Missing and disappeared migrants: intimate voids and political vulnerabilities

• The article suggests a conceptual frame to think about migrant disappearances; it argues that juxtaposing them with disappearances in other contexts, such as armed conflicts and totalitarian regimes, allows for understanding the specificities of each context. The suggested conceptual frame approaches missing and disappeared people as members of families and local communities, but also as subjects of state power and systems of governance across the globe. Migrant disappearances are framed within the tightening border regimes between the Global North and the Global South and the huge global inequalities. The article maps the specificities of migrant disappearances and the challