I have visited the Muslim cemetery in Ilford. I wish to be buried there if I die in London.I was contributing to an insurance scheme for repatriation when I was in Italy because the Muslim funeral service was not convenient there. In London, Muslims are satisfied with the funeral services, and they want to be buried here instead of repatriation. (Anis, Muslim interviewee, cited by Islam, 2022, n.p.)

In contrast to the liveliness conjured by the terms ‘migration’ and ‘mobilities’, death is associated with stillness and immobility. Yet, just as the animated experience of migration and mobilities can be characterised by hiatus, waiting and even death, so too death and funerary-mourning rituals prompt a variety of mobile practices. For example, the dying may travel between home and other places of care; the dead body is typically moved between the place of death and sites of funerary care and rituals; the corpse or cremated remains may be transported over long distances for final disposition; in many beliefs the spiritual journey of the deceased continues after death; and mourners variously travel, process and perform religious or secular rites at the time of death and subsequent cyclical acts of remembrance, depending on their customs. Therefore, mobilities are inherently interwoven with death and mourning practices. Further, as the quote above indicates, these already mobile funerary practices are additionally inflected by the mobilities of migration and can change with time, place and circumstances, including the relative inclusiveness of local cemetery-crematorium services. This volume brings lived migrant mobilities and immobilities into dialogue with the less familiar mobilities and immobilities associated with death, death rituals and the remains of the dead.

Mobilities have become a conceptual lodestone in contemporary studies of everyday and extraordinary movements and journeys, including migration. However, mobility is more than a concept relating to movement, it is a post-disciplinary paradigm that integrates studies of movement and travel with experience, meaning, practice and performance, affording ‘new ways of seeing and thinking about these things and the links between them’ (Gale et al., 2015, p. 7). In an era characterised by migration (de Haas et al., 2019), mobilities include the movements of domestic and international migrants, as well as other journeys or mobile practices, and the meaning-making associated with these movements. International mobilities are inherently shaped by the push and pull factors of need and desire, negotiated in and through individual people, families and communities, embodied physical and psychological stamina, and/or economic and political privilege and power. Mobilities, especially the ability to be internationally mobile, is unevenly distributed (Salazar & Smart, 2011), as a consequence of varying personal privileges and discriminatory ‘regimes of mobility’ (Glick Schiller & Salazar, 2014). This uneven access to international movement results in immobility and exclusion for many (Tsing, 2004), as is evident in the immobility of those who lack the required passport, skills, financial assets or familial connections which ease international travel, and in the delays of enforced interruption experienced by those waiting for a travel visa or asylum application. These dialogic and sometimes dialectical tensions are brought into sharp relief when comparing the migratory trajectories and experience of borders and ‘bordering’ regimes (Yuval-Davis et al., 2018) by the privileged, who experience minimal ‘border friction’, compared to those who risk their lives circumventing official borders which are impermeable to them by any other means. Even when migration journeys are completed, psychological scars may persist as a result of the trauma of the journey; ruptures in personal and professional lives (Przybyszewska, 2020); (post)colonial power relations (Jazeel, 2019); and cultural bereavement as a result of dissonance between the social and cultural life of upbringing and that of the country of arrival (Eisenbruch, 1991). Thus, mobilities both cost and mean ‘different things, to different people, in differing social circumstances’ and are socially and politically relational (Adey, 2006, p. 83).

Likewise, experiences of loss and grief relating to migration are varied, situated, relational and frequently overlapping: (i) loss of home and country, particularly as a result of war, political exile or environmental disaster/degradation; (ii) pre-migration bereavement (which may act as an impetus for migration); (iii) leaving behind beloved family, friends, animals, property and/or places; (iv) the death of kith-kin and/or other fellow migrants during the migratory journey; (v) broken dreams or aspirations when the experience of migration is incomplete or does not live up to hopes and expectations; (vi) grief associated with loss of status and professional de-skilling; (vi) cultural bereavement; and (vii) the exclusion or cultural rejection of postcolonial migrants and/or those of a particular race-ethnicity, religion or nationality.

1.1 Death, Bereavement and Belonging in a Mobile World

The motivations, means and experiences of migration shape the meanings and psychological-affective legacies associated with migrant journeys, inflecting migrants’ relation to places of origin, stopping points en route and final destinations. Relationality to place/s is deeply entwined with relations to people, including familial, faith, political and community networks, as well as the ethos of bureaucratic systems, public services, employers/employees and residents in the locality/country of arrival. In turn, these experiences and dynamic relationalities shape migrants’ (and subsequent generations’) ties to places of origin, heritage or citizenship and those of residence.

