Programmes of migration regulation in the Mediterranean Sea constantly evolve and adapt, changing in accordance to shifting migration patterns and EU policies. Despite the commitment to governing mobility in this sea, migrant death continues to be a significant and indeed growing problem in the Mediterranean. While scholars have examined how the geography of the US-Mexico border is incorporated into an architecture of exclusion (Doty, 2011), this article considers how the sea conceals the violent political workings of a maritime geography that grows increasingly risky for migrants. By bringing the sea to the fore, the article interrogates how the space of the maritime has come to be understood as ungovernable and perilous and what the implications of such framings are in contemporary migration management. The article specifically examines how the maritime geography was framed in early maritime law as unruly and untameable, as well as the way the sea was used to justify the deaths of African captives in insurance law during the Middle Passage. These contexts demonstrate the longer standing logics in contemporary maritime migration management, whereby the assumed fatal materiality of the maritime is used to obscure political violence.

地中海中的移民监管计划会不断变化和适应，并根据不断变化的移民方式和欧盟政策而变化。尽管致力于管理这片海洋中的流动性，但移徙者死亡仍然是地中海地区一个严重且确实在增长的问题。学者们研究了如何将美墨边境的地理因素纳入排他性体系中（Doty，2011年），本文考虑了海洋如何掩盖海洋地理环境的暴力政治行为，这对于移民而言正变得越来越危险。通过凸显大海，本文审问了如何将海洋空间理解为不可统治和危险的，以及这种框架在当代移民管理中的意义。本文专门研究了海上地理在早期海商法中是如何构成不守规矩，难以驯服的，以及在《中间通道》中如何使用海洋为非洲俘虏的死法辩护。这些情况证明了当代海上移民管理中长期存在的逻辑，由此假定的海上致命物质被用来掩盖政治暴力。