Carolina Kobelinsky is CNRS Research fellow in anthropology at the Laboratory of Ethnology and Comparative Sociology, University of Paris Nanterre. Her current research deals with the material and symbolic treatment of dead and missing migrants at the Southern borders of Europe. She has conducted fieldwork for this project in Catania (Sicily), around the Spanish city of Melilla on the African continent, as well as on the Iberian Peninsula and in France.
Carolina’s recent publications include:
Kobelinsky, C. & F. Furri. 2024. Relier les rives. Sur les traces des morts en Méditerranée, Paris, La Découverte.
Our recent book explores an initiative in Catania, Sicily, to identify the bodies of migrants who died in the Mediterranean and are buried in the city's municipal cemetery. It follows the investigations carried out by a group of volunteers with no particular skills in the field aimed at identifying the deceased and returning them to their families. The ethnography examines the emergence of relationships of proximity between the living and the dead, the contours and implications of which the book traces.
Kobelinsky, C. & L. Rachédi, eds,. 2023 Traces et mobilités posthumes. Rêver les futurs des défunts en contextes migratoires, Paris, Pétra.
Where should one be buried if one has lived between two countries? According to what rituals? How can the transformation of the deceased into an ancestor be guaranteed when many ceremonies cannot be performed in the country of migration? This volume extends these questions by exploring the role - important and singular in each case - played by caring for the deceased, in the way migrant communities project themselves into the future. The chapters examine cases in Latin America, Japan, Canada, Spain, Russia and Senegal. The contributions of researchers in anthropology, history and sociology, based on ethnographic or archival investigation, are joined by the voices of professionals from the world of social intervention. Together, they shed light on the day-to-day management of ‘foreign’ deaths.