10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17495
This article empirically analyses how the unknown bodies of migrants who died in the attempt to reach Europe are managed and potentially identified. Shifting attention away from the border, the paper provides a new angle to the crisis unfolding in the Mediterranean, investigating the practices developed in order to know and attend to the dead migrant’s body. More specifically, drawing from 6 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Sicily in 2016 and 2017, the article presents an ethnographic account of the emergent Italian forensic infrastructure. It does so by looking at movement. The movement of bodies towards identification. The pursuit is informed by Science and Technology Studies (STS); the focus is on material practices aimed at the eventual identification of unknown bodies. Taking stock from recent debates in the anthropology of infrastructure in which scholars critique the idea that infrastructures are passive architectures comprising circulations, the paper proposes an alternative perspective on infrastructures, arguing that infrastructures are processes of constant and creative adjustment and that these ongoing changes are the effect of circulation.
application/pdf
2038-3460
17495
1
en
Sara Casartelli
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/
Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
migration crisis
Moving Bodies: Creative Infrastructures of Identification
Text.Serial.Journal
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/
12
Essays
2021-11-01
2023-06-27
2021-11-01
2023-10-19
37-60
TS
Sara Casartelli
2021/11/01
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17495
37
Università di Roma La Sapienza
2038-3460
1
migration crisis
en
60
Moving Bodies: Creative Infrastructures of Identification
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17495/16340
12
                                                                                          37




                                                                                      Essay
Moving Bodies: Creative Infrastructures
of Identification
Sara Casartelli
Università di Roma La Sapienza



     Abstract: This article empirically analyses how the unknown bodies of mi-
     grants who died in the attempt to reach Europe are managed and potential-
     ly identified. Shifting attention away from the border, the paper provides a
     new angle to the crisis unfolding in the Mediterranean, investigating the
     practices developed in order to know and attend to the dead migrant’s
     body. More specifically, drawing from 6 months of ethnographic fieldwork
     conducted in Sicily in 2016 and 2017, the article presents an ethnographic
     account of the emergent Italian forensic infrastructure. It does so by look-
     ing at movement. The movement of bodies towards identification. The pur-
     suit is informed by Science and Technology Studies (STS); the focus is on
     material practices aimed at the eventual identification of unknown bodies.
     Taking stock from recent debates in the anthropology of infrastructure in
     which scholars critique the idea that infrastructures are passive architec-
     tures comprising circulations, the paper proposes an alternative perspective
     on infrastructures, arguing that infrastructures are processes of constant
     and creative adjustment and that these ongoing changes are the effect of
     circulation.

     Keywords: circulation; anthropology of infrastructure; identification; dead
     bodies; migration crisis

     Submitted: February 11, 2021 – Accepted: June 8, 2021

     Corresponding author: Sara Casartelli, Università di Roma La Sapienza,
     Dipartimento di Scienze Sociali ed Economiche, Via Salaria 113, Roma, Italy.
     Email: sr.casartelli@gmail.com


1. Introduction
                    Se questi morti sono soltanto nostri, allora io voglio ricevere
                       i telegrammi di condoglianze dopo ogni annegato che mi
                      viene consegnato. Come se avesse la pelle bianca, come se
                    fosse un figlio nostro. (Giusi Niccolini, Mayor of the Islands
                         of Lampedusa and Linosa, “Appello all’Europa”, 2012)

TECNOSCIENZA
Italian Journal of Science and Technology Studies
12 (1) pp. 37-60 - ISSN 2038-3460
www.tecnoscienza.net                                2021
38                                                         Tecnoscienza – 12 (1)

    This piece is about infrastructures in the making. I’ll give away the
end at the very beginning (spoiler alert!). Contributing new threads to an-
thropological studies of infrastructure, the paper argues that infrastruc-
tures are processes of creative adjustment and that these ongoing changes
are the effect of circulation. More specifically, foregrounding the circula-
tion of bodies in the infrastructure whose purpose is identification, I
show the infrastructure is enacted through the very movement of bodies
and bodily material. By the end of this journey I hope that what move-
ment does will become clear. But now let’s start from the outset.
    In summer 2016, at the beginning of my fieldwork, the word infra-
structure was not part of my vocabulary. My object of research, I ex-
plained, are the procedures and activities involved when the dead body of
a migrant is found, recovered, investigated, and buried. My focus is on
the identification apparatus supporting the forensic and scientific practic-
es mobilized to give a name to the unidentified migrants who died on
their way to Europe. Such a cumbersome speech wasn’t very helpful. I
had to develop better communication strategies. I started using the term
forensic infrastructure. It was all there, in two words: the kind of organi-
zation that must be in place to know and attend to the dead migrant’s
body.
    The topic was indeed not popular. Amidst the putative “refugee cri-
sis”, whilst political (and academic) attention was on the European fron-
tiers and border management regime, I studied an aspect of the phenom-
ena that was largely overlooked: the management and identification of
migrants deceased in the attempt to reach Europe. Engaging with the first
qualitative study on the Italian forensic infrastructure, I investigated the
initiatives taken to attend to and eventually identify the dead migrant’s
body. The aim was to uncover the trail followed by a body with no name.
A how question triggered the research, and echoes in this article. What
kind of path does the body of a dead migrant travel, and how does this
route come about?
    The pursuit is informed by Science and Technology Studies (STS); the
focus is on the material practices aimed at the potential identification of
unknown bodies. Attending to forensic work in practice, in fact, reveals
the traits of motion, uncertainty and flux that most define and character-
ize the complex scientific endeavor of identifying a body without a name.
Whereas on paper identification procedures follow a linear trajectory
from the place where a dead body is found to its burial, on the ground,
the supposedly fixed infrastructure loses its extraordinarily defined fea-
tures, exposing a reality filled with ambivalence. In investigating the so-
cio-technical landscape required to manage and potentially identify the
bodies of dead migrants, this manuscript aims to take this very ambiva-
lence on board, unravelling the movement of a deceased body through its
identification route within the forensic infrastructure.
    It is important to stress from the outset how the theoretical framework
Casartelli                                                               39
of this paper challenges the rationalistic assumptions of the 1970s studies
in which infrastructure was seen as a passive “substrate” and takes its cue
from emerging and innovative models that highlight the relational nature
of infrastructure, exploring its agentic and ontological potential (Star and
Ruhleder 1996; Karasti et al. 2016; Jensen and Morita 2016). In fact this
manuscript provides an empirical analysis on the emergence of infrastruc-
ture, answering the question of how infrastructure comes into being. To
answer this question I draw from M’charek (2016) the concept of circula-
tion, or movement, two terms that from now on will be used interchange-
ably. Movement is to be understood no longer as a simple transmission of
people and things from one place to another, rather it is herein engaged
as a performative event that co-shapes humans and things as they move
through space and time (M’charek 2016, 29). Contributing new threads
to STS interest in this field, the piece sheds new light on our understand-
ings of infrastructures, showing how infrastructures emerge creatively
through the doing of movement itself. I start by introducing the problem
of border deaths. The paper then familiarizes the reader with the issue of
forensic identification making use of the protocol as ethnographic and
heuristic device. Next, I situate the topic within recent debates in anthro-
pology of infrastructure. After clarifying the theoretical and methodologi-
cal stance, the analysis is fleshed out empirically, providing ethnographic
accounts of the Italian forensic infrastructure.


