Criminalisation and Control: Mediterranean Maritime Search and Rescue Workers’ Perceptions of Uses of Law

Abstract This article, based on qualitative research of 22 search and rescue (SAR) activists who save migrant lives at sea, examines perceptions of these activists on measures used to criminalise and control them and their organisations. Recognising the law in this area as contested between the impressions of civic society humanitarian activists and state authorities, it analyses how SAR activists perceive how the law is used to disrupt their work. This article examines not only how the law is developed by government, but it will be argued, utilising the theory of critical legal pluralism, that state officials create law in their encounters with SAR activists and their vessels. This article is therefore significant in demonstrating how state officials can create law for nefarious purposes, which has relevance not only to immigration and maritime law, but to other areas of controversial or contested activity.