The project has sought to conceptualize maritime rescue as a contested international norm, identify the main discourses used to restrict its interpretation, and map how this duty has been internalized by the security forces and seafaring organizations operating in maritime regions regularly crossed by undocumented migrants. Accordingly, the first building bloc of the process has consisted of a theoretical conceptualization of maritime rescue as a contested norm, tracing its formation and institutionalization. Despite being codified in several widely ratified international convention, the duty to rescue those in distress at sea and disembark them to a place of safety has remained vague, leaving the questions of what amounts to distress and how to identify a place of safety unanswered. These uncertainties became apparent as irregular maritime mobility gained momentum. To address the vagueness of the norm international organizations and domestic courts advocated a broad interpretation of the duty to rescue, calling for the disembarkation of all those in distress at sea in a place where they could safely apply for international protection. While consistent with basic human rights and refugee law principles like the right to life and to asylum, this broad interpretation fuelled different forms of contestation.
As a second step, the project has therefore analyized the contestation processes triggered by irregular maritime mobility by identifying the content and salience of the main discourses problematising the duty to rescue migrants in distress at sea. As widely noted by norms scholars, securitization processes legitimize deviations from normal behavior and established legal principles. Consequently, the securitization of migration – namely the process whereby human mobility is framed as an existential threat to a specific referent object – has served as the pivot of different contestation processes. The maritime rescue norm is no exception. Specifically, three different referent objects can be identified: the seafarers and security forces engaging in rescue operations, the places of safety where those rescued are to be disembarked, and the people rescued at sea themselves.
Last, the project has mapped how different actors have interpreted and internalized the rescue norm, concentrating on the public, commercial and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) operating in the Southern Mediterranean maritime region. Specifically, the project has highlighted how Italian and European security forces’ interpretations of the duty to rescue has increasingly diverged from NGOs, which have become increasingly criminalized as facilitators of undocumented migration. The concern that proactive rescue operations would serve as a pull factor of irregular migration was pivotal to more restrictive forms of maritime migration governance, increasingly geared on the externalization of rescue operations and border enforcement to actors like the Libyan coast guard and navy.
Results have been published in two impact-factors appeared on the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, disseminated across the academic community by participating in four international conferences and three workshops, and publicized through webinars and media interviews.
