(iPoster) The Criminalization of Search and Rescue Operations as a Strategy for Exclusion

• In Event: Poster Session: Immigration Politics in a Changing World & Middle East Section
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Immigration Politics in a Changing World

Abstract

Is the criminalization of Search and Rescue (SAR) operations justified? More specifically, have these operations led to an increase in irregular sea arrivals and fatalities in the Mediterranean Sea? The year 2024 marked a decade of SAR operations in Southern Europe, during which two contrasting narratives have emerged. A deterrence narrative—calling for more restrictive migration control and blaming SAR humanitarians for incentivizing irregular migration, and a humanitarian one—attributing deaths and disappearances of people on the move to stricter migration control measures. Despite growing research on the consequences of the criminalization of SAR operations, those engaging with novel and emerging data or theorizing the persistence of SAR operations amid strong criticism and criminalization have remained limited. This paper contributes to this scholarship by engaging with della Porta and Steinhilper’s (2021) contentious solidarity framework to underline how SAR operators have come to act as norm enforcers despite the growing diffusion of illiberal norms criminalizing NGOs across liberal democracies. It analyzes data from 2014 to 2022—primarily compiled from Frontex, the IOM, and the Fundamental Rights Agency—to show how SAR activists play a buffer role in lieu of states, acting as service providers for those left without assistance. This paper relies on descriptive statistics and process tracing with Bayesian updating to challenge the belief that SAR operations act as a “pull factor.” The findings indicate that operations conducted between 2014 and 2022 in the Central Mediterranean Sea have not led to an increased number of irregular arrivals and have, in fact, reduced the number of deaths and disappearances. This research’s findings reinforce the argument that the criminalization of SAR humanitarianism is an unjustified norm- and law-violating strategy enforced as an excuse to further exclude undesired (predominantly non-European) people on the move.

Author

• Claudia M. Serrano, University of British Columbia