Reclaiming Agency through the Politics of the In_Visible Body

Illegalized Migration and Self-Representation of Women Domestic Workers in Switzerland

This article deepens our understanding of agency in the context of (in)securitized migration by engaging with the experiences of ‘undocumented’ women domestic workers in Switzerland. By linking the securitization framework with gaze theories and ontologies of the body, the following article accounts for migrants’ embodied and gendered experiences of (in)security and agency. In this perspective, the same bodies which are subjected to domination become tools of resistance enacted through a politics of in_visibilities. While these women mobilize strategies of invisibilization (camouflage, spatial practices of avoidance) to resist deportation, they simultaneously reappropriate self-representation by visibilizing their embodied presence within Switzerland’s visual field, creating a counter-gaze to their (in)securitization.