Existing at risk of disappearing. Narratives on death during border crossing

‪In Melilla, Spanish enclave in the Mediterranean, on the African continent, migrants tell numerous stories about death during border crossing. The discovery of men, women and children drowned, dehydrated, asphyxiated at the border has become a daily reality. Unlike maritime borders, few dead are counted and few bodies are found around Melilla. However, death is a specter that accompanies the experience of all the people I met in the enclave and its surroundings. This spectral omnipresence is a form of violence that appears both in stories about lived experiences, told by those who arrived in Spain, and in the rumors that circulate among those who have still been waiting their “chance” on the Moroccan side. The author examine here the form and the content of these narratives, collected during an ethnographic field study carried out between 2014 and 2016, by exploring what they say about contemporary migration.‪