At a Loss at the Loss at Sea: Families of the Missing Migrants of the Mediterranean and the (Bermuda) Triangle of Space, Articulation, and Justice

Over the past decade, thousands have been recorded dead or missing after attempting to cross the sea from north Africa to southern Europe. In contrast to the governmental apathy to this plight, behind these missing people are those who steadfastly remain in search, demanding answers and seeking closure. Drawing on an intimate engagement with Tunisian families involved in activism, this article highlights the tripartite lacuna within which they find themselves: The slipping of their sons into the black box of intercontinental “illegal” immigration betrays the contingency of their narratives and the illusiveness of closure. We attend to these families’ responses to finding themselves in search of loved ones effectively, if not actually, lost at sea. By thinking with and through their efforts, we decenter the locus of Mediterranean-borne stories from statist and Eurocentric anxieties to a particular set of subaltern experiences. Linking these intimate geographies to the political landscapes in which they are imbricated serves to show how (inter)subjectivity at the familial scale is not detached from (geo)political imagination. By triangulating between space, stories, and sapience in these families’ experiences, we recognize in their yearning and striving amidst a spatially conditioned injustice an articulation of a familial mythos underpinning a situated geopolitical intervention from below. Still, the families live the day-to-day, their hearts yearning for a reunion here and now, their eyes fixed on the northern (event) horizon. May their eyes find coolness.