New book on invisibility in African displacements

African migrants have become increasingly demonised in public debate and political rhetoric. There is much speculation about the incentives and trajectories of Africans on the move, and often these speculations are implicitly or overtly geared towards discouraging and policing their movements. What is rarely understood or scrutinised however, are the intricate ways in which African migrants are marginalised and excluded from public discourse; not only in Europe but in migrant-receiving contexts across the globe. 

Invisibility in African Displacements: From Marginalization to Strategies of Avoidance is edited by Simon Turner and Jesper Bjarnesen and offers a series of case studies that explore these dynamics. What tends to be either ignored or demonised in public debates on African migration are the deliberate strategies of avoidance or assimilation that migrants make use of to gain access to the destinations or opportunities they seek, or to remain below the radar of restrictive governance regimes. 

The book offers fine-grained analysis of the ways in which African migrants negotiate structural and strategic invisibilities, adding innovative approaches to our understanding of both migrant vulnerabilities and resilience. DIIS Researcher Ida Marie Savio Vammen contributes with a chapter on ‘Entangled Hypervisibility: Senegalese Migrants Everyday Struggles for a Place in the City’, that sheds new light on how recently arrived Senegalese migrants in Buenos Aires constantly have to face and contest historical borders of race and class to try to make a living in the city.