Various Actors: The Border Death Regime

Behind border deaths there is a variegated multiplicity of actors, guided by different principles and motivations, which contribute in different ways and to different extents to create the conditions for deaths to be more or less likely to occur or be prevented. Moreover, distinctive public and private actors enter the stage in the post-mortem phase. This chapter provides a tentative overview of the main categories of actors, showing the relationship different actors have with death, as well as with what could be seen as its counterpart: survival (from the survivors’ perspective) or rescue (from the rescuers’ perspective). The concluding section also proposes the concept of a ‘border death regime’ to make sense of this multitude of subjects.