford 2006; Bigo 2002). This dynamic becomes starkly evident when considering the borders between the global South and North – such as those between the United States and Mexico and between Europe and Africa – where the implementation of free trade agreements has been accompanied by the establishment of barriers to “undesirable” migration (Agier 2006; Cornelius 2001; Mezzadra and Neilsen 2013; Nevins 2010; Reineke and Martinez 2014). What circulates unimpeded is what fits into the structure set by a global architecture of capitalist production, trade, and governance: Traders, financial flows, experts, and tourists. In contrast, precarious, racialized populations and groups classified as threats according to national security policies are subject to strict movement controls (De Genova 2018).

These security policies are embodied in the physical and digital militarization of borders in both the US and Europe. This has led to funnel effects that force migrants to take extremely dangerous routes (Rubio-Goldsmith et al. 2006). One of the alleged consequences of policies constitutes the exponential increase of the number of deaths and disappearances of migrants attempting to cross these borders over the last 20 years (Martinez et al. 2021; Cuttita and Last 2020).

However, unlike the deaths and disappearances caused by the 2001 World Trade Center attacks or the terrorist attacks in Europe (Madrid 2004; London 2005, Paris 2013 and 2015), there were no established methods of recording the vanishing of clandestine lives. Therefore, the first actors to make these deaths and disappearances visible were activist groups such as Fortress Europe and the Coalición de Derechos Humanos in Arizona. This was later on followed by international organizations, which developed accounting methods such as the Missing Migrant Project set up by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in 2014.

Before this backdrop, this article is concerned with analyzing various forensic and counter-forensic devices that go beyond the strictly medico-legal realm to demonstrate which concrete practices and truth-spots, that constitute the place of provenance from which a specific truth claim originates (Gieryn 2002), contributed to giving a public account of these fatalities. As we will conceptualize hereafter, we understand these practices as factualization devices, i.e. devices as DNA or testimonies through which facticity is achieved, namely procedures that transform lived experience into an objectified reality.

We consider that the factualization devices and practices are imbricated in valuation practices (Dewey 2008; Lamont 2012), i.e. situated practices of value attribution to persons and things, by means of which common goods or what we usually call values are constituted via ethical and political value attribution practices. This does not diminish their objectivity, but indicates that they are socially situated productions (Haraway 1991). We argue that the analyzed factualization devices, therefore, describe entangled phenomena. As Putnam (2002) points out, crime and violence are both factual and moral phenomena whose factual description includes a valuation. Thus, it is not the same to describe a situation as a bare fact, “He fired a gun,” as to say “He murdered someone” which includes an intentionality. The death and disappearance of illegalized
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migrants as well as the violence along borders, as described by the analyzed devices as humanitarian crises, structural violence and violence of the border regime, correspond to entangled phenomena.

Based on an analysis of written and audiovisual documents and semi-structured interviews with professionals working in different institutions, we analyze a project by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) (2017–2021) to implement a methodology to identify deceased and disappeared migrants in the Central Mediterranean Sea; the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner (PCOME) along with the NGO Colibrí Center for Human Rights (Colibrí) in Arizona; and the open source investigations of Forensic Oceanography (FO), a multidisciplinary project of Forensic Architecture (FA) based at Goldsmiths University in London, which sought to visibilize evidence of these deaths and disappearances and their causes in the Central Mediterranean Sea.

In the first part, we briefly introduce the main perspectives that prevail in the analysis of migrant deaths and disappearances at borders and our analytical approach. We then analyze the three factualization devices mentioned above focusing on the truth spots where they produce a truth account, factualization practices and the truth accounts that they produce. We conclude with a reflection on the political implications of this kind of truth production from socio-epistemological sites that are disconnected from official and hegemonic discourses and practices.

# 1. Deaths and disappearances along militarized border areas

In the last two decades, the concepts mobilized for analyzing the death and disappearance of undocumented migrants have multiplied. Biopolitics (Foucault 2004), necropolitics (Mbembe 2003), bare life and state of exception (Agamben 1998) and precarious, vulnerable, and grievable life (Butler 2020) are among the most widely used modes of framing this phenomenon in interdisciplinary fields such as critical migration studies and critical border studies (Aradau and Tazzioli 2020; Cuttita and Last 2020; Schindel 2019; Squire 2020) as well as the critical geography of migration (De Genova 2018). All these perspectives share a common focus: the analytical emphasis on global systems (capitalist, neocolonial, neoliberal, extractivist) and the encounter between sovereign power and political subjects ultimately causing these deaths and disappearances. These systems are generally conceptualized in terms of structures or regimes, i.e. techniques of power, that generate forms of life that are subject to high exposure to naturalized violence towards which there is a refusal of recognition, and thereby does not become intelligible as violent injury (Winter 2012), therefore it cannot be grieved when lost (Butler 2020). These perspectives are complemented with works on the consequences of mass migrant deaths and disappearances, focusing mainly on the subjectivity of families, survivors, witnesses and inhabitants (Kobelinsky 2019; Reineke 2016) witnessing humanitarian disasters (Givoni 2016) and the externalization of the causes of these deaths and disappearances by weaponized nature (De Leon 2015).

