Security Dialogue 1–16 © The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0967010614557512 sdi.sagepub.com The saved and the drowned: Governing indifference in the name of security Tugba Basaran University of Kent, UK Abstract The duty to render assistance at sea appears to be a well-established humanitarian norm, nonetheless in 2011 alone more than 1500 people drowned in the Mediterranean. Witnesses recount that many could have been rescued if fellow seafarers had not ignored their pleas for help. Struggling to understand failures to rescue, many seek to portray indifference as individual failure from the norm. In contrast hereto, this article provides an insight into the governing of indifference in contemporary liberal societies - that is, how people are guided towards becoming indifferent to the lives and sufferings of particular populations. Thus, my focus will be on the workings of law and its potential to produce collective indifference. The drowned, I argue, are not casualties of individual immoral behaviour; through a system of sanctions, fellow human beings are encouraged to look away and even to let people die at borders in the name of security. This not only dilutes the legal duty to rescue but has also had a detrimental impact upon the normative landscape, leading to a distinction between worthy lives that fall within the duty to rescue and charitable lives becoming a question of benevolence. Keywords security, law, borders, rescue, migrants, indifference What laws, what barb’rous customs of the place, Shut up a desart shore to drowning men, And drive us to the cruel seas again? (Virgil, Aeneid, Book I) Introduction 10 April 2011. An unnamed, unregistered boat floats back to Libya. After 14 days adrift on the Mediterranean, just 11 of 72 passengers are still alive (Shenker, 2011; Strik, 2012; Heller et al., Corresponding author: Tugba Basaran, BSIS, University of Kent, Boulevard de la Plaine 5, 1050 Bruxelles, Belgium. Email: T.Basaran@kent.ac.uk 557512SDI 0 0 10.1177/0967010614557512Security DialogueBasaran: Governing indifference in the name of security research-article 2014 Article by guest on April 24, 2015 sdi.sagepub.com Downloaded from