Where place attachment is established in the country of arrival, migration commonly produces symbolic transnational ties across multiple nation-states, expressed formally in dual citizenship (where permitted) and informally through a sense of attachment and belonging to more than one country. But international attachment may also be experienced through the more everyday entwinements of what are described as translocal communities and subjectivities (Conradson & Mckay, 2007), i.e. between two localities in different countries, such as British Bengalis who express attachment to and ongoing engagement with both London and Sylhet (see Chap. 5 in this volume; also Gardner, 1998). These connections are grounded in ‘translocal field[s] of intimacy’ (Mckay, 2007, p. 191) expressed through ongoing relations of kith, kin and community (Gilmartin, 2008), reflecting the de- and re-territorialisation of cultural identities and practices beyond nation-states (Inda & Rosaldo, 2002). As Buffel (2015, p. 13) summarises: ‘Identities, place attachments and family no longer respect national borders.’ These attachments to people and places elsewhere, what have been described as the mobile geographies of home (Ralph & Staeheli, 2011), are typically maintained via digital communication (phone, email, social media, video calls, etc.), remittances, post-migration mobilities (Ali & Suleman, 2017) and a persistent sense of diasporic community with those who are deemed socially close even if they may be spatially distant.

To date, mobilities studies have highlighted the close relationship between migration and the socioeconomic and cultural mobilities of so-called ‘first-generation’ migrants, but more work is necessary to explore the legacies and associated spatial and cultural needs of Established Minority communities (those of migrant heritage born in Europe) and indigenous minorities (such as Irish Travellers, Roma and Sami). This includes a need for a better understanding of migrant and minority religious practices and associated spiritual or sacred mobilities (Maddrell et al., 2015), given that religion can be a highly significant aspect of social, cultural and political identities – including funerary practices. While there are notable exceptions (e.g. Gallagher & Trzebiatowska, 2017; Rytter & Fog Olwig, 2011; Wigley, 2016), outside of pilgrimage and other performative studies, the role of religion in mobilities is relatively under-explored. While some migrants seek distance and separation from the constraints of religious beliefs and regimes embedded in their previous lives and home countries (see for example Gorman-Murray, 2009 on LGBTQ+ migrants), others find continuity in their sense of identity and belonging through the maintenance of religious affiliation and communal practice. Often overlapping networks of kith-kin and religion can provide migrants and indigenous and/or Established Minorities with both concrete and imagined communality, a sense of connection to their ancestors, and sites of belonging (Rytter & Fog Olwig, 2011). Thus, religious identity and practice can be seen as a fixing point or mooring in a space-time otherwise characterised by geographical and social mobilities (see Hannam et al., 2006 on mobilities and moorings).

As is evident in the following chapters, religion is of particular importance to understanding many people’s funerary choices and practices (Kadrouch-Outmany, 2014; Rugg & Parsons, 2018), and associated (im)mobilities (see Chaps. 5, 6, 7 and 8 in this volume). Thus, spiritual meaning, however defined, can shed light on the motivations and experiences ascribed to mobilities (Gale et al., 2015), but detailed qualitative research is vital to interrogate these identities, beliefs and world views in order to avoid treating migrants and minorities, and their needs, as homogenous. This requires an ethics of care and sensitivity to personal preferences and intersectional differences, such as the role of place, generation, relationship status, class, gender, sexuality and/or disability, in the experience of mobilities and faith groups (see Ciobanu & Hunter, 2017; Gorman-Murray, 2009; Jensen et al., 2019; Priya Uteng & Cresswell, 2008; Raghuram, 2019). Intersecting gendered roles, responsibilities, norms, values and death rituals provide fertile ground to explore the mobilities of norms, culture and values. Gendered mobilities (Priya Uteng & Cresswell, 2008) have typically been studied in relation to physical movement, but there are other parallel movements in roles and power relations, and the ways in which death rituals are performed can provide new insights to these social-political shifts within families and communities (see Chap. 2, this volume).