2. Dead bodies at the border

    In recent years the intensifying flows of migrants attempting to reach
Europe have been receiving increasing attention. The numbers are indeed
unprecedented: the pro-democracy uprisings of the so-called “Arab
Spring” in 2011 significantly mobilized cross-border movements as peo-
ple fled violence, persecution and political turmoil. For the most part, the
European response to the migration’s upsurge took the form of security
and militarization. Whilst the human flows have been framed primarily as
a threat - through a rhetoric of invasion and emergency- a collaborative
effort at a European level was made to protect the borders, not the peo-
ple (M’charek 2018). Interventions focused firstly on the containment of
migrants, asylum-seekers and refugees in the Southern Mediterranean,
and, secondly, on intensifying border control and surveillance policies
through the mobilization of a border enforcement agency, Frontex (Car-
rera et al. 2012, 4).
    Politics of border externalization were set up to prevent arrivals par-
ticularly in the Mediterranean Sea, on land along external EU borders
and within third-party states such as Libya, Turkey, Moldova and
Ukraine (Jones and Johnson 2016). The “collateral” effect of such policies
40                                                         Tecnoscienza – 12 (1)

was to produce a segment of the world’s population who risked their lives
to get inside Europe (Van Houtum 2010). The construction of barriers
did not stop people coming, it simply directed them elsewhere, forcing
them to choose more dangerous and deadly pathways each time. 20,000
migrants have died seeking to cross the Mediterranean since 2014
(Dearden et al. 2020). From 2017 to 2019 the deaths recorded are 5,600,
of which more than 4,300 died on the Central Mediterranean route, most
typically departing from Libya and aiming to reach the Italian territory
(Robins 2019). Despite a decrease in the absolute number of deaths and
disappearances recorded on the Central Mediterranean crossing, the
probability of dying while crossing the Central Mediterranean has in-
creased (Dearden et al. 2020).
    Despite the repetitiveness and magnitude of the deaths around Eu-
rope’s southern borders, the dead receive little or no attention from state
authorities. Questions relating to who the dead are or their origins are
seldom raised, little is known about them or their names – the cause of
death is not even counted or registered officially by governmental organi-
zations. There is no established common practice for collecting infor-
mation on migrant deaths between States, data on irregular border-
crossers is limited, and there are no official death tolls (Laczko and Brian
2016; Last et al. 2017). While the management of borders and their pro-
tection is implemented through a collaborative effort at the EU-level, the
issue of identification and management of the dead is left to chance, de-
pendent on the competences and individual abilities of local public au-
thorities (police, the public health system, courts, cemetery attendants) in
the place where their body is found or brought from the sea (Tapella et
al. 2016). Politically ignored, deceased migrants are left unattended and
unidentified.
    Slowly but gradually attempts have been made to counteract the inac-
tion of states and fill the information deficit. The Mediterranean Sea is at
the heart of the epidemic of death and Italy is the country of first arrival
on several routes across the southern external borders of the EU (Last et
al. 2017). By exploring the ways devised to manage and know these bod-
ies along Italy’s southern borders, this paper offers a different under-
standing of the human crisis unfolding in the Mediterranean. If the insist-
ence on borders implies a disconnection between realities, a “here” and a
separate “there”, conveying the idea of divided worlds, the bodies of the
people who have died while attempting to reach Europe show that the
problem is not outside, but it is our problem as well. Making the people,
rather than the borders, the matter of concern (Latour 2004), may well
start with thinking bodies as agentic participants and remind us of the
power asymmetries of the European Union’s border management regime.
Casartelli                                                                   41
3. Identification
    Pointing attention to the regulatory gap surrounding dead bodies at
the border, the first Conference on the management and identification of
unidentified decedents, with an emphasis on dead migrants, was held in
Milan in 20131. Two years later experts from the forensic community met
again in Barcelona2. The main objective of these meetings was to start an
international dialogue on the problem of unidentified dead migrants. The
agenda included: 1) to share information on migration problems in dif-
ferent Mediterranean countries; 2) to improve communication, coopera-
tion and coordination between the different entities involved; and 3) to
identify "best practices" at regional, national, and international level.
There indeed is no easy way to identify an unknown body.
    Following international regulations, identification is based on the
comparison of post-mortem (hereafter PM) data, which is information
taken from the corpse to be identified (medical and/or dental infor-
mation, fingerprints, DNA, clothing, and circumstantial evidence) with
ante-mortem (hereafter AM) data, which includes information relating to
the missing person before his or her disappearance (medical and dental
history, distinctive features and unique characteristics of the person,
clothes and other personal items worn by the missing person when last
seen). Matching PM and AM data may lead to the identification of an un-
identified body (ICRC 2013; ICRC 2017; Cattaneo and D'Amico 2016).
Making this comparison, however, involves a rather complex work of co-
ordination, made even more complicated in the case of migrants who
have died while traveling: if PM data can be collected directly on the uni-
dentified corpse, the collection of AM data has to be done with the fami-
lies and acquaintances of the dead, whose country of origin is often un-
known.
    Subsequent to the conferences, Italy is so far the only country to have
adopted at an institutional level specific protocols for the identification of
deceased migrants (Piscitelli et al. 2016). This initiative did not come out
of nowhere. In October 2013 two shipwrecks occurred in front of the Is-
land of Lampedusa where it is estimated that more than 600 lives were
lost (Robins 2019,19). On that occasion the Italian governmental office of
the Extraordinary Commissioner for Missing Persons joined forces with
academia to identify the victims retrieved from the sea. A couple of years
later, the night of April 18, 2015, a vessel carrying migrants sank in the
waters between Italy and Libya, leading to the deadliest shipwreck ever