Although research on death and disappearance in migration contexts has been prolific over the last decade, there are still few works that focus on the study of factualization devices (Díaz 2020; Pezzani and Heller 2019) or on their critique (Heller and Pécoud 2020). Nevertheless, there are several works that aim to construct the facticity of the phenomenon itself. First, humanitarian researchers focusing on describing deaths
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based on first-hand observations and making recommendations for policy makers based on this (IOM 2016; ICRC 2020). Second, interdisciplinary teams, mainly in the US and Europe, collected data in forensic services, cemeteries and other administrative bodies to measure deaths against basic statistical trends and show links between the increasing number of deaths and the disappearance of migrants due to restrictive border and migration policies (EAAF 2020; Last et al. 2017; Martinez et al. 2021; Migre Europ 2019; Rubio-Goldsmith et al. 2006). Third, forensic researchers have focused on the identification of human remains of migrants who have died at borders, often foregrounding the link between forensic evidence and structural violence (Beatrice et al. 2021), and highlighting the *material witness* of non-human traces through the analysis of media artifacts and environmental conditions (Weizman 2017; Sheikh 2018). However, there is still little work analyzing forensic practices as a process of factualization and its importance for truth claims (Soto 2021; Soler and Beatrice 2018). This article contributes to a reflection on this analytical gap by considering forensics more broadly as practices of producing different kinds of material traces of death and disappearance, as well as violence resulting from the management of borders.

## 2. Factualization devices

Starting from the idea that the death and disappearance of migrants at borders is an experience that needs to be factualized through practices as listing and counting (Desroisières 2013) or bearing witnesses (Dulong 1998), among others, in order to become a fact so that a public truth account of these events can emerge, we consider ICRC, PCOME-Colibrí and FO as factualization devices. By experience, we refer to events not yet objectified, including forms of violence. Factualization devices are a collection of semiotic and material practices that contribute to the production of reality (Boltanski 2009), understood as the production of objectivity that transforms the lived experience of the world into facts and truth accounts.

The factualization devices are the practices by which the objectivity of the social world and consequently the truth accounts are constituted by traces that are considered valid to establish facts in certain contexts of reception (documents, testimonies, photographs, etc.). This conception comes from ethnomethodology (Garfinkel 1967; Zimmerman 1974; Pollner 1987) and means that the facticity of the world is not given, it is not natural or pre-established, but instead is a social accomplishment.

Few studies on violent events use this perspective. In this article, we draw on Dulong's work on the factualization devices related to the First and Second World War and especially the Holocaust (1997, 1998) and our previous work on the factualization of the disappearances and torture of political dissidents in Chile (Díaz 2014, 2017).

We understand the now classic Foucauldian notion of device not only as a "dominant strategic function," i.e. power as domination, but above all as "a stipulated series of sequences intended to qualify or transform a state of affairs through an arrangement of material and language elements" (Dodier and Barbot 2021, 60). The three factualization devices examined here transform a state of affairs, i.e. the experience of death and disappearance by survivors, their families and witnesses, into facts and truth accounts through different practices of factualization. It is important to note that we do not
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consider the effect of matter, object and non-human, in isolation from the human and valuation practices and situations that give it meaning.

By looking at the devices in this way, it is possible to understand the *valuation practices* that actors use in relation to them, attributing purposes and values, such as claiming the right to the identity of missing migrants (ICRC), linking deaths at the border to structural violence (PCOME-Colibrí) or highlighting the violence of border regimes (FO) as a political act. This requires considering actors. i.e. people and groups, as forensic experts and migrants, as separate instances from the devices to which different values can be attributed, and showing how these actors work with the devices that produce different valuation practices. Thus, the factualization work is intertwined with the valuation practices. In this sense, facts and truth production are situated practices, but not relativistic and arbitrary ones (Haraway 1991).

Each of the devices examined contributes, first, to the factualization of deaths and disappearances that have generally not been addressed (or have been inadequately addressed) by routine state mechanisms such as the quantitative recording of mortality figures or state-led forensic and legal investigations. Second, the factualization and denunciation of the facts by critical research groups creates a counter-official account of the facts that challenge the discourse of states, which generally attributes these deaths to the actions of smugglers or the responsibility of migrants themselves. Third, although each of these three devices creates narratives that sustain or challenge official accounts to different degrees, the valuation work is different in each of the cases described, as we will elaborate in the analysis.

The three devices we analyzed fit into what has been called the forensic turn (Anstett and Dreyfus 2015; Dziuban 2017), characterized by the increasing use of material elements such as human remains, geographies and buildings as sites of witnessing, as they contribute to the factualization of death and disappearance through the creation of materializable elements such as data lists and numbers, indicators and spatial representations. At the same time, these devices go beyond this turn. The absence of human remains means that other kinds of traces must be discovered in order to reconstruct, if not the identification of those disappeared, then "a plausible account of what happened" (Interview, Baraybar 2021). While classical forensics are understood as an application of scientific techniques to a judicial context through which an object is made to speak in trials, counter-forensics refer to a rhetoric aimed at challenging state violence and fostering modes of political engagement (Pezzani and Heller 2013; Keenan and Weizman 2012). In this sense, these devices make visible the specific forms of state violence such as the naturalized death and disappearance of racialized communities on the move that go unnoticed by the juridical grammar of the very states that cause such violence.