Elsewhere, scholars have addressed migrant experiences of bereavement and end of life, including care, beliefs and transnational digital connectivity (Bhugra & Becker, 2005; Gunaratnam, 2013; Fahy Bryceson, 2016; Hunter & Soom Ammann, 2016). In this volume, we focus primarily on migrant and minority disposition of the dead, the systems governing the acts of disposition and the influence of migration and other mobilities on mourning practices. High risk and tragic fatal migrant mobilities have rightly been highlighted in recent work by scholars, policy-makers and the media (e.g., BBC, 2021; Brian & Laczko, 2014; Kobelinsky, 2020; see also Chap. 4, this volume). However, other more everyday intersections of mobilities and death also merit academic and policy attention, particularly in the light of increasingly diverse multicultural societies in Europe and elsewhere. In this volume, we argue that migrant and minority death rituals and options for burial, cremation and cremated remains benefit from interrogation through a mobilities perspective and that, in turn, attention to these practices brings new insights to the wider fields of mobilities and migration studies, not least the emotional, spiritual, economic and political harm wrought on migrants and minorities through inadequate provision for their dead and their death rituals.

Attending to the interrelation of migrant mobilities and the materialities of the built environment of public spaces and services, including cemeteries-crematoria, offers a fresh lens through which to view the ways in which non- or more-than-representational emotional-affective sentiments, such as uncertainty, fear, joy and comfort, are co-produced for migrants (see Bille, 2019). As Jensen (2011, p. 267) writes: ‘Mobility is strongly intertwined with emotions, feelings, and ambiences.’ This emotional-affective lens provides a framework for better understanding the politics of place, architecture and design at different scales and levels, and the affects of these (Jensen et al., 2019), which, in turn, are central to understanding the relationship between migrant and minority life stories, mobilities and trajectories, and minorities’ subsequent choices about the disposition of the dead. A sense of entitlement and status are central to the politics of citizenship and belonging (Yuval-Davis, 2006); conversely a lack of ‘belonging’, including difficulties in fulfilling religious rituals, can impact on the mental health of migrants (Bhugra & Becker, 2005). Belonging and sense of home are connected, and these in turn are intertwined with the remains of the dead. Further, ‘the making and claiming of “home”’ (McClymont et al., 2023, p. 70) relies on the existence of a broader infrastructure that supports the associated community, including specific types of death rituals.

Questions of ‘design justice’ and differential mobilities (Jensen, 2017) reflect mechanisms of power and social exclusion and how these are manifest in and through material design decisions and interventions. In the context of this volume, this is particularly pertinent to the infrastructure and design of cemetery and crematoria and related services. Places of worship are also significant to this discussion, as sites which are central to funerary rituals for many, and where mobile-material items, such as imported religious texts, artefacts and even building materials, can (re)create authentic religious-ritual spaces for migrants and minorities (Tolia-Kelly, 2008). This sense of authenticity via mobile artefacts lends credibility to their use for symbolic lifecycle rituals in situ, which further allow migrants to materially and metaphorically ‘fix’ or anchor themselves in place, after lives characterised by mobilities (see Marjavaara, 2017). In such cases, the cemetery or site of the disposition of cremated remains can function as a familial and cultural ‘mooring’ and signifier of ‘home’ for migrants (McClymont et al., 2023; Hunter, 2016; see also Chaps. 6 and 7, this volume). On the other hand, inadequate funerary spaces and infrastructure can be experienced as exclusionary which exacerbates grief, especially when situated in the context of a history of demeaning (post)colonial power relations (see Ansari, 2007; Maddrell et al., 2021; Chap. 5, this volume). Thus, cemeteries-crematoria are dynamic material, functional, sacred-symbolic, textual, more-than-representational, emotional-affective and political sites of inclusion and/or marginalisation.

Centred on an understanding of cemeteries and crematoria as dynamic hubs for both mobilities and immobilities, this book includes findings from a variety of European countries, emphasising that ‘death is a phenomenon that demands a transnational approach’ (Havik et al., 2018, p. 1). Transnational identities can inflect and determine attitudes to death, the disposition of the dead and spiritual wellbeing, and mobilities associated with the afterlife (ibid.; Maddrell et al., 2021). We argue further that translocal networks and relations, whether that of diasporic or indigenous minority communities, need to be recognised as significant elements of European funerary culture and deathscapes (see Porteous, 1987; Maddrell & Sidaway, 2010). However, just as migratory systems are dynamic and diverse (Kofman & Raghuram, 2012), so too mobilities are varied and interdependent (Sheller & Urry, 2006), rather than uni-directional flows. Likewise, understanding the relational and mutually co-producing expressions and practices of translocalism both allows and requires sensitivity to the mobilities of the dead or their remains, and to the reciprocal influence of funerary practices and mobilities.