     1
       Supported by the University of Milan, the Italian Red Cross (IRC) and the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
     2
       “Second Conference on the management and identification of unidentified
decedents, with an emphasis on dead migrants: the Experience of European Med-
iterranean countries” supported by the ICRC and Spanish Red Cross.
42                                                            Tecnoscienza – 12 (1)

recorded: 28 survivors, about 800 drowned. The mass disaster stretched
the capacity of the Italian state to respond, again. Later that year Opera-
tion Melilli – named after the nearby coastal village – was launched, to re-
cover and identify the victims’ bodies. A task force – comprising forensic
pathologists from twenty Italian universities, experts from the ICRC; en-
gineers; professionals from the Navy, the police, the fire brigade; and lo-
cal governmental authorities from Syracuse – was created ad hoc (Piscitel-
li et al. 2016). A protocol was designed formalizing the collaboration be-
tween the government and University3.
     Starting from the protocol devised for Operation Melilli, the paper
examines the emergent Italian forensic infrastructure. As an organizing
device the protocol helps forensic practitioners to standardize a proce-
dure through which data can be linked to a body and finally a person.
The protocol does not simply describe the work that goes into identifying
dead bodies, it also orders and organizes that work (M’charek and Casar-
telli 2019). In a similar way, by focusing on how the protocol acts as an
ordering device, I use it as an ethnographic device (M’charek and Casar-
telli 2019, 741) to unravel the complicated and contradictory process of
identifying dead bodies.
     Even though the Melilli protocol refers specifically to the victims of
this shipwreck, the document is representative of how the identification
of unidentified bodies is assumed to work in general. Indications provid-
ed are fully in line with the DVI (Disaster Victim Identification) protocols
of Interpol (designed for mass disasters) and the ICRC International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). The document describes the whole
set of forensic activities to be carried out on the unidentified body to op-
timize the collection of PM data. A well-preserved cadaver, for instance,
is photographed with metric references, from all angles. Then clothing
and personal belonging are removed, described, and registered. Distin-
guishing signs or marks, like tattoos, scars, and implants are recorded.
When possible, fingerprints are always taken, x-rays and a 3D scan of face
and skull are made. Through an autopsy the biological profile of the
corpse is construed. From all cadavers a DNA sample (could be a tooth,
the femoral diaphysis or a piece of the iliopsoas muscle) is retrieved, and
if present, a hair sample (Protocol 2016).
     The document lists the identification procedures a corpse undergoes
to collect PM data. The process implies the allocation of a multiplicity of
specialists, radiologists, forensic anthropologists, odontologists, and ge-
neticists. Different instruments and apparatuses operate together. The
process involves epistemological, technical, as well as legal and bureau-
cratic aspects. All the information collected must be transcribed, orga-

    3
      The Melilli protocol sanctions an agreement between the Ministry of Educa-
tion, University and Research (MIUR) and the office of the Government’s Ex-
traordinary Commissioner for Missing Persons.
Casartelli                                                                        43
nized and stored. Doctors communicate with authorities, authorities
communicate with technicians, technicians with undertakers. Different
realities and worlds are entangled and connected to one another. This
complex intertwinement, collaboration, and distribution of such diverse
practices is something that we may call forensic infrastructure, and pre-
cisely the object of this investigation. But what exactly is an infrastruc-
ture? And why is the term useful? The following section answers these
questions.


4. Roads

   No prior boundaries exist to define infrastructures (Star and Ruhleder
1996). Infrastructures are complex systems, characterized by ambiguity,
incomplete information, cooperation by different individuals and often
bring together a diversity of actors, organizations, and perspectives from
academia, industry, commerce and the general public (Karasti et al.
2016). Infrastructures were first conceived as a “substrate”:
                 Something upon which something else "runs" or "operates"
             such as a system of railroad tracks upon which rail cars run. This
             image presents an infrastructure as something that is built and
             maintained, and which then sinks into an invisible background. It
             is something that is just there, completely transparent (Star and
             Ruhleder 1996, 112).
     A common metaphor associated to this perception of infrastructures is
a road which allows the movement and traffic of cars. Once they are built,
roads are “out there”, time quietens and cars glide along the way. Ac-
cordingly Larkin defined infrastructures as “built networks that facilitate
the flow of goods, people, or ideas” (Larkin 2013, 328). One wonders,
however, whether this exhausts our understanding of infrastructures.
Drawing from literature that highlights the relational nature of infrastruc-
ture, I endeavor to explore infrastructure’s agentic and ontological poten-
tial (Star and Ruhleder 1996, Karasti et al. 2016; Jensen and Morita 2016).
Rather than passive backgrounds underlying social action, as they are
conventionally viewed, the article conceives infrastructures as generative
systems, that both organize flows and spin out new relations between
them (Jensen and Morita 2016, 3, emphasis original). Infrastructures have
world-making capacities, they give form to culture, society and politics
(Jensen and Morita 2016, 3). Situating my research within these conversa-
tions, this article goes beyond, or perhaps, behind, the issue singled out
by the Authors. Focus will not be on what infrastructures are able to gen-
erate, but on exploring the very emergence of infrastructures.
     In order to do so, I borrow the concept of circulation, as delineated
by M’charek (2016). Ever since Mauss (1924) anthropologists have stud-
44                                                            Tecnoscienza – 12 (1)

ied the movement and analyzed the cultural meaning circulations transmit
as they traffic people and things. Moving beyond mere transmission, the
analysis will look not just at the things that move, but at the very doing of
movement. Circulation will be hence engaged as a performative event that
brings about identities and changes humans and things as they move
(M’charek 2016), showing the effect of circulation in the very making of
infrastructure.




