Theorising invisibility: Migrants in shifting institutional landscapes

Globally, many millions of people are systematically uncounted or undercounted in official population estimates. These undercounted populations include people displaced by conflict or environmental change, asylum seekers awaiting official designation, migrants with an unauthorised visa, landless or houseless populations, those working in informal or illicit economies, among others. The broad term for these conditions is ‘invisibility’. However, to what degree is this ‘undercounting’ just one of many outcomes of the production of invisibility within social‐ecological systems? While the ‘invisible’ is often framed as an aberration from the norm, I argue that it is an inherent part of complex social‐ecological systems. Thus, in order to understand complex social‐ecological systems, intentional and ethical recognition and analysis of the invisible is required. Failing to consider invisible populations and do so effectively at best paints a partial picture of complex systems, and at worst encourages the perpetuation of a potentially harmful status quo conditions. This paper presents a theoretical framework for invisibility and explores that theory using the lens of irregular migration to illustrate both how invisibility is produced, how it can be manifested or perpetuated through shifting institutional relationships, and the role that it plays within complex social‐ecological systems. Though only one of numerous angles from which to consider a theory of invisibility, the theory presented here provides a framework from which invisibility can be described and explored within complex systems, with broad applicability across numerous fields. As invisible populations are produced and persist globally, this paper finds that the relational nature of invisibility is key to understanding its production and to creating visibility where ethical and desired to better meet the needs of our global community.