Both transnational and translocal connections have long been evident in diasporic and migrants’ funerals, including the virtual presence of international mourners via mobile phone or online streaming. Through digital technology, mourners, physically distant, are able to be present and even participate in important lifecycle rituals elsewhere (see Chap. 2), and this practice was widely mainstreamed during governmental restrictions on travel and social interaction during the COVID-19 pandemic. Taking these social-cultural, religious and technological virtual mobilities into account is crucial to understanding the mobilities of the dead and mourning rituals.

1.2 Post-mortal Mobilities of Bodily Remains and Cremains

While mobilities studies have overwhelmingly focused on the living, the dead have their own mobilities (Marjavaara, 2012; Maddrell, 2013): ‘No longer just bodies at rest, the dead are increasingly on the move’ (Jassal, 2015, p. 486). Ties of family, place and faith are potent, and beliefs about spiritual mobilities of the deceased may determine – even require – the physical travel of both the deceased and mourners, and particular embodied and symbolic ritual performances on behalf of the wellbeing of the deceased in the afterlife. The material mobilities of the dead include commonplace local micro-mobilities – e.g. movement of the corpse between the place of death, home, funeral home and cemetery or crematoria – but can also include long-distance travel to another area within a country or transnational journeys for funeral rituals and/or the disposition of the dead, including the return of a body or the cremated remains (‘cremains’) to the deceased’s place of birth, citizenship or heritage, commonly referred to as ‘repatriation’.

The transnational mobilities of the dead are spectacularly visible in the return of war dead to their home countries, coffins draped symbolically in their nation’s flag. More everyday forms of post-death repatriation involve the movement of bodies or cremated remains from the place of death to the desired place of final disposition, which often reflects local as much or more than national attachment, as is evident in a desire for remains to return to a village or suburb associated with family, or a particular sacred place. However, for migrants and minorities faced with unsatisfactory funerary governance and practice, mobility in the form of repatriation offers an alternative to negotiating local necroregimes (Jassal, 2015; Islam, 2022). Yet, studies of the mobilities of the dead have tended to focus on the necromobilities of corpses rather than the much more portable cremated remains.

Cremation represents a less visible but widely practiced form of the mobility of the dead. Cremation allows for human remains to become highly mobile, facilitating the transport, storage and dispersal of cremains at sites independent of the location of death and/or cremation. However, the level of state regulation of cremains varies enormously across Europe; e.g. Luxembourg requires the interment of ashes at the crematorium or other officially designated areas; the UK and Netherlands allow for cremains collection, storage or disposal as the next of kin see fit; and countries like Norway and France require an application process to gain permission for dispersal elsewhere under certain conditions (see Nordh et al., 2021). Where permitted, these mobilities, which combine the neutralisation of physical barriers to movement and high levels of movement (defining characteristics of hypermobility (Sassen, 2002)), can be seen in the case of cremains transported around the world in hand luggage, or by postal or freight services, scattered in sacred rivers or at other natural sites, returned to childhood homes, shared between family members, integrated into jewellery worn by the bereaved, or even rocketed into the atmosphere.

The relatively recent practice of cremation and dispersal outside cemeteries which has become a common practice for the majority population in countries such as the UK (Prendergast et al., 2006), has long been a familiar practice for minorities such as Indian Hindus and Sikhs, and Chinese Buddhist and Taoists (Jassal, 2015). Further, faith-based mobilities are often highly place-focused, exemplified by those Hindus whose post-mortal mobilities are deeply rooted in the significance of sacred place, notably the River Ganges and pilgrimage sites along its course. Translocal filial and place attachments to locations associated with birth, childhood or ancestral heritage also influence funerary mobilities. As noted above, post-mortal local and transnational mobilities closely relate to issues of migrant and minority belonging, integration and inclusive service provision. Indeed, as the quote which opens this chapter illustrates, inclusive infrastructure, migrants’ sense of being ‘at home’, and local disposition of the migrant-minority dead are co-productive. Notwithstanding the potential mobility of the dead, the reported decline in the practice of repatriation for non-European migrants (Gardner, 1998; Jassal, 2015; Kadrouch-Outmany, 2014; Maddrell et al., 2018) points to the need for more cemetery and crematoria provision for migrants and minorities within Europe. In addition to these spatial requirements, this necessitates better understanding of the nature and significance of varied funerary ritual practices, religious beliefs and obligations for minority faith and cultural groups, in order to avoid infrastructural harm caused by inadequate or inappropriate cemeteries-crematoria and related services (Maddrell et al., 2021). Equally, sensitivity to difference within migrant and minority groups is vital (see also Chap. 3, this volume).