     Image 1. "Work flow on site", Technical Annex, guidelines for managing
     the unidentified bodies of the shipwreck of April 18, 2015.
Casartelli                                                                   45
     Movement is indeed implied within the forensic infrastructure. Let’s
take a look at the following picture. Image 1 (see the next page) is taken
from the Melilli protocol and describes the trajectory the bodies were to
follow for the purpose of identification. The diagrams order temporally
the work-flow and the division of labour among the different practition-
ers (M’charek and Casartelli 2019, 744). Starting from a refrigerated
ICRC truck (1), the body bags were moved to an area where they were
defrosted and sorted (2). Then they were transported to tents where au-
topsies and external examinations took place (3). The anthropological,
odontological, and genetic samples retrieved were sent to Milan (4),
whilst the corpse would be boxed in numbered coffins (5), stored (6), and
then distributed to cemeteries around Sicily (7). The second diagram
shows how this order is not expected to change even under working con-
ditions where 500 bodies are expected.
     As we can see the circulation of bodies is entailed in the whole pro-
cess, yet somehow lacks specification. The protocol presupposes a linear
road along which the body travels from the refrigerated truck to the au-
topsy table to the grave, easily changing hands and available for examina-
tion (M’charek and Casartelli 2019). Seemingly bodies appear on a mor-
tuary slab and are smoothly moved from site to site and from hand to
hand, readily subjected to several identification activities. Samples are re-
trieved, stored at room temperature and transported to laboratories
where they are subjected to further analysis to complete the biologic pro-
file of the corpse. For every corpse a photographic digital archive is creat-
ed, and information fluidly travels and is transcribed on international
forms both Interpol and ICRC. Each corpse is followed by a legal practi-
tioner, an anthropologist and an odontologist (Protocol 2016). Referred
to as a “road-map” (Piscitelli et al. 2016), the document is illustrative of
the tendency to engage infrastructures as systems which regulate the traf-
fic of things, people and information. On paper, the forensic infrastruc-
ture is a fixed design in which dead bodies are smoothly managed and
moved for the purpose of identification. In reality, however, the move-
ment of an unknown dead body is far messier4.
     Once we start looking at movement empirically, the established route
slows down, accelerates, bends sharply, or disappears. Zooming-in on the
circulation of bodies and bodily material entailed in the identification in-
frastructure, I will take you on the route the body follows towards its
identification. Exposing the detail of forensic activities in practice this ar-
ticle shows the very different configurations this road takes on the
ground. As bodies start moving the road starts changing. As will become

    4
      STS has long been interested with the theoretical and methodological chal-
lenge of mess. Nowhere is the endeavor greater than in the messy world of large-
scale collaborative science projects. See Buyuktur and Jackson (2014), and Law
(2004).
46                                                         Tecnoscienza – 12 (1)

clear in what follows, infrastructures do not emerge de novo. Much infra-
structural work has already been done and made durable in time. A focus
on circulations, however, offers a new perspective on infrastructural activ-
ity. Infrastructures have erroneously been seen as a stable “matter that
enables the movement of other matter” (Larkin 2013, 329). Instead, this
research will show that it is the opposite: the very movement and circula-
tion helps to shape the infrastructure. It helps to shape the matter and the
specific version thereof.

5. Rammendo

    Following the movement of the body and bodily material in the road
towards identification I engage with a methodological genre developed
within STS called material semiotics. This approach looks at reality as a
dense material–semiotic network. That is, we are caught up in sets of rela-
tions that have to do both with meanings and materials. Nothing exists
outside the enactment of those relations, therefore, to understand reality
we must explore the multiple webs and the material semiotic practices
that carry them (Haraway 1991; Law 2004).
    With these conceptual and methodological arguments in mind, the
analysis attends to forensic procedures unravelling the mundane practices
of the identification endeavor. In the Melilli protocol we have encoun-
tered various versions of the body: as a corpse, as a tooth, as a bone, more
bones, a DNA sample, a garment. The infrastructure to identify an un-
known body indeed entails a wide range of virtual, technological and
physical crafts that take the human body to construct meaning in relation
to its identity. If reality is not independent of the apparatuses that pro-
duce it (Latour and Woolgar 1986) the technologies that use the body as
a means for identification produce very different renditions of the body.
The body, once again, comes in many versions (Mol 2002). Tracing out
the diverse ways in which the body is made knowable I suggest the identi-
ty of an unidentified body is not a fact to be revealed, but an intervention
on the body that comes about in practices. A photograph, a fingerprint, a
3D scan.
    At this point I would like to elaborate on a visual metaphor, that of
embroidery, in Italian, rammendo, that is particularly apt to articulating
the qualities and complexities of the identification endeavor I describe.
During my fieldwork the moments of concretization of the forensic infra-
structure were far from obvious. Characterized by invisibility, mess, and
ambiguity it was not easy to assess and circumscribe my research object.
Drawing, inter alia, on Haraway (1991) Law (2004), and de La Bellacasa
(2011), methods don’t just describe social realities but also help to create
them. Reality does not precede the mundane practices in which we inter-
act with it (Mol 1999, 65). Law and Singleton (2005) employ the meta-
Casartelli                                                                47
phor of fire to describe a pattern of presences and absences. Construing
through a material semiotic approach my research object, I observed and
became part of something evoking a darning of torn pieces, moments,
words. The word rammendo signifies both the work performed with the
needle on the fabric and the operation, the practice of darning, the one in
and out movement of a threaded needle. The job is not glamorous, its on-
tological existence is not taken seriously (Pérez-Bustos 2017, b).
    Similarly, identification of unidentified migrants is a careful work in
relation to bodies and materialities. Collecting forensic evidence from a
dead body is a meticulous work of care and shares the invisible status that
characterize some textile craft activities. Like mending a destroyed cloth,
it takes time, patience, and handiwork. A forensic pathologist, a friend,
told me a Sicilian proverb that she related to her job: “you eat onion.
Your eyes weep, and others get angry”5. By shedding light on the practi-
cal and affective commitment with the becoming of these bodies, this pa-
per aims to make an intervention, becoming part and co-constructing a
rammendo of different designs and colours sewn together.
    Ethnographic material comes from 6 months of ethnographic field-
work carried out in 2016 and 2017, following the movements of deceased
bodies of migrants back and forth between laboratories, cemeteries, and
mortuary slabs. Nineteen semi-structured interviews were carried out
with forensic pathologists and anthropologists. Furthermore, key actors
of the forensic infrastructure, including activists, ICRC volunteers, police
officers, lawyers, undertakers, politicians, a representative of the Interna-
tional Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), and the Italian Extraor-
dinary Commissioner for Missing Persons were interviewed. Whenever
possible, observations were made in forensic laboratories. In addition,
fieldwork included a day of participant observation in the military hangar
in Melilli, where identification activities of Operation Melilli were taking
place. I worked closely and befriended some coroners from the Universi-
ties of Palermo and Catania, getting to know them, seeing how they work,
exchanging points of views, and sometimes observing autopsies and ex-
ternal examinations of corpses. This paper is based on very different eth-
nographical cases of identification, that are more or less part of standard
practice. We start from Operation Melilli, the retrieval and identification
of the bodies drowned the 18th of April 2015.


