| Summary: | <p>This thesis examines the history of humanitarian aid at sea from the 1970s to the present day. It focuses on humanitarian projects that locate, support and transport people in distress at sea, most often refugees and migrants who are seeking safety and opportunity across borders. I argue that maritime humanitarianism is a rebellious form of assistance, which has frequently ‘rocked the boat’ within the relief industry by putting forward distinctive arguments about aid. The thesis identifies three main manifestations of this rebelliousness. First, maritime humanitarianism has resisted processes of professionalisation, opposing the bureaucratisation of relief efforts. Second, it has embraced political debates over immigration and border control, posing a challenge to the humanitarian principle of neutrality. Third, it has promoted advocacy as a central means of intervening in crisis, complicating classical understandings of impartiality. In these ways, maritime aid agencies have pushed against conventional approaches to relief. I argue that their ‘rebellions’ stem from the specific operational frictions that arise at sea, where care is provided on the move beyond territorial borders. In maritime settings, aid workers’ obligations towards stranded migrants, and the duty to uphold the right to free movement and asylum, have a traction that frequently overrides classical humanitarian protocol.</p>
<p>The thesis makes this argument by looking at three maritime projects. The first was launched by two ‘Boat for Vietnam’ committees in the South China Sea in the 1970s; the second by a Cuban-American organisation named Hermanos al Rescate in the Florida Straits in the 1990s. The third project was kickstarted by the German aid agency Sea-Watch in the Central Mediterranean in 2015. Each of these ventures took humanitarians into unusual operational territory and together they highlight the problems and politics of providing aid ‘without borders’. By looking at the details of maritime relief, the thesis raises themes relevant to humanitarian and refugee history, including the politics of migration and displacement, the recurring ethical dilemmas of aid, and the tension between humanitarian intervention and state sovereignty. At the same time, it prompts us to reflect on how humanitarianism looks different when it is carried out in the specific setting of the sea, instead of in landed contexts ‘in the field’.</p>
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