Local majority cemeteries-crematoria culture, access to separate faith community provision and openness to inclusive and flexible funerary infrastructure and spaces collectively reflect dialogic elements of post-secular multicultural European societies (e.g. Chap. 10, this volume). This speaks not only to the interface between migrant integration and transnationalism in relation to funerary choices, but also to the extent to which cemeteries-crematoria are minority-inclusive public spaces and services. Cemeteries and crematoria are places of confluence and everyday encounter (Skår et al., 2018), which can show friction (Tsing, 2004) and where mutual understanding can emerge between diverse communities, and between service-providers and users, or where conflict can arise over diverse uses and meanings (see for example House et al., 2023). Yet they are understudied as public spaces and spaces of minority inclusion and exclusion, and majority-minority cultural negotiation. In reality, the planning, management and use of cemeteries and crematoria in multicultural societies can tell us much about the everyday lived experiences of majority norms, migration and migrant heritage, urban diversity, access to public spaces and services, and social inclusion and exclusion in Europe; and how these relate to migrant and minority experience of what Kallio et al. (2020) describe as ‘lived citizenship’, and practices of territoriality and bordering (Yuval-Davis et al., 2018; Maddrell et al., 2018, 2021, 2022), as well as (post)colonial narratives (Brah, 1996; see also Beebeejaun et al., 2021; Hunter, 2016; Jedan et al., 2020). Improving understandings of potential and actual conflicting majority-minority cemetery-crematorium meanings, uses and practices through dialogue, negotiation and co-production of strategies will enhance cross-cultural understanding and engagement within local communities, and inform wider diversity-sensitive management of and planning for public spaces-services in multicultural European societies.

1.3 Mobilities of Life and Death

Clearly, attention to the varied mobilities and immobilities of migrants and established minorities, in life and in death, provides a fresh perspective on the nature of mobilities which includes the local and international movement of both the dying and the material remains of the dead in diverse forms; the significance for many of the spiritual needs and trajectories of the deceased; and the embodied and virtual mobilities of mourners. Likewise, a mobilities approach sheds new light on what is often perceived as passive death practices and funerary rituals, and the fixity of death and the immobility of the dead. These insights, particularly the religious significance, and even requirement, of particular ritual spaces and mobilities for minority as well as majority faith groups, are central to ensuring that public cemeteries and crematoria in multicultural societies are inclusive of the needs of all residents. A focus on migrants and minorities underscores, firstly, the wider context of migrant and minority histories (including postcolonial and other power relations); secondly, the significance of migrant status, such as authorized and non-authorized, intra-European and Third Country migrants; thirdly, the importance of recognising difference within religious or ethnic groups; and finally, the centrality of cemeteries-crematoria and related services to fulfilling the European values of full and equal citizenship for all, expressed through the recognition of, and active provision for, varied minority needs, religious and secular.

The context of the COVID-19 pandemic has made the study of inequalities in cemeteries and crematoria even more timely and pressing, highlighting the disproportionate impact the pandemic had on minorities in Western Europe (Islam & Netto, 2020), and the widespread imposition of majority-norm-centred government regulation of funerary practices during periods of public health restrictions. Pandemic restrictions imposed by governments further resulted in enforced immobilities, impacting on the living, who wished to travel to visit the dying or to attend the funeral or memorial service of a loved one – locally and internationally – but also limiting the movements of the dead, whose bodies or cremated remains were held in limbo, awaiting appropriate rituals, and/or return to their country of origin or spiritual home. Public services (including cemeteries and crematoria), communities, travel, communication and networks have been challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic, necessitating attention to newly framed articulations of majority norms, multicultural society, religiosity, difference, place, digital connectivity and indigeneity and how these sit in relation to the presumptions – and wilful blind spots – of what Marotta (2017) has previously described as a neo-liberal and global age. Likewise, the intersections of the climate crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the inequalities these lay bare, are a prompt to reimagine, firstly, more inclusive mobilities and spaces and, secondly, to aspire to the positive attributes of chosen grounded immobility, when migrants and minorities have a sense of belonging in situ, rooted, at least in part, in the confidence that in death diverse citizens can reasonably expect to have their funerary needs fully met where they live, work and pay taxes.

