Non-governmental Search and Rescue Operations in the Mediterranean: Challenge or Opportunity for the EU?

Non-governmental Search and RescueOperations iThe article analyses the development of Search and Rescue (SAR) Operations in the CentralMediterranean by NGOs as a controversial but efficient practice and aims to discuss its impact onstates’and EU performances in coping with the migrant and refugee crisis. Using empirical dataprovided by the Italian Coast Guard from 2014 to 2018, it focuses on these questions: Arenon-governmental SAR operations at sea becoming a civilian practice to be associated withgovernmental ones? Can the consolidation of such practice impact (complement) governmentaland intergovernmental policies?It is divided into three parts. First, civil society organizations, and specifically NGOs, areanalysed within the theoretical studies on migration, to stress their roles and approaches and tounderstand their relevance. Second, the recent use of SAR operations at sea by NGOs to rescuepeople in the Mediterranean are discussed as a complementary tool to governmental one. Theirpotentiality to become more than a temporary solution and instead to constitute an innovativeand consolidated practice of‘non-governmental SAR operations’is assessed. Last, empirical dataare used to evaluate the perception of such practice and to discuss its political and sociallegitimation