6. Operation Melilli

   Whilst the protocol overlooks the retrieval of the corpses, as if it were
indifferent to the identification work per se, I believe it deserves our at-

     5
         Personal Conversation with coroner, January 2017.
48                                                                 Tecnoscienza – 12 (1)

tention. Operation Melilli started with the deployment of the Navy’s un-
derwater special operation unit6 recovering 169 corpses scattered in an
area of 1,805,000 m² on the sea (Trucco and Ibba 2016). In the mean-
while, the intervention strategy for the retrieval of the vessel and the bod-
ies inside was planned. 9.5 million euros were financed by the Presidency
of the Council of Ministers for the operation7. The underwater enterprise
was entrusted to a private company, the Impresub Diving and Marine
Contractor. All steps were carefully organized. A preliminary inspection
of the wreck was carried out through a Remotely Operated Vehicle
equipped with sensors to assess its exact position (370 meters below the
sea level), and the geological characteristics of the seabed. A robotic un-
derwater unit was designed and built for the occasion. The cyborg was
controlled from the surface through a futuristic co-management console
from which most of the underwater operations were handled. The sup-
port able to accommodate the equipment and technical personnel for the
execution of this unprecedented operation was selected in a Multi-
Purpose Supply Vessel, the Ievoli Ivory (Trucco and Ibba 2016).
    In fact, the high-tech aspects of the enterprise were not always suita-
ble to real conditions. Prohibitive weather and sea conditions represented
a substantial limit to the continuation of operations as an optimal weather
window of at least five days was necessary for the robotic arms to pull the
boat up. Recovery operations started in April 2016, a year later the ship-
wreck. When dealing with the movement of bodies climatic factors must
be taken into account, and not just to plan the retrieval of the corpse. The
conservation of a dead body is crucial as it provides precious PM infor-
mation, and it largely depends on the interaction of the body with envi-
ronmental conditions. During the long time spent in sea water, the bodies
underwent a conservative cadaveric phenomenon called saponification, in
which the body is encased in a waxy material called adipocere slowing
down the decay process: the internal organs and external features of the
corpses were hence discretely preserved. Once removed from wet or
moist conditions, however, the decomposition of the body would resume
quickly.
    To mitigate the tissue alteration that the putrefaction process entails,
when the vessel reached the surface it was kept at a temperature around
5°/10° through the use of liquid nitrogen. The nitrogen also helped to
drive away sea birds targeting the bodies, until the wreck reached the
port of Augusta, where a NATO military base had offered to temporarily
host the ambitious project to examine the bodies with the aim of identify-
ing them. The medical and forensic activities were organized in an enor-
mous hangar inside the NATO headquarters. The ICRC provided three


     6
         GOS Gruppo Operativo Subacquei.
     7
         Sources are contradictory on the exact amount spent to retrieve the wreck.
Casartelli                                                                  49
refrigerated trucks, two tents for autopsy examinations and forensic pro-
cedures and a refrigerated container to store all biological samples and
personal effects. A military base was transformed into a forensic laborato-
ry. Still, the bodies were unavailable. Trapped inside the boat, the pre-
sumed 800 bodies had to be taken out: a hole was made on the hull. A
group of firefighters was specially trained by the forensic pathologists to
ensure that no element useful for identification was dispersed during the
removal of the corpses. Recovery operations were particularly complex
because the boat’s holds and engine compartment were narrow, difficult
to reach, with very small accesses. The firefighters took care of one an-
other. They entered two at a time. One would collect the body, the other
would check on the colleague, ready to intervene in case of need. With
the help of shovels, the firemen collected 7 bags of objects useful to the
recognition but not specifically attributable to any particular body, 36
containers of bilge sewage possibly containing some clues, and 457 body
bags of commixtio tremens, that are commingled human remains.
    As we can see, cadavers do not simply appear on an autopsy table
ready to undergo the collection of PM data. Migrants’ bodies are found in
various places: washed up on beaches, trapped in fishing nets or in rocks
at the bottom of a cliff, clumped in ships holds, scattered at sea (Tapella
et al. 2016, 57), or hanging from trees8. Operation Melilli points at the
work it takes to move a dead body from where it is found, as it cannot be
left as litter in the sea or on a beach. Indeed, there is no easy way to move
800 corpses from 370 meters under the sea. The kind of work necessary is
varied: ranging from the creation of sci-fi robots to the work of care that
induces a firefighter to look after his colleague, to wipe dirt off his face or
quench his thirst whilst securing body parts9. Each of these details is not
trivial but essential for the movement of bodies. Diverse qualifying efforts
are required to move a dead body. Although such operations may not
immediately seem to be linked to the identification effort, they are a cru-
cial part of the forensic infrastructure. Once bodies start moving, they
impose modes of relating to them. They help to produce the kind of in-
frastructure through which they can be transported. Although taken for
granted, movement is key to identification.


