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Invisible Displacement
Forced Migration Studies Programme, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3, Wits 2050, South Africa tara.polzer@wits.ac.za
Department of Development Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG lh4@soas.ac.uk
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
By directing our gaze, we also avert our eyes. It is widely recognized—though the implications are rarely consistently analysed—that all perspectives are partial, and that therefore by seeing, describing and categorizing social reality, we also make people and processes invisible. This special edition discusses the many aspects of invisibility in refugee and forced migration studies: at the conceptual level, from the perspective of forced migrants, in relation to policy, and from the perspective of academic knowledge production.
A critical look at invisibility begs a series of questions. It asks not only who or what is invisible, but invisible to whom, in what ways, and why. The ‘who or what’ refers to various groups and processes that have long been part of the experience of displacement,
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Disciplinary Invisibilities |
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Relational Aspects of Invisibility |
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The Functionality of Invisibility: Whose Interests are Served? |
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Knowledge Production and Invisibility |
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Invisibility and Ethics |
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Conclusions |
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