Understanding the Invisibility Bargain

Abstract Chapter 2 introduces the concept of the invisibility bargain in order to explain how the informal strategies chosen by migrants to resolve conflicts, participate politically, and gain access to resources respond to the set of unwritten expectations within the host society that govern social relations between migrants and citizens and establish the “rules” by which the host population will tolerate or accept the physical presence of migrants in the country. It traces how the perception of migrants’ valued contribution, combined with their social and political invisibility, is often the price of the host population’s acceptance of their physical presence in the country, and argues that violation of these expectations may lead to social sanctions and a hostile backlash against migrants by the host population. The invisibility bargain lays important conceptual groundwork for the main argument of the book.