Unwanted, Unnoticed: an audit of 160 asylum and immigration-related deaths in Europe Introduction This briefing paper highlights the role European governments’ immigration policies and practices have played in the 160 immigration and asylum-related deaths we have identified within EU member states between January 2010 and December 2014. die jumping or falling as they flee pursuing police. They die of dangerous restraints applied to shut them up and force them down during deportation, or of punishment beatings by guards. They die at the hands of cellmates with untreated psychoses. Sometimes they go mad, and die in violent encounters with police. But most of all, they die at their own hand, of despair. In the deaths of migrants and refugees that the ERP has documented over this period – primarily through local media reports and communication with local migrant and antiracist support groups – the circumstances vary, but increasingly, trends and commonalities have emerged. In freezing, damp, squalid or overcrowded reception centres, asylum seekers die of preventable but untreated disease. Undocumented migrants forced to live with no home, livelihood or security die lighting fires to keep warm on the streets or derelict buildings where they subsist. Asylum seekers forced to live in camps die crossing unsafe railway tracks to get to shops. Undocumented migrants The deaths we are aware of are by no means the whole story. The relatively large number of deaths recorded here in Germany, for example, is more likely to be a result of an active antiracist and migrant sector which obtains and publicises information from the accommodation centres and asylum hostels, rather than an indication that Germany is the deadliest country for migrants and asylum seekers. Similarly, the large number of deaths recorded in the UK is not just the result of relative ease of access to UK press reports and campaign Table 1: Regions of origin of migrants and asylum seekers who died in Europe or after deportation 20 4 SLOV 1 Caribbean 16 North Africa Post-Soviet states & non EU Eastern Europe Eastern Europe (EU) 17 Middle East 21 South Asia 2 East Asia COLOMBIA 1 Latin America 35 Sub-Saharan Africa In 43 cases, the nationality of the person is unknown. IRR | European Research Progamme Briefing No. 10 3