We argue that these devices produce situated truths about the death and disappearance of migrants at borders. This means that truth does not assume a universalizable transhistorical status, but is anchored in spaces, times and social and material conditions of production by the subjects who proclaim and embody it from a particular position (Haraway 1991). The concept of truth-spot elaborated by Gieryn (2002), takes off from the realization that an apparent truth is intrinsically contingent upon the place as the site of provenance of a specific claim, but in order to become a truth claim, the contingent circumstances of its making have to be obscured. The geographical, architectural and
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rhetorical construction of truth-spots facilitates the transition from "place-saturated con-
tingent claims to place-less transcendent truths" (Gieryn 2002, 113). That is, a relationship
is established between the knower and the place where the knowledge is produced
giving that truth claim insight, objectivity, accuracy, and trust.

In a similar way, truth according to Foucault is not a totality of statements, but refers to
the history of existing rules according to which statements can be made. This creates a
contingency of historicity that makes the truth established in each case a provisional
partial solution with a historically conditioned expiration date. Accordingly, truth can
never be established in relation to totality, being or any other transhistorical claim, but
instead is historically situated (Foucault 2008). Emphasizing the historical nature of
truth-making allows us to reflect on the contribution that each of the devices examined
here makes to truth-claims under contemporary conditions of borderization. By this, we
do not mean that the factualization devices contribute to the negation of institutionalized
sites of truth production (courts, science, journalism), as post-truth discourses intend
(Weizman 2019). On the contrary, several of these devices make use of them by construct-
ing truth accounts that contest official discourses.

These devices produce a localized objectivity, from different truth spots, and can be
conceived as embodied technologies of visualization (Haraway 1991). Not as the eye of
God, which sees everything from nowhere, but as the production of entangled phenom-
ena from a specific position (humanitarian, scientific, activist or a combination of these)
that implies responsibility. As we will see, in the cases analyzed, this translates into com-
mitments to families, community or broader political causes against border violence.

These factualizations produce ways of seeing the death and disappearance of migrants
in the borders as an entanglement of facticity and normativity and subsequent truth
accounts, entering in the struggle on what will be considered "rational accounts of the
world" that is, struggles on "how to see" (Haraway 1991, 194 Emphasis in the original).
Thus, they contribute to pluralize and conflictualize the representation of the real. In
this sense, making visible these deaths and disappearances can bring about a new
"sharing of the sensible" (Rancière 2000) that reorganizes the distribution of what is
visible and invisible and of those who take part in it to the common or to what should
be important to the common experience. By taking part in the sensitive representation
of the world through the mediation of these devices, migrants who have fallen
through the doors of the Global North could then become political subjects (Rancière
2000).

3. Creating network traces: ICRC

Push-and pullbacks frequently result in the disappearance of both bodies and traces
across the seascape. In the Mediterranean, migrants die and disappear due to neglect
and as a result of pushbacks by European state authorities which deliberatively expose
their lives to knowingly dangerous geographies at various land borders and the Mediter-
ranean Sea. In this context, the ICRC via its Missing Persons Project foresees to restore
family links through network tracing, informational and DNA matching (ICRC 2019). The
absence of body traces does not invalidate the obligation to process information to
provide an answer to family members that includes at least approximated information
about fate and whereabouts of disappeared migrants. The provenance from which the
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truth claims about the migrants' identity, whereabouts, and fate emerge as truth-spots can be conceived as humanitarian-scientific.

The factualization practices used to translate various clues about the identity, migratory route, disappearance or death of migrants into humanitarian-scientific data is undertaken in various ways. In the cases of shipwrecks, postmortem (PM) and antemortem (AM) data is matched on the basis of forensic investigation protocols, mathematical calculation of passengers, testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the event of the shipwreck, and mnemonic-visual devices such as photos of the deceased based on the visual reconstruction of the appearance of the missing person through forensic data (Cattaneo 2018).

The ICRC was involved in the identification and tracing of the victims of the aforementioned April 18, 2015 shipwreck. As a first factualization practice the ICRC uses an online photo-gallery called *trace-the-face* for family members who are looking for their loved ones in order to reconnect with their missing next of kin.<fnref n="1" /> A photo portrait constitutes a powerful factualization device operating through interactive acts of performance that, through the visuality of the image, bind the past event to the recovery of the present (Bernasconi and Ruiz 2018).

The second factualization practice focused on forensic identification involving the collection and matching of AM and PM data. AM information as well as all the material traces that are important for identifying the bodies (toothbrushes, combs, photos, videos, etc.) were received through the relatives of the disappeared (Cattaneo 2018). First, X-rays or a computer topography of the corpse is taken to determine if there was any bone thicken-ing due to fractures or protheses (Cattaneo 2018). After that, an external examination is carried out if the corpse is not charred or is already only a skeleton. In cases where no DNA comparison could be made, the reconstruction of the face via three-dimensional scans was of particular importance so that this could be compared with a photo of the deceased person as a visual factualization practice. At the end of the PM examination, the detailed anthropological, toxicological and genetic information is fed into a database in which physical characteristics can be searched for. The last step is to cross the PM data with the AM data providing pairs as possible matches (Cattaneo 2018).