7. Emergence

   Operation Melilli unfolds a bricolage of different actors that enable
the corpses’ transit, both human and non: politicians, vessels, soldiers,


     Personal conversation with forensic anthropologist, January 2017.
     8

     In the documentary “Lontano Dagli Occhi”, Domenico Iannacone inter-
     9

views the firefighters who retrieved the bodies of the victims of April 18.
50                                                            Tecnoscienza – 12 (1)

shovels and liquid nitrogen. As bodies move many things start moving
with them. Looking closely, we see old and new elements intervene in the
enterprise. This was not the first time a large-scale pilot study to identify
dead migrants had been undertaken in Italy. The approach was framed
by the shipwrecks of 3 and 11 October 2013 (Robins 2019), that provided
the experience operationalized in the intervention strategy deployed in
Operation Melilli. The technology used had a history as well: the private
company supporting the Navy in the operation had tested its technical
capacities in the recovery of the Albanian vessel A-451, sunk in the Adri-
atic Sea on March 28, 1997, at a depth of 800 meters, where Albanian mi-
grants lost their lives (Trucco and Ibba 2016). These two occasions laid
the foundations for testing and refining the technology used in Operation
Melilli. We see how infrastructural work is not built anew but emerges
incrementally over time, developing from existing infrastructures that
both enable and constrain their form (Star 1999). New elements may be-
come part of standard practices, others, may not. To clarify another ex-
ample is provided. The same summer, not so far away, in the court dis-
trict of Trapani, another vessel was being perforated. A coroner I spoke
to recalls the episode:
           I was expecting a call for that night... I had heard the news.
       There was an unknown number of corpses on a boat rescued in in-
       ternational waters, then transported to the port of Trapani. Our
       duty was pretty straightforward: the prosecutor had ordered to
       complete autopsy operations and attempt personal identification
       of all the corpses in 48hours. There were rumors about deceased
       migrants trapped in the hold. It was impossible to check the accu-
       racy of such rumors due to all the migrants on the main deck,
       waiting to be transferred on KBV 001 Poseidon. Even once we
       reached the deck, we couldn’t see anything in the cargo. It was
       very hard to look inside, extremely narrow, low in height and
       without ventilation. After 150 Migrants had been transferred we
       found an unconscious migrant and started CPR, without results.
       There was no heart activity. We continued for around 20 minutes
       before we had to redirect our priorities to all the other migrants
       who were unconscious or in very bad shape. When more migrants
       were moved we were finally able to investigate inside the cargo. A
       colleague crawled inside the cargo. He found a body with vital
       bodily functions and determined all the other migrants were de-
       ceased. The migrant who showed signs of life was reallocated.
       When all the unconscious migrants were stabilized we decided to
       recover the deceased bodies. To be able to do so, we had to open
       the deck. We opened two big holes, one in the bow and one in the
Casartelli                                                                     51
             stern .
                 10


    The case described in the ethnographic vignette is different from the
previous, and indeed less notorious. However, the issue is akin: the re-
trieval and identification of deceased bodies. In this circumstance, legal
action triggers the bodies’ recovery. There currently is no fixed regulation
in Italy through which authorities must proceed to identify a cadaver. As
clarified by Tapella et al. (2016, 58) identification is too often dependent
on the initiative and know-how of the individuals who conduct the foren-
sic investigation. In fact, there is no legal obligation to perform an autop-
sy or to identify a person who was not a victim of crime. The performance
of a full autopsy is at the discretion of the Pubblico Ministero (Public
Prosecutor), who appoints the judiciary police and the coroners to con-
duct the forensic investigation into the identity of the cadaver and the
cause and circumstances of his/her death. While identifying the bodies of
drowned migrants departs from the criminal justice context, both systems
aim at standardized procedures, that are thought to guarantee proper
handling from the start. As a device, a protocol helps forensic practition-
ers to achieve a level of standardization, setting out a procedure through
which data can be linked to a body and eventually a person. The question
is how that work is done on the ground, where standard procedures do
not hold (M’charek and Casartelli 2019, 740).
    In this specific case the Prosecutor had ordered the coroners to carry
out autopsies and external examinations in 48 hours. Their first concern,
however, was to take care of the migrants who still showed vital func-
tions. Only when the stabilization and relocation of all the passengers,
almost 200 people, were completed, the doctors could dedicate them-
selves to the deceased bodies. 52 bodies were retrieved from the cargo
storage and transferred in a refrigerated van. As previously mentioned, re-
frigeration is essential as cadavers are not immune to the summer’s heat
and decomposition rapidly advances. Also, a refrigerated van keeps the
smell of the corpses under control. By chance, that night, the forensic
team acquired a refrigerated truck confiscated from the mafia during a
criminal investigation occurred a few days before11. The van temporarily
joined the chain to facilitate the transportation of bodies. That night the
forensic team transported all the corpses to the cemetery where the re-
quested examinations were performed. Under such circumstances, the lab
moved to the graveyard.
    The example of the truck accidentally confiscated from the mafia is
significative, as we see an unexpected actor become part of the forensic

    10
       This case was also part of a Power Point presentation presented by Antonel-
la Argo at the IX National Conference of the Italian Group of Forensic Patholo-
gy, October 2016.
    11
       Personal conversation with coroner (January 2017).
52                                                             Tecnoscienza – 12 (1)

infrastructure, then disappear. Looking at the how the movement and
circulation of bodies comes about in the identification endeavor, discloses
an infrastructure that is more fluid and flexible than what we may think, a
process that adjusts according to specific needs emerging in a particular
time and place. A creative infrastructure, we could say.




     Image 2. The forensic team whilst unloading the refrigerated van




       Image 3. Photograph of the whole team during forensic operations in the
                                   cemetery
Casartelli                                                                           53


8. Creativity
                  You’ve got to be domestic right? Ok... so we used a coffee cup
             to clean the teeth of the cadavers and whiten them like the odon-
             tologist explained, we put some bleach so they became a little
             cleaner… ‘cos she was annoyed (by the fact that) they were all
             dirty ‘cos it’s not like we had time to brush all the teeth one by
             one, right? I mean, there was no time to do what one would have
             probably done in the case of one single body… so I said let’s put
             them... you see... I had kept the coffee cup... by chance... I said
             let’s put them in the coffee cup... (the coffee) offered by those who
             provided the coffins, those men, the undertakers, how can I call
             them?
     The fragment reports part of my conversation with Paola, a forensic
pathologist participating in Operation Melilli. Incongruously with the
media portrayal of the enterprise, the collection of PM data was carried
out in a situation of financial dearth and paucity of material means.
Whereas for the sci-fi retrieval of the ship 9.5 million euros were provid-
ed, no funds were allocated for forensic operations. The identification ef-
fort was seen as an act of humanitarianism, a contribution of expertise
that permitted universities to engage publicly with the issue of deaths in
the Mediterranean Sea. At the same time, it provided ample opportunity
for research and training (M’charek and Casartelli 2019, 748). In the ex-
cerpt above Paola is describing how a coffee cup becomes a tool for iden-
tification procedures. Teeth are of particular importance in the identifica-
tion process. When examinations on the body are impossible or insuffi-
cient for the identification of the cadaver, the odontological inspection
and the comparison of the anatomical and pathological peculiarities of
the buccal cavity can give more decisive results. Faced with the necessity
to ensure properly cleaned teeth were quickly handed to a bothered od-
ontologist, Paola ingeniously places them in a bleach filled coffee cup.
     On another occasion, one of the forensic anthropologists was annoyed
that while cleaning the bodily remains, small bones kept disappearing in
the sink. After a year under the sea the bodies had commingled together.
One of the aims of the forensic work was to understand how many people
were on the boat, and the bones were important traces in this process of
counting. Although the bones were not registered one by one, they were
taken into account in order to understand the magnitude of the disaster
and to create a registry of the number of victims. The disappearance of
small bones down the drain complicated matters. One day she came up
with a solution. Part of her lunch was a fresh ricotta cheese. Walking
back into the hangar she put the ricotta basket into the sink and was hap-
py to find that it fitted perfectly. It thus became a sieve to catch the small
bones (M’charek and Casartelli 2019, 272). The two examples describe
54                                                              Tecnoscienza – 12 (1)

