Project description
Humanising the lives of deceased migrants
Thousands of migrants attempt to enter Europe through irregular channels each year, with many tragically losing their lives in the process. The Mediterranean alone saw the highest number of migrant deaths in 2023 since 2017, with many bodies never being recovered. Some perish in deserts or shipwrecks, while others remain unidentified, their stories obscured. Yet, in the communities they left behind, these missing and deceased individuals remain socially significant. The ERC-funded SOLID project explores the social life of deceased migrants. Through ethnographic, global, and collaborative research, SOLID seeks to humanise these tragedies and make the social importance of these lives visible. The project introduces the concept of social anatomy, analysing the practices surrounding the identification and understanding of deceased migrants.
Objective
Thousands of people have died in the attempt to migrate into Europe through irregular channels. In fact, 2023 has seen the highest number of migrant deaths in the Mediterranean since 2017 . We only ever see very few of these bodies. Some die in the deserts of Sudan and Libya never to be found, others get stuck inside shipwrecks at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. Even the dead bodies that end up on the shores of Europe often remain unknown and thus socially obscure. However, in their local communities left behind, the dead and missing continue to hold great social importance.
SOLID presents an innovative theoretical and methodological approach to understanding the social life of deceased migrants by employing a research strategy that is ethnographic, global and collaborative. The aim is to promote the humanisation and social visibility of deceased migrants by creating a broader understanding of the human lives behind the tragic statistics of migrant deaths. The SOLID research project introduces the analytical lens of social anatomy, which refers to the configurations of social arrangements that emerge around missing or deceased migrants as various people and organisations employ practices of determination to identify, understand and/or keep indeterminate who has passed away and how. By bringing together forensic, social, economic, humanitarian, political and criminological actors and perspectives on the same unidentified bodies of deceased migrants, SOLID pursues an innovative analytical approach to the anthropology of death, and specifically to dying in anonymity. It highlights the social importance of missing and deceased migrants in their communities as well as in Europe by tracing the social concerns left behind in Somaliland, Morocco, Greece and Spain through the innovative methodological approach, generative collaborations. This method captures the multiple configurations of knowledge and practices as different actors respond to the same dead bodies.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- medical and health sciences basic medicine anatomy and morphology
- social sciences sociology anthropology
- social sciences sociology demography human migrations
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2024-STG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
1165 KOBENHAVN
Denmark
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.