However, regarding migrant disappearances and deaths not only the PM but also the AM information is difficult to be matched, in addition to the general bureaucratic problems concerning complicated registration practices of the deceased – if any. In this context of transnational migratory fluxes, forensic operations resorted to a third factualization practice different from the previously used mechanisms by the ICRC: the tracing of networks sharing similar variables such as date and place of the departure of migrants for their travel, their language, and occupation (Baraybar, Caridi, and Stockwell 2020). It becomes then possible to establish links if individuals disappeared in close geographical proximity or within the same period of time. Through this novel practice used by the ICRC, the starting points of the migrant's journey were traced through asking inhabitants of the villages of origin of those disappeared to fill in a questionnaire that permitted to know more about the disappeared person's characteristics, the exact route taken, and the belongings carried along. This information fed into the establishment of networks that oriented further search. In contrast to traditional forensic strategies

<footnote n="1">¹See https://familylinks.icrc.org/europe/en/Pages/Home.aspx.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_22.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_23.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1.** Example of a small network. There are two types of nodes, missing persons (ellipses) and survivors or witnesses (rectangles), and three different types of links (a continuous line means that the connected individual began the travel together, a double line means that the connected individual **began** the same boat, and the dashed line means that one of the individuals, survivor or witness, saw the other one). All networks were built using Cytoscape (cytoscape.org) and R software (www.r-project.org). Source: Baraybar, Caridi, and Stockwell (2020, 108).</figcaption></figure>

looking for the identification of names, relevant variables such as age, gender, address, place and date of departure, date and place of the last communication, and the relations between and among the individuals, among others, became relevant for identification purposes (Baraybar, Caridi, and Stockwell 2020). All this information was translated to variables and nodes forming various networks. Then, these networks were linked to establish the fate and whereabouts of a disappeared migrant. As such the explicit focus of this method consists in the tracing of social relationships between the missed, the survivor and the witness, including non-evident relationships via the geographical and temporal circumstances attributed to each individual involved (Baraybar, Caridi, and Stockwell 2020). Tracking and combining networks, therefore, served as a particular trace that in the ideal case allowed for the identification of the whereabouts of the disappeared (Figure 1).

When there is no evidence, no trace, that could be made intelligible, the trace effectively becomes a non-trace (Interview, Baraybar 2021). Forensic experts moved from transitional justice settings, where they encountered and unearthed bodies, to the Central Mediterranean Sea where they found no bodies, they erased by the sea. In this context, forensic refers to the process of the search (Interview, Baraybar 2021). If there is a body the forensic experts will apply technical-scientific knowledge to restore the identity. However, if there is no body the forensic process needs to “construct an answer beyond reasonable doubt” (Interview, Baraybar 2021). Hence, in the absence of body traces, the forensic activity moves closer to factualization practices of interrogation and reconstruction of circumstantial information regarding the relevant parkour of the migrant (Baraybar, Caridi, and Stockwell 2020). In the migration context,
<figure><img src="image_24.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_25.png" /></figure>

**Figure 2.** In green (ellipses) are individuals with collected TR, AMD and BRS, in yellow (ellipses) individuals with only TR, and in red those for which we have TR, but not AMD, nor BRS. Individuals in grey (ellipses) represent cases for which no TR, AMD or BRS were collected. Survivors are coloured in brown, witnesses (rectangles) in light blue, and other actors (triangles) in blue. Source: Baraybar, Caridi, and Stockwell (2020, 110). TR (tracing requests), AMD (ante-morten data), BRS (biological reference samples)

this creates an investigative common between various actors and agendas. As Baraybar
states:

The challenge is to create a common space of users and owners of information, a piece of
information can help to build a commons, and each organization should contribute some-
thing to create a commons. (Interview, Baraybar 2021)

Forensics as factualization practices in the context of migration can be conceived as
addressing the retrospective and future trajectories of disappearance, tracing the tra-
jectory of an individual from the beginning of his/her journey (Baraybar, Caridi, and
Stockwell 2020), reproducing the diachronic trace in reverse. For this purpose, the
untapped information in the tracing request papers under "other comments" was
explored. Here factualization is achieved through the tracing of the document's authority and transactional character "making observable the 'necessary' link between an activity and the occasion in which it becomes a matter of record." (Zimmerman 1974, 135) (Figure 2).

Valuation practices emerge around this factualization device: their purpose consists in
tracing links of social relationships and the migratory route of the disappeared through a
modeling of the human networks, as a way to fulfill their humanitarian mandate and
obligations.

In this regard, the ICRC focuses on individual cases but does not pinpoint state respon-
sibility or contest state accounts of the incidence of the disappearance. Hence, factualiza-
tion practices in these investigations do not serve to reverse the hegemonic gaze of state
data and discourses that conceal the causes of migrant death and disappearances. The
practices' aim focuses on the humanitarian aspiration to link fate to whereabouts and
to inform the next of kin of these whereabouts through the factual reconstruction of the
event, rather than revealing the historical processes of border violence and continuities
that caused these events.

