Visibility and invisibility are words we tend to treat as opposites; something is either seen or hidden, present or absent. Yet in the context of migration and asylum, these concepts rarely work as a clean binary.

This month’s topic explores (In)Visibility through the lens of forced migration to Europe. We examine Anna Finiguerra’s concept of “making migration present” as an alternative to the visibility/invisibility binary altogether; we look at Cyprus’s UN Buffer Zone, a militarised no-man’s-land that is highly visible on the ground yet also a de facto EU border that officially does not exist; we turn to unaccompanied minors, whose protected status as children gives way, often overnight at 18, to a legal adulthood that quietly withdraws the services and representation that once made their vulnerability visible; we trace how labour exploitation in Italy’s agricultural sector remains largely unseen until tragedy forces it into headlines and how Italy’s own policy architecture helps produce the irregularity it later punishes.

Combined, these sections show how visibility can mean recognition and protection, but it can also mean exposure to surveillance and control; invisibility can mean neglect and abandonment, but it can also be a means of evading the tension of hyper-visibility and systems designed to exclude.

We end by highlighting a different kind of invisibility: the informal networks of mutual aid built by people for themselves, support systems that rarely register in institutional accounts but that are often the first, and most trusted, source of help for people rebuilding their lives.

Together, these accounts suggest that visibility and invisibility in migration is rarely accidental. It is produced, maintained, and sometimes strategically deployed, and recognising this is the first step to challenging it.

To read our report in full, download it in English here: