Telling Stories, Overwhelming Borders

Abstract

This paper presents the ethnographic experience of the author, who worked as an independent researcher in the Project «The Human Cost of Border Control» led by the Free University of Amsterdam. More concretely, the narrative follows her participation in the making of a database with the available information about the death of those immigrants who died in their trip to Europe, and whose bodies were rescuedeither in the sea or in the coast of Spain, Malta, Italy, Greece and Gibraltar. Through the description of the participation on this project, the author leads the reader to some of the black holes of contemporary migratory flows, inscribed in the bureaucracies of death, in the statistical voids, and in public silence.