4. Producing sociobiological and testimonial traces of trust: PCOME-Colibrí in Arizona

Although PCOME, a public agency, and Colibrí, an NGO, are formally different organizations, in our analysis we consider them as one and the same factualization device. This is because they compose a unique assemblage of innovative practices of actors working closely together to identify anonymous remains sent to PCOME and to register migrants who disappeared while crossing the border through Colibrí (Interview, Anderson 2017). Located in Tucson, 60 miles from the Mexican border in the state of Arizona, the PCOME-Colibrí combines well-institutionalized forensic expertise and techniques, with knowledge and data from a civil society organization, in this case the AM information (Missing Person Report) that Colibrí collects thanks to the bond of trust they have woven with the families, due to their experience and the fact that they are not a government agency, which often represents a threat to the families (Interview, Reineke 2017). This collaboration is not usual in the US in general and in its southern border in particular, where many times serious negligence has been reported on the part of the services in charge of conducting forensic examinations of human remains of migrants (Anderson and Spradley 2016). In the state of Arizona, PCOME-Colibrí is situated in a broader network of collaborations between family members around the US, embassies and consulates of the countries of origin of the concerned migrants, grassroots organizations (No More Deaths, Coalición de Derechos Humanos, Humane Borders, Samaritans), the University of Arizona and a number of other institutions in other states in the country and abroad. Networking, which involves technical collaboration and the transmission of learning and sharing of information, is a central factor in PCOME-Colibrí's ability to both identify and register cases (Interview, Reineke 2017; Anderson and Spradley 2016).

PCOME-Colibrí factualization practices can be summarized, but not exhausted, as two
types: PM forensic investigations (PCOME) and AM data collection (Colibrí). It is impossible
to know the total number of deaths, but of the 9756 remains recovered at the southern
border, according to the official count (USBP 2020) PCOME has examined the human
remains of 3356 *undocumented border crossers* (UBC) between 1990 and 2020, and
managed to identify 2154 UBCs (Martinez et al. 2021). For its part, Colibrí has registered
3500 Missing Persons Reports up to 2021 (Interview, Monterroso 2021) (Figure 3).

The first type of factualization practice, PM forensic investigations, designates two
subsets of factualization practices. On the one hand, the medico-legal investigation
and, on the other, the interdisciplinary academic investigation of death at the border
crossing as a reflexive practice, proposing hypotheses about the structural causes of
these fatalities based on the forensic practice itself, statistical data collected and social
anthropological frames. In the forensic investigation of deaths, PCOME combines the
practices of several disciplines (forensic anthropology, pathology and odontology, as
well as fingerprint examination and DNA analysis), but because the remains are usually
found in an advanced state of decomposition and skeletonized, forensic anthropology
is the focus (Anderson and Spradley 2016).
<figure><img src="image_26.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_27.png" /></figure>

<figure><img src="image_28.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 3.** PCOME form for unknown persons. This is a print copy of a computerized form. Bruce Anderson gave this form to Paola Diaz Lize in 2017 complementing the interview.</figcaption></figure>

PCOME has forged the category of UBC, which replaces that of undocumented aliens, emphasizing the act of crossing the border as the central element of the death and not the ethnic/national identity of the subjects. This category allows for individual identification of remains as UBC and also more accurate statistical recording of this type of death. PCOME set up a UBC Profile, that is a combination of indicators that distinguish a Southwest Hispanics ancestry profile: the socio-cultural characteristics inferred from UBC personal belongings (e.g. foreign currency; religious stamps, etc.), the geographic location where remains were recovered, which are typically remote areas known as migration corridors, and biological characteristics comprising the phenotypic and genotypic information (DNA) (Anderson 2008; Reineke and Anderson 2010). Additionality, PCOME set up a Biocultural Profile, i.e. "the manifestation of cultural and socioeconomic factors on the physical body, either incorporated into one's biology or applied as semipermanent modifications observed on one's remains" (Soler and Beatrice 2018, 121). The Biocultural Profile especially implied poor oral health and skeletal indicators of stress (malnutrition, period of extreme illness, chronic affection as anemia, etc.).

Interdisciplinary research, carried out by social anthropologists and sociologists, has made it possible to create a truth account from the facts established by PCOME. On the one hand, the quantifications and statistics published since 2006 (Martinez et al. 2021) have shown that these deaths occur systematically and not in isolation. Furthermore, relationships have been established between the Biocultural Profile and the
<figure><img src="image_29.png" /></figure>

# REPORTE DE MIGRANTE DESAPARECIDO

## SI CONOCES A ALGUIEN QUE DESAPARECIÓ CRUZANDO LA FRONtera ENTRE ESTADOS UNIDOS Y MÉXICO, LLENA ESTE REPORTE PRIMERO.

Si desea reportar a alguien que se encuentra en el desierto y necesita asistencia de emergencia, por favor llame inmediatamente al 911.

Si desea denunciar a alguien que desapareció en los últimos días o semanas, consulte nuestra guía de "Búsqueda activa" antes de llenar este reporte.

Una vez que se llena el reporte, un miembro del equipo de Colibrí se pondrá en contacto con usted para tomar el informe completo. Se puede demorar hasta una semana para recibir una llamada, pero puede estar seguro de que Colibrí le devolverá la llamada lo antes posible.