1.4 Scope of the Book

For reasons of coherence, and reflecting broadly shared majority cultural heritage, the geographical setting of this volume is limited to Western Europe. This affords an analysis of recent migration patterns, and the negotiation of majority-minority practices in countries which have a broadly similar religious-cultural heritage shaped by largely Christian religious traditions (predominantly Catholic and Reformed Christian practices and heritage), coupled with common social trends such as the dialectic processes of the secularisation of mainstream culture and increased religious diversity, notably in resident migrant and established minority communities (see Nelsen & Guth, 2015). However, what may at first sight appear to be a Eurocentric approach is counterbalanced, firstly, by attention to the wider transnational and translocal mobilities and networks of those living and dying in Western Europe and, secondly, by the transferability of many of the insights to other geographical locations. Appropriate spaces and associated services for burial, cremation and remembrance rites are central to ideas and experience of home, identity, belonging, and political citizenship regardless of place.

The team of authors and editors for this volume are drawn from a wide range of disciplines, including human geography, urban planning, anthropology, history, religious studies and landscape design. In all of these fields of research, the infrastructure and care given to the dead are attracting increased attention, but the results are often published either in discipline-specific outlets or in journals specialising in death studies. Through this IMISCOE-sponsored volume, we have sought to embed those findings firmly in migration and mobility studies. The research underpinning this volume is grounded in the 2019–2022 HERA-funded CeMi project, Cemeteries and Crematoria as Public Spaces of Belonging in Europe: A Study of Migrant and Minority Cultural Inclusion, Exclusion and Integration.Footnote 1

The book opens with a contribution from the preceding 2017–2018 Deathscapes and Diversity project in England and Wales, and combines further work from the wider European CeMi project case studies, with additional chapters by other scholars working on related topics in Europe (see Høeg, Hunter, and Stauffacher, this volume, which respectively provide important discussion of Jewish cemeteries, cemetery governance in France, and the death of irregular migrants in the Italian Mediterranean). All chapters draw on extensive primary research with municipalities and other cemetery, crematoria and related service providers, and community interest groups, in order to examine varied local experiences and negotiations of cemeteries-crematoria uses, practices and service provision in relation to diverse needs within multicultural Europe. In addition to an innovative contribution to scholarship on the nature and significance of mobilities of the dead, this volume identifies both the challenges and benefits of providing inclusive cemeteries-crematoria and examples of good practice/creative strategies for fostering public dialogue, engagement and consultation regarding diverse cemeteries-crematoria uses, needs and practices, and the necessary management and policy/planning responses. As such it also calls for a policy shift to more inclusive cemeteries and crematoria spaces, services and governance where these are lacking, not least because of their value in enhancing the range of public spaces and services, the sense of belonging and citizenship for migrants and minorities, and potentially improve cross-cultural understanding for all involved.

Throughout the volume, participant-centred studies investigate ritualised, embodied, gendered, racialised and emotional-affective meaning-centred understandings and approaches to understanding migration and mobilities (Kofman, 2004; Vacchelli, 2018). This includes attention to questions of citizenship, beliefs, integration, residual colonial attitudes and implicit and explicit mechanisms of assimilation. Contributors to this volume show the cultural and religious pluralities that come with mobility, as well as the limits, contingencies and potentialities of these pluralities. The following section outlines subsequent chapters in brief, highlighting key content and contributions to theoretical, empirical and policy debates. Each chapter is framed and informed by its geographical and historical setting, including the legacies of war, genocide and colonial relations, and associated migratory flows and circulations, which in turn intersect with particular religious, secular, local and national regulations and norms, with varying implications for the funerary spaces and practices, and associated varied (im)mobilities of migrants and those of migrant and minority heritage. Issues addressed include the legacies of colonialism and current geopolitical relations; intra-European and third-country national migrant (im)mobilities; translocal identities, communities and practices, including repatriation; the varied (im)mobilities of international mourners in relation to embodied or virtual participation in funerary rituals; and/or the assertion of home-making through local disposition of the dead; the negotiation of minority cemetery and crematoria needs in the light of local-national regulation, norms and practices; the co-production of inclusive cemetery and crematoria; and evolving practices, including gendered norms. For reasons of confidentiality, research participants have been given pseudonyms, unless there is a specific agreed reason to name a participant, e.g. holders of public office. Similarly, although the municipal/state delegated cemeteries and crematoria studied are public spaces and grave markers are public statements, for reasons of sensitivity, some identifying details from these memorials have been obscured in text or images.