ways to adapt the infrastructure, revealing a situated and continuous pro-
cess of re-composition, in motion. The infrastructure adjusts to the body’s
needs. Far from stable and a priori, the infrastructure is tinkered with
(Mol et al. 2010) all the time and different elements are tailored to con-
form for the body’s circulation to keep going. We find that existing infra-
structures, such as the coroner’s lifetime experience, adapt to new and
difficult working environments. Next unusual ecologies, like a filter from
a package of cheese are enrolled to ensure the bodies’ circulation and be-
come crucial devices in the forensic infrastructure.
    This is not to imply that the making of the infrastructure is vague or
random. Far from it. When asserting the infrastructure comes into being
through the interaction and adaptation of various elements I do not mean
any kind of feature can appear to facilitate the bodies circulation. Rather I
highlight the creative process that is infrastructure, in which different ac-
tors change and fine-tune to solve contingent demands. Long-established
features readjust through the body’s circulation. A military hangar be-
comes a forensic lab to receive 800 corpses. Everyday objects, such as a
coffee cup, intervene to allow teeth to be adequately treated. Or less
“trivial” interventions, like a van confiscated from a criminal scene helps
to transport bodies ensuring their preservation, becoming part of the
identification infrastructure. As novel entities emerge, they may dissolve
into the background, like the hangar provided by the Navy in the port of
Melilli turns into a military base again once identification activities are
completed, or yet again become durable. I wonder where the coffee cup
might now be.
    In the following ethnographic vignette, I am inside the hangar, help-
ing with the registration of clothes. When the firefighters accessed the
cargo of the vessel, scattered clothing and objects were found, probably
the passengers’ luggage, randomly gathered in bags separated from the
corpses. These personal belongings were not immediately ascribable to
any corpse but were classified anyway, after which they were recorded
and photographed. I was instructed to take notes as the bags were
opened. This was not an easy task: words were dictated to me at a partic-
ularly high pace, flies were going in my eyes and inside my mouth. The
job was quite demanding for a newcomer.
           I shoo away the flies from my face, nose, and hands. I’m taking
       notes for myself, when I can, on my arm. Some garments are more
       intact, lending themselves to a more meticulous description, others
       are reduced to shreds. My pen is dirty and smudged. Smudged
       with rotten remains. The coroner starts speaking very fast, and I
       concentrate on writing in capital letters in a readable calligraphy:
       BAG 04, CARGO
       11/07 TIME 11.27. YELLOW PLASTIC BAG AT THE
       OPENING OF WHICH CLOTHING IS FOUND.
Casartelli                                                                               55
             INCLUDING
             BROWN JACKET WITH EXTERNAL LATERAL POCKETS
             ANTERIOR AND INFERIOR (EMPTY).
             INSIDE COVERED WITH FAKE FUR.
             BRAND: UNREADABLE
             SIZE: XL
             BLUE AND WHITE SHOE WITH SYMBOL
             BRAND: NIKE
             SIZE: 41
                  The coroner opens a sweatshirt and I see something falling
             out, it rolls on the floor. I lean over to look, it is a bone, I indicate
             it to a man from the scientific police who picks it up and puts it on
             the table with the other remains. I will register it under the entry
             “dispersed find”, a piece of cervical, C2.
    Movement is capricious. By falling down C2 evokes the contingencies
in which bodies move. As the bone inscribes the ethnographer into the
forensic infrastructure, it indicates the quality of the infrastructure's
emergence: an adaptation of the different elements that allow the move-
ment of bodies. C2 tells us something else as well: by moving within the
infrastructure, bodies move and change, and also change things and peo-
ple around them. Circulations are so much more than a transmission from
point A to point B. Movement means change.