Colibrí toma todas las precauciones para garantizar la privacidad y seguridad de las familias. Toda la información que se comparte será confidencial y sólo se utilizará para encontrar personas desaparecidas y ayudar a identificar las personas que han sido fallecidas. Colibrí es un programa de

## INFORMACIÓN SOBRE LA PERSONA DESAPARECIDA

<caption>NOMBRE DE LA PERSONA DESAPARECIDA</caption>

Nombre

Apecido

Segundo apellido

<caption>FECHA DE DESAPARICIÓN</caption>

<caption>LUGAR DE DESAPARICIÓN</caption>

<caption>PAÍS DE ORIGEN</caption>

<caption>INFORMACIÓN BÁSICA SOBRE LA DESAPARICIÓN</caption>

<caption>**Figure 4.** Screenshot Colibrí Center for Human Rights website, 2021. Disappeared people form in Spanish.</caption>

embodied structural violence that these people "carry" due to poverty, racialization and marginality (Soler et al. 2019; Beatrice et al. 2021).

Colibrí, as PCOME's counterpart, mobilizes the right to truth in relation to migrant disappearances, as it provides tools for the next of kin to "find answers" (Colibrí website). In doing so, it takes on a traditionally humanitarian mission by tracing family relationships through a database of missing migrants, DNA matching and networking with families drawing on forensic practices in post-dictatorship contexts in Latin America (Reineke 2016). As such, the truth-spot from which PCOME-Colibrí develop their practices encompasses an assemblage of practices by state agents (county office) and members of NGOs involved in academic and activist work, as well as practices of family members of the disappeared.

In 2016, Colibrí began conducting a large-scale project to collect DNA samples from relatives of missing migrants believed to have died at the US-Mexico border (Reineke 2016). Factualization practices consisted in testimonies collected during visits to family members in the US, Mexico and Central America (Interview, Reineke 2017), which serve as a guide in the search for the disappeared in the files of medical examiners or in records collected from foreign embassies, as well as forensic data. In this context, the matching of forensic data usually follows a hypothesis. In this process, Colibrí and PCOME combine the results of their databases to find human remains that match the names registered by Colibrí (Interview, Monterroso 2019). In addition to scientific forensic procedures and witness statements, visual indicators such as photographs of the disappeared are used for identification as another factualization practice (Interview, Monterroso 2019) (Figure 4).

One of the challenges of this work is the access restrictions of various existing databases (e.g. FBI database, Combined DNA Index System) that only allow access on a case-by-case basis and are linked to law enforcement purposes, which
<figure><img src="image_30.png" /></figure>

discourages migrants from reporting their missing persons. Colibrí's adopted practices focus on building trust between family members and the organization (Interview, Monterroso 2021). Through Colibrí's creation of an alternative database, mistrust towards state-led search mechanisms can be overcome and thus testimonial traces can be recorded. In addition, Colibrí supports families through the creation of a Family Network where relatives of disappeared and deceased persons can meet others with similar experiences, and through an oral histories project of disappeared relatives, "Historias y Recuerdos" (Interview, Family Network Chief 2019). The family network can be understood as a social sustenance (Bernasconi and Ruiz 2018) that already constitutes a socio-affective trace of the permanent presence of disappeared persons in the family and society. The focus of these factualization practices is thus on building trust, healing and honoring the disappeared and their families, as well as providing emotional support, rather than only quantifying migrant deaths (website, Colibrí).

The truth accounts that relate statistical data and profiles with structural causes, indicate that these factualization practices are imbricated in valuation practices. The purpose of forensic identification is not only based on humanitarian need, but focuses on naming, personalizing and making visible "those who have been structurally erased" (Reineke 2016, 2). In this respect, practices based on ethical concerns to recover the identity of missing migrants go far beyond DNA matching. Factualization serves to break through the structural invisibility and the bureaucratic liminality of migrants by contributing to change the gaze on the immigrant as criminal towards the structural violence in contexts of border policing. Without diminishing the work of objectification, importance or value is given to the life, death and disappearance of these people as well as to the causes of the violence they suffer. As members of PCOME-Colibrí suggest, they not only work to identify individuals "but also to contribute a scientific truth about migrant's status as marginalized and vulnerable community impacted by this large-scale humanitarian crisis" (Soler and Beatrice 2018, 117).

## 5. Visual traces of state violence in the Mediterranean Sea: forensic oceanography

FO was developed within the framework of Forensic Architecture,<fnref n="2" /> an independent research agency based at Goldsmiths, launched in 2010. FO defines itself as a collaborative research project that critically investigates the militarized border regime in the Mediterranean Sea. Those involved in FO are both academics and practitioners interacting with a European network of grassroots organizations campaigning against repressive migration policies.

