They Matter: Volunteer Efforts in the Search for Migrant Remains in the Sonoran Desert

Abstract

This thesis explores the efforts of volunteer-led Search and Rescue (SAR) teams working to locate and recover the remains of missing migrants in the Sonoran Desert. Drawing on participant observation and semi-structured interviews, it examines how these grassroots actors respond to the state-produced conditions of death and disappearance shaped by deterrence-based U.S. border policies. Framing SAR efforts within the concepts of necropolitics and structural violence, this study argues that SAR work constitutes a powerful form of resistance against the structural conditions shaped by federal immigration policies and local enforcement practices that contribute to migrant death and disappearance. Volunteers engage in rituals of recovery, naming, and mourning that serve not only to honor the dead, but to assert their dignity and affirm the value of their lives. Through these practices, SAR teams transform the desert from a zone of abandonment into a landscape of care, remembrance, and radical solidarity. This project contributes to broader conversations on the politics of humanitarianism, border violence, and grassroots justice.