The book is divided into three parts, each containing three chapters. These parts are not mutually exclusive, rather, they are a convenient mechanism for grouping together chapters which particularly highlight and speak to each other in relation to particular sub-themes. Part I investigates the tension between the increased range of contemporary mobilities on the one hand and the (perceived) immobilities of local customs and regulatory systems on the other. This is explored through the lens of Established Minorities, a majority migrant city, and death as a result of high-risk irregular Mediterranean crossings to Italy. In Chap. 2, Avril Maddrell, Brenda Mathijssen, Yasminah Beebeejaun, Katie McClymont and Danny McNally untangle the embodied, gendered, racialised and institutionalised cremation practices of Hindu communities in three case study towns in England and Wales: Northampton, Swindon and Newport. They argue that attending to questions of (in)adequate funerary infrastructure and norms – including prompt cremation; accommodating ritual requirements for witnessing the charging the cremator; appropriate infrastructure; the negotiation of designated sites for the disposition of cremated remains in local rivers; and local bus services – are essential steps to creating and maintaining a sense of inclusiveness, lived citizenship and justice for these communities. Conceptually, the chapter underscores the changing local-national-international mobilities of cremated remains and other evolving practices and beliefs to reflect the role of varied corporeal, material, institutional and religious-emotional (im)mobilities that are instrumental in shaping contemporary Hindu funerary practices and experiences in England and Wales.

While much attention to migration issues in Europe focuses on non-European migrant minorities, Luxembourg City, as discussed in Chap. 3 by Mariske Westendorp and Sonja Kmec, is both a geographical meeting point and a political hub within the infrastructure of the European Union, and a unique city, as migrants, the majority of these being intra-European migrants, constitute the majority of the city’s resident population. This context allows the examination of different forms of translocal identities and practices. Analysis of in-depth interviews with intra-European migrants and third-country nationals shows how migrants from both other European and non-European countries with different cultural practices are at times shocked by Luxembourg’s highly regulated cemeteries and crematoria regime, notably compulsory fixed term leases and re-use of graves, and particular grave designs. Based on these experiences, the authors argue for approaching cemetery and crematorium spaces as important potential contact zones.

Chapter 4 by Daniela Stauffacher and Avril Maddrell addresses the pressing contemporary political and social issue of migrant death as a result of dangerous irregular migration routes across the Mediterranean, and local provision for the migrant dead in southern Italy. Drawing on the method of ‘following the body’ and the concepts of bordering and (non)grievability, it details the evolving local governance and social responses to the border dead at the geographical edge of the state and European Union. It goes on to examine local mortuary and burial practices, contrasting the initial integration of the migrant dead within local cemeteries, which, presented as a charitable response, can also be read as a form of immobilising assimilation; plus dedicated burial grounds which appear to give the border dead status, but which can serve to make them socially and politically invisible when located in peripheral spaces.

The legacies of past mobilities are highlighted in Part II, which seeks to tease out how historical heritage and often traumatic aspects of the past, including the legacies of colonialism, which shape present day migration flows, mediate experience of migration and belonging, and funerary spaces and preferences. In Chap. 5, Yasminah Beebeejaun, Danielle House and Avril Maddrell explore this interconnection in the Scottish city of Dundee. The town thrived on jute imports from South Asia and related manufacturing industry from colonial times up until the 1980s. The resulting ties with the Bengal Delta had an impact on labour migration patterns which need to be taken into account when discussing cemetery provisions for minorities. The chapter traces the tradition of mutual support within the Muslim communities to pay for burials as well as the long and winding negotiations with the City Council for appropriate Muslim burial grounds, which led to the creation of a Muslim Cemetery Trust (MCT) and to the opening of a private cemetery in 2014. This example prompts questions about whether the MCT burial ground represents relative success or failure for negotiated minority provision within the city’s municipal cemeteries services.

