Passports powers: movement restrictions, regulations and troubles after death Anthropological considerations on crossing borders based on fieldwork-notes from an ethnography on Italian bureaucracy for returning remains

The present paper aims to lead a reflection on the process of returning remains, focusing on routes from North to South of Mediterranean Sea, from Italy to native countries. Based on ethnography, the article exposes considerations about politics addressed to dead bodies requiring transitions: they imply bureaucratic processes breaking mournings and producing sub-categories of people. Bodies are subjects requiring regulations and ruled by their need of permissions and passports to cross borders even after death. It confirms the logic of limiting freedom movement for some sub-categories of people, needing to justify constantly their presence and possibility to move. Politics addressed to remains contribute to create a dangerous Other, a synonymous of foreigner requiring regulations even after death.