FO has conducted five research projects between 2012 and 2019, which are publicly available (https://forensic-architecture.org/location/mediterranean-sea). Each of these studies shows different forms of what the researchers call "structural causes of migrant deaths" (https://deathbyrescue.org/). As each of the five investigations uses similar methodological procedures, we will focus on one of them in order to show through which practices of factualization this device transforms events and situations of violence in the

<footnote n="2">²https://forensic-architecture.org.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_31.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 5.** Screenshot Death by Rescue investigation's home page. https://forensic-architecture.org/investigation/death-by-rescue-the-lethal-effects-of-non-assistance-at-sea.</figcaption></figure>

Mediterranean into facts and truth accounts. We chose to analyze the investigation "Death by Rescue" because it refers to one of the shipwrecks that was the target of the ICRC mission (18 April 2015) and offers us a different perspective on the same event.

"Death by Rescue" is a one-year research project with a team of 30 people specialized in eight different areas (geographical information science, vessel tracking technologies, image forensics, oceanography, statistical analysis, EU policy, international law and migration studies). This is one of the tragedies with the highest number of victims in the Mediterranean that was publicly known. There were two shipwrecks within one week (April 12 and April 18, 2015). Although the researchers use the word "tragedy," the event is not characterized as a coincidence or a result of the clash of violent geographies or as an isolated event, but as a result of structural politics of non-assistance, arguing that:

> The EU's policy of retreat of state-operated rescue at sea left in fact ill-adapted commercial vessels to bear most of the responsibility for rescuing and this, in turn, led to assistance becoming deadly. Death by rescue, we conclude, was the outcome of the EU's policies of non-assistance. (https://deathbyrescue.org/)

The EU policy of non-assistance in this case refers to the replacement of the military-humanitarian mission Mare Nostrum (MN) (2013), which was mainly funded by Italy and specialized in the search and rescue of migrants on the high seas, by Operation Triton (2014–2018), conducted by Frontex (the European Border and Coast Guard Agency), whose central mission is to secure Europe's external borders and prosecute human trafficking, rather than to rescue migrants (Figure 5).

Two main practices of factualization can be distinguished in this research. The first aims at debunking the argument put forward by the European authorities to end the MN operation on the basis of a discourse analysis. According to the official argument, the MN
<figure><img src="image_32.png" /></figure>

presence was a “pull factor” that increased the number of illegal border crossings and “smuggling networks.” This argument is challenged by FO through a discourse analysis based on data from various sources, but most importantly from a highly credible humanitarian organization, the UN Refugee Agency, which states that migration has increased due to the crises in Syria and Libya and that smugglers have not changed their practices inspite of the presence of the MN. Based on Frontex documents (such as “Tactical assessment for Triton operation” and “Frontex concept document for operation Triton”), it is further documented that Frontex and the European authorities knew that the end of the MN would lead to more deaths, but indicated that it would work as a deterrent:

> Through operational documents and meeting minutes, the report demonstrates that EU member states, political bodies and agencies – in particular Frontex – knew that the ending of MN would cause increased risk for migrants and ultimately lead to more deaths at sea, but discarded this information to prioritize the aim of deterrence. (https://deathbyrescue.org/)

The second practice of factulization refers to a series of evidence construction techniques to create what they called a “chain of events” of the two shipwrecks. This meant that they placed the April 12 and 18 shipwrecks in a longer chain of events that included less mediated shipwrecks that occurred earlier. Thus, it becomes possible to establish a trend in which these shipwrecks are seen as the result of a lack of rescue efforts and not as isolated exceptional events. The data on which FO operates depends on cooperation with the authorities, the private companies involved in the events, and the quality of the images to which they have access (Weizman 2017). In the case of the Death by Rescue investigation, the data relies on survivor testimonies, data from the Automated Identification System (AIS) – a satellite system that supplements radar to track the trajectory of vessels and avoid collisions (Pezzani and Heller 2019) – photos from one of the boats involved in one of the rescues, SAR mission reports from Frontex, and data from a warning system called Hydrolant. By combining this data, FO creates a detailed reconstruction of the chain of events in time and space, which also includes visualization through video, photos, animations with the position and trajectory of the ships (AIS), reproduction of rescue alerts with the exact hours and minutes, and the positions of each ship in latitude and longitude. For this reason, the Death by Rescue report can be seen as an assemblage of visualization and verification activities that, by bringing together a range of vantage points (from survivors, from computerized vessel tracking systems, from warning systems, from witness photographs), leads to “a coherent understanding of the unfolding of events,” or, in our terms, a truth account.

Based on the analyses described above, this truth account shows that the replacement of the MN by the Triton left a vacuum that was partly taken over by the merchant navy, which was not prepared for such rescue operations. This resulted in the rescue operations themselves being fatal. In the April 12 shipwreck, the migrants, seeing the merchant ship coming to their rescue in the distance, became agitated and further upset the precarious vessel in which they were traveling, causing it to sink. In the case of April 18, FO shows that the boat with about 1000 migrants on board runs into a large merchant ship that comes to their rescue. In the process (approximately) 800 people drowned. As a truth-spot based on scientific knowledge and techniques, FO aims to turn the instruments regularly used by hegemonic actors, such as statistics, sciences and techniques, against the
<figure><img src="image_33.png" /></figure>

The frantic tangle of Automatic Identification System (AIS) vessel tracks in the Mediterranean following the 18 April shipwreck. Credit: Forensic Oceanography. GIS analysis: Rossana Padeletti. Design: Samaneh Moafi.

