Search and Rescue Ships as Exceptional Spaces in the Mediterranean: Navigating Emergencies, Threats and Governmental Actions

ABSTRACT

Since 2014, there has been an increase in non-governmental Search and Rescue activities (SAR) on the Central Mediterranean Route (CMR). Scholarly attention has focused on refugees’ and migrants’ lived experiences on the route. When engaging with non-governmental SAR ships, recent migration scholarship mostly concentrated on their function to rescue and to be a symbol for political activism. What is currently missing is a thorough exploration of rescue ships exceeding their function to rescue through the lens of humanitarian action. Scholarship has to expand on mechanisms and dynamics of political interference and the rejection thereof. Hence, I explore how SAR vessels can be conceptualized as exceptional spaces and how this affects NGO activists on those ships. This article is based on semi-structured interviews with activists that worked with SAR NGOs and on participatory observation on a SAR vessel. The article offers specific insights into the dynamics and mechanisms of rescue ships as exceptional spaces on the CMR and engages with wider debates about exceptional spaces.

KEYWORDS:

• Search and rescue
• exceptional space
• central Mediterranean route
• intersectionality

Disclosure Statement

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

Notes

1 Other SAR NGOs that operate and were operating in the Mediterranean Sea include but are not limited to: Jugend Rettet, Pro-Activa Open Arms, SOS Méditeranée, Save the Children, Cadus and Boat Refugee Foundation.

2 For security reasons, this article will not include a more detailed description of the interview partners (e.g. their profession, gender, nationality), nor will it include the exact dates when the interviews were taken. This is in line with the confidentiality agreements with the interview partners.

3 For more on challenges for researchers in security-sensitive settings see Gurol and Wetterich (2020b; 2020a) or Sriram (2009).

4 Important here is that there were changes in which territories are international waters and which states are responsible for a certain SAR zone. In some areas, what used to be Maltese or Italian responsibilities, became the Libyan SAR zone around 2017.

5 Even at sea, there still is some cooperation nowadays and used to be much more in the past.

6 Notable aspects for this subsection are deducted from the interview and fieldwork material and triangulated with relevant literature.

7 In this article, I focus on NGO activists and workers from two NGOs – Sea Watch and ResqShip – rescuing on the Central Mediterranean Route, one mainly operating from Sicily, Italy, and one from Malta.

8 All interviews that were not conducted in English have been translated.

9 SAR NGOs and single activists face investigations based on accusations of abetting human smuggling and therefore threatening national security (Cusumano and Bell 2021).

10 This does not mean that other intersectional dimensions have no influence in the governmental (emergency) order responses. Still, the above-mentioned aspects have been mentioned the most in the data this article is based on.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cita Wetterich

Cita Wetterich is a PhD researcher at the University of Basel, Switzerland, and the University of Freiburg, Germany. Previously she has worked as a research associate and lecturer at the Department of Political Science, University of Freiburg. In her research, she focuses on borders, violence, masculinities and the Central Mediterranean Route.