Historical practices are also key to understand French burial practices and the accommodation of religious minorities. Alistair Hunter (Chap. 6) shows that laws and regulations abolishing separate confessional burial grounds in the late nineteenth century were aimed at unifying the body politic and neutralising cemeteries as a site of social conflict, while simultaneously granting mayors sufficient leeway to allow for confessional grouping at cemeteries without any visible markers. This legal framework, it is argued, no longer serves it purpose, due to a political context which favours an increasingly strict separation of State and religion, which specifically problematises the presence of Islam and Muslim bodies in the public space of the cemetery. Due to legal insecurities and political pressures, many municipalities are unwilling to create new confessional cemetery sections. This intransigence leads to a distressing potential dilemma for Muslim families, which have to choose between involuntary repatriation or a local burial thereby contravening religious beliefs, with adverse effects for the integration of migrant-origin communities.

In Chap. 7, Ida Marie Høeg sheds light on how relationships to the local Jewish cemetery assist in negotiating Jewish identities in the city of Trondheim, Norway. In studying the coupling between migration, identities and the material mobilities of the local Jewish cemetery, the author concludes that for minority and migrant culture, cemeteries facilitate Jewish place-making. Her study reveals that such a place-making exercise in Trondheim has led to the creation of an inclusive Jewish place, including a material marking of their ancestors and those killed in the Holocaust. For many, particularly more recent Jewish migrants, the Jewish cemetery has provided a site at which to fix their sense of belonging to Trondheim and Norway as their new homeplace. Interestingly, in-depth interviews evidence greater freedom in funerary choices on the part of those belonging to longstanding Jewish families in the area, some of whom opt for burial in majority cemeteries.

In Part III, chapters investigate the unstable ground of identity politics with regard to funerary practices and grave-site management, raising questions about the marginalisation of indigenous as well as more recently arrived minorities. Chapter 8 by Katie McClymont and Danielle House is set in contemporary Cork in the Republic of Ireland. It asks how ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ are framed in terms of burial discrimination, focusing on the construction of whiteness. A comparison of burial practices of Polish people in Ireland, one of the most recent migrant communities, and those of a longstanding community, the Irish Travellers, shows that in the case of shared religion, institutional and/or majority culture rejection and disapproval are not linked to the Poles as incoming migrants, but to longstanding stereotypes and perceptions of (white) Traveller identity and class. Discord centres on the mismatch between cemetery governance based on majority norms and Traveller funerary culture and grave markers, as a type of aesthetic Othering.

Helena Nordh, Marianne Knapskog, Tanu Priya Uteng and Carola Wingren build on preceding discussions of co-creation and co-production of minority-inclusive cemeteries and crematoria (Chap. 9). They examine what this means and requires in the context of relatively strict Norwegian and Swedish national regulatory frameworks for cemeteries and crematoria, and migrant and minority communities’ needs. In both countries, the Church oversees cemeteries and crematoria, acting as proxy for the state, but take different approaches to provision for those belonging to minority faiths or none. The chapter reflects on whether this accommodation, especially when derived from a negotiated form of co-creation, is adequate to meet migrant and minority needs and the specific inputs that are needed for facilitating a multicultural approach in designing, planning and managing cemeteries and crematoria.

Dedicated funerary provision for migrant and (established) minority groups hinges on a number of factors including economic, political, social, historical, cultural and local conditions. In Chap. 10, Christoph Jedan examines different local definitions of and provision for ‘inclusive’ cemeteries in provincial Dutch towns. Focusing on recommendations for service providers, he goes on to suggest an ‘Eight-Factor Framework’ for evaluating local-specific funerary provision demand for minority and migrant groups. This is offered as a potential heuristic tool for municipal cemetery administrators and planners when reviewing diverse funerary facility needs. Drawing on different typologies of municipalities in the Netherlands, the chapter concludes that dedicated minority burial grounds, trans-municipal regional minority burial grounds and ‘free-field’ areas provide potential alternative approaches for providing inclusive funerary space and facilities for migrant and minority groups. He also highlights the potential income stream for cemeteries from meeting minority burial needs, especially in areas where majority disposition practice has shifted to cremation.

The insights from this volume are explored further in the Afterword by Eric Venbrux, who calls on death studies scholars to pay greater attention to mobilities as a concept and practice. Indeed, it is the hope of the editors and contributors to this volume that this work will inspire further research on the intersections of mobilities and death, and that, in the words of Parvati Raghuram’s Foreword, migrants and minorities in Europe will be treated with honour in life and death, and that European cemetery and crematoria spaces and services embody that principle.