Public grief and political transformation: La 72 Hogar-Refugio para Personas Migrantes

Expressions of public grief have been ever more present in the context of growing numbers of migrant deaths acros many border regions. However, the political and transformative potential of collective acts of mourning or commemoration has been increasingly put into question. Instead of posing a tangible challenge to border policy, grief has often been co-opted or actively employed by state actors precisely to work against transformation of existing policies and systems of migration control, not least by placating and comforting those in whose name borders are erected, protected and militarized. Expressions of public grief have also become normalized to an extent, without shifting what some call a “globalization of indifference”. In this article, we reflect on the relationship between public grief and political transformation based on our research on public memory and the politics of mourning in Mexico in the context of state violence, criminal violence, and migrant deaths. We suggest that conclusions about the potential effects of public grief rest in part on competing visions of political transformation. Through the work of memory activists in a migrant shelter, and drawing on distinctions between instrumental and prefigurative politics, we show that activists who create communities of mourning do not exclusively judge their work by effecting changes in laws or by holding states accountable. Instead, they act as if the alternative is already here, embodied by the activists' practices themselves, their everyday actions and the relationships built within these spaces.