<caption>**Figure 6.** Screenshot Death by Rescue report. https://deathbyrescue.org/.</caption>

state (or private actors such as large transnational corporations) in a particular way. This means visibilizing what the actors of power want to hide (in the case of Death by Rescue, the vacuum of rescue as a strategy of deterrence) and invisibilizing what the actors of power want to make visible, which include tracing mechanisms that make push-backs against migrants possible. They refer to this practice as counter-forensic. FO generates forensic counter-evidence from entities that are not bodies, human remains or corpses, but mainly oral traces from survivors and digital traces from ship tracking systems and alarms (Figure 6).

We have argued that the practices of factualization are intertwined with valuation practices. In the case of FO, the valuation practices correspond to political valuation practices. FO could be seen as a critical visual prosthesis that allows the violence of borders exercised by the migratory geopolitics of the European Union to be visible through material evidence: they resurrect the lost or deliberately concealed traces of death and disappearance of persons-on-the-move as forms of racialized and structural violence and insert them into the sphere of what can appear, thereby becoming perceptible. FO calls this procedure a “disobedient gaze” (Pezzani and Heller 2013), and it is in this sense that the notion of political valuation of this factualization device can be understood: as an artifact of critique that opposes facts and truth accounts to official (state) discourses, by an aesthetic, technical and scientific creation of a dissident representation.

## 6. Conclusion

This article makes a transversal analysis of three different contexts of forensic and counter-forensic practices, drawing from the concepts of factualization, valuation and truth spot. This allows us to think more deeply about forensic activity, highlighting its ethical and political implications.
<figure><img src="image_34.png" /></figure>

The cases analyzed reveal three approaches that go beyond classical forensic practices, which are limited to the analysis of the cause and manner of death of an individual and her identification, stretching the scope of counter-forensic practice.

As far as the ICRC was concerned, factualization devices included the matching of PM and AM data, testimonies of survivors and witnesses, and mnemonic-visual devices. Forensics no longer referred only to the identification of human remains, but to the entire search and tracing processes of migratory itineraries. While a truth-spot was conceived to be humanitarian-scientific, valuation processes focused on quantifying migrant deaths and restoring (family) networks without explicitly emphasizing state responsibility and structural violence as the root cause of these deaths and disappearances.

Regarding PCOME-Colibrí, factualization devices consisted in PM forensic investigations, AM data collection, testimonies collected during visits with family members and visual indicators such as photographs. In this context, valuation practices concerned naming, creating trust and making visible the disappeared and dead migrants who have been structurally erased from geographical zones and state records. In this way, valuation practices are inextricably linked to a victim-centered perspective. However, this binomial also analyzes what they call structural violence. In this way, they go beyond the single victim to include the social causes that force migration and provoke unequal vulnerability among the population.

As for FO, it assumes the truth-spot as interdisciplinary academic/activists knowledge paired with scientific and highly specialized technical tools. Factualization practices consist of analyzing data from multiple sources, including reports from humanitarian organizations and visual evidence such as data from computerized ship tracking systems and from alarm systems that serve to temporally and spatially contextualize the event. Valuation practices surround the aesthetic, technical and scientific creation of a dissident representation that opposes state-led forms of denial and concealment of responsibility.

The fetishization of the visible that underlies factualization devices could lead to another positivist impasse if they fail to recognize that it is not necessarily a matter of inadequate optics that prevent certain forms of violence from being seen, but of a structural indifference to that violence: that which becomes visible as evil does not necessarily fall within the scope of circumstances that are perceived to demand immediate cessation and radical change. Ultimately, the devices employed are limited to documenting the facts of migrant deaths and disappearances at the borders of the Global North, analyzed with scientific and financial resources rarely available in the South. Knowing that the migrants who die and disappear at the gates of the Global North are the survivors of long dangerous and arduous journeys due to discriminatory visa policies that do not allow for regularized migration, it would be crucial to expand the disobedient gaze to a critical and decolonial geopolitical gaze to include in the field of counter forensics the structural causes such as poverty, exclusion, mobility injustice, war and climate violence.

## Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
## Funding

This work was supported by the Babels Project (16-FASI-00005-01) of French National Research Agency (ANR-FRANCE) and School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences Research Funds. (EHESS-Paris-France).

## Notes on contributors

Paola Diaz Lize holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (Paris). She is currently an associated researcher at the Violence and Democracy Institute (VioDemos, ANID-Chile), the Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES-ANID-Chile), and the Centre of Social Movements Studies (CEMS-EHESS-France). Her research areas are political, criminal, and social violence, border studies, and sociological pragmatism. https://ehess.academia.edu/PaolaDIAZ

Anna Rahel Fischer studied political science, human rights studies and law, specialising in international law and international humanitarian law (IHL) at Sciences Po Paris (France), Columbia University (USA) and Leiden University (Netherlands) and was an associated researcher at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). She worked in the field of human rights law, with a focus on enforced disappearances, particularly in the context of migration, and conducted research on transitional justice processes and the right to truth with various NGOs as well as with the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

## ORCID

Paola Diaz Lize http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3606-516X

Anna Rahel Fischer http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0448-7544

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