9. Change

    In Operation Melilli the firefighters had been trained by forensic
pathologists not to leave out any useful information when they crawled
inside the vessel to retrieve the corpses. This is particularly important be-
cause when a body is found it is the body itself that is the source of data,
and everything around it. This is the case not only in cutting-edge opera-
tions such as the one occurred in the Port of Augusta:
                 Port of Catania, 3 a.m.
                  Click. Click. Taking pictures are two operators from the scien-
             tific police. Click again. A young forensic pathologist joins in. She
             knows what to do. She has done it before. It is crucial to immortal-
             ize the body as soon as possible, shoot the face while it is still
             there. She puts on her gloves and helps them drag the body,
             clumped amongst others, closer to the moon light penetrating
             from the hole on the roof. Noticing the presence of a foam coming
             out of the corpse’s mouth, she slightly turns the head so the pic-
             ture fully captures the froth. Click. Then she cleanses it with a tis-
             sue. The cadaver is reproduced more than once from repetitive
             angles. They look inside the clothes and in the near surroundings
56                                                                Tecnoscienza – 12 (1)
       for any information apparently connected to this cadaver. She col-
       lects the fingerprints. An operation that usually goes beyond the
       tasks of the forensic doctor, being relevant to the Scientific Police.
       Fingers are well preserved, they all probably died just a few days
       ago. The corpse with all its personal belongings is moved inside a
       body bag. Time for the next one.
    The moment the corpse is found, evidence is sought mainly in the cir-
cumambient of the body. The search involves the corpse, the clothes, the
close environment. Often evidence is secretly secluded in necklaces or in
the hair! Don’t ever forget to check the pockets. As soon as the body is
found, everything counts as a factor. The body itself, skin and flesh, but
also all that is outside: personal effects, documents, jewelry, sim cards,
phones. What is missing is also important: fingers devoid of nails, chil-
dren without parents. The body reaches its amplest peaks as contextual
information is taken. Proof is everywhere as evidence is sought in the
background and through circumstantial information, but there is not
much time. The body must be moved. Relations of space and time will
change as the body keeps on moving.
           Cemetery X, 9 a.m.
           The zipper is opened. She starts looking. It’s incredibly hot.
       Her colleague is outside the tent smoking a cigarette. They have
       been working all night. He is humming a song he heard on the ra-
       dio, a summer hit. She smiles, then starts attentively inspecting the
       corpse in front of her. The body is lying in a supine position with a
       rigid support under the nape. She looks for distinctive elements or
       particular marks on the black epidermis. She finds nothing. No
       special mole, piercing or tattoo. No external injuries, scars, or
       traces of old surgeries. The only thing she takes note of: he is cir-
       cumcised. She then cuts off a lock of hair. After securing it in a
       plastic bag she takes the scalpel and performs a cut at the level of
       the pelvis. She raises some bundles of the iliopsoas muscle with
       surgical forceps. She notices the brownish looking muscle has lost
       its normal consistency, as it is easily divided by the scalpel. She
       withdraws a piece of it for DNA analysis.
    This fragment depicts a forensic external examination. Once the ca-
daver is removed from the context in which it was found, practices to
identify it can proceed more calmly. The surroundings don’t count any-
more. Elements that may contribute to finding the bodies’ identity are
now sought on the body. Its exterior is the fount of data pertaining to the
skin, the fingers, the nails, the wounds - inside the mouth, on the teeth.
Biological samples are retrieved. A lock of hair and a piece of the met-
aphysis of the femur. Not only biological samples are retrieved from the
body. Photographs of details or particular signs are taken, fingerprints (if
not done before), garments and personal effects are collected and stored
Casartelli                                                                            57
away. Throughout identification procedures we observe a multiplication
of the body (Mol 2002), as examinations take the body and articulate it
into the source for forensic identification. The following excerpt de-
scribes an autopsy.
                  Once the surface is checked, the body can be opened up. It
             tells more. They start from the head12. The scalp is opened: peri-
             cranial soft tissues are detached and skin flaps reversed. From the
             left frontal region samples are taken and placed in a sterile con-
             tainer, a specific box that ensures proper conservation pending the
             histological examination. Her colleague performs a cut with a cir-
             cular saw, he removes the skullcap and clutches it with two hands.
             After extracting the duramater, which is free of injuries, they ob-
             serve the encephalon. It is in an advanced state of putrefaction.
             They retrieve anyway it and place it in a box for future dissection
             in the lab. She then takes the scalpel and deeply carves the skin
             with a long incision from the upper part of the neck to the su-
             prapubic area...
     Whereas before evidence was looked on the body’s surface, infor-
mation is now found inside. The body “shrinks”. Through incisions, the
body is exposed, cut and dissected. It reduces in space, but it is gaining
time. The body is transient. Although the protocol suggests a neat tem-
poral and spatial orientation, once the body is subjected to forensic exam-
inations it undergoes a process of spatial compression and temporal ex-
pansion. As samples are progressively retrieved for laboratory examina-
tions, tiny bits of the body become part of other networks and travel long
distances. Whilst the corpse is handed to undertakers that arrange the
burial, photographs and fingerprints crystallize it in archives of the scien-
tific police, as it enters digital databases through Interpol and ICRC
forms. Documents pile on the desk of a magistrate. The femoral diaphysis
goes to a laboratory for DNA analysis. Skin tissues undergo histological
examinations, and so on. Legal, physical, bureaucratic, and forensic inves-
tigations intertwine as the body is translated (Mol 2002, 35). Pictures,
biological samples, the fingerprints, the files and the clothes are what the
“body” is at the end of the identificatory route. From physical to material,
from written to digital, the body on its route towards identity is trans-
formed. It has become smaller yet acquired an abiding durability.


10. Conclusion

   In the context of the putative “refugee crisis” thousands of people
have died en route to reach Europe. Moving away from the lenses and

     12
          Alternatively, autopsies start from the rib cage, usually with a "Y" cut.
58                                                             Tecnoscienza – 12 (1)

politics of the border, this article offers an alternative approach to the cri-
sis in the Mediterranean, exploring the scientific endeavor to know these
corpses and confront their anonymity. Attending to the management of
deceased migrants in Italy and identification initiatives surrounding dead-
bodies-at-the-border, this paper dealt with the issue of forensic infrastruc-
ture. My argument in this piece was about adding further articulations to
the issue of infrastructure. Whereas infrastructures have traditionally
been viewed as passive substrates affording movement, I invited the read-
er to challenge this common way of thinking about infrastructures, offer-
ing insights in the becoming of infrastructures. Utilizing the protocol as
an ordering device, the paper analyzed movement empirically and dis-
closed the reality of forensic work in practice, showing how infrastruc-
tures are processes of constant adjustment that emerge creatively through
circulations.
    Here I have focused on circulations and what circulations do. At the
end of this journey, I hope to have convinced the reader that movement is
so much more than a simple passage from here to there, and that the per-
formative powers of circulation deserve our attention. Movement is
change. It turned coffee cups into forensic utensils, professionals into
volunteers, and it made me an anthropologist of science. But this is an-
other story. This work also provided knowledge on the management of
dead bodies of migrants. Mobilizing the visual metaphor of rammendo, I
disclosed the factual and affective commitment with the becoming of
these bodies, refusing the silencing of these deaths. In conclusion, inquir-
ing the scientific efforts to attend to the dead migrant’s body, this article
aims to subvert the unacknowledged massacre and advocate for the exist-
ence and the possibility of change. For while these bodies move, they
might also move us.


Acknowledgements

I thank Antonina Argo for the pictures. I especially thank her and the Palermo
équipe for their welcoming and kindness. I am equally grateful to Cristina Catta-
neo as well many other anonymous (forensic) professionals who shared their time
and insights with me.


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