It is unsurprising that a range of organisations have been created both by and for migrants, as unique needs have arisen alongside the growing flow of migration from the African sub-continent to South Africa in the post-apartheid era. This article investigates in particular the Johannesburg-based organisations that serve the needs of cross-border migrants and their families when death occurs, facilitating the chance for a funeral and burial in the home country by navigating the social, governmental, economic and spiritual channels necessary for determining the course of a deceased migrant body. This article is concerned with the motivations, roles and actions of a selected set of these organisations as they assist and prepare a migrant body for its posthumous journey (including the factors that mediate against a ‘successful’ return of the body home). We ask how these actors interact during this journey and what these connections and processes might suggest to us about living and dying in Johannesburg as a foreign migrant. Rather than examining funerals and burials themselves, we go on an extended journey from the deathbed back to the living migrant community, exploring the way in which death is managed in Johannesburg in the interim period between death and burial. Such an exploration, we believe, will provide a view of the lived experience of migrants that has been given neither sufficient attention in the literature on death in Africa nor in the literature on migration.