‘An ordinary business dealing with extraordinary circumstances’: deathwork and mediation in the case of Ukrainian transnational funeral services for migrants in Italy

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Amidst the rise of the labour mobility mediation industry, Haron is an unusual transnational business: a funeral company transporting the bodies of deceased labour migrants back home to Ukraine. With over a hundred clients per month from across Europe, Haron places the lives of people separated by borders at the heart of its work. This ethnographic case study of Haron’s Italian branch is guided by Walter’s concept of deathwork as specialised labour following a death, in which mediators establish a triadic relationship between the living and the dead. Haron operates as a mediator in multiple ways: it manages the mobility of bodies across state borders, negotiates families’ expectations of a “proper” funeral, and addresses ruptures created by migration. Most importantly, it navigates the complex moral economies of labour migration, in which transporting a deceased relative is a costly, often unaffordable undertaking, especially during the war in Ukraine. In many cases, clients remain buried abroad at the expense of local municipalities simply because of families’ financial constraints. This study, based on participant observation and interviews with Haron conducted between 2020 and 2023, asks: What extraordinary mediating deathwork is required for a transnational labour migration project?