Project

NECROPOLIS UNITED: integrated data platform of dead and missing migrants in Europe

Code
3I005522
Duration
01 May 2022 → 30 April 2026
Funding
Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO)
Promotor-spokesperson
Research disciplines
  • Humanities
    • Interactive media
    • Performance
  • Social sciences
    • Ethnicity and migration studies
    • Urban anthropology
    • Human rights law
Keywords
performance cultural anthropology radical cartography migrant deaths augmented humanities
 
Project description

NECROPOLIS UNITED aims at developing an integrated, sustainable, open-source database on reported migrants’ deaths in Europe. It integrates and updates the source data of three available databases that present fragmented data on reported border death victims: the list composed by UNITED Against Racism (data of 44.764 reported deaths, covering 1993-2021), the Missing Migrants Project (MMP) of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) (surpassing 35,000 lives, data of 2013 onwards) and the Deaths at the Border Database (DBD) conducted at the Free University of Amsterdam (covering 1990-2013). These data sources are fragmented, they have diverse specificities and accessibilities, and there is no platform to compare and cross-analyze the data. NECROPOLIS UNITED integrates and updates these data sources, and develops an information system that renders the database sustainable. The sustainable information system is set up in dialogue with José Pablo Baraybar do Carmo, Forensic Coordinator at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). ICRC created ‘Trace the Face’, an initiative that mobilizes and assists people in the country of origin looking for their relatives, who are migrants that they lost track of. The information system set up of NECROPOLIS UNITED will hence allow for people directly concerned by the data, to gain agency over the(ir) data, but also over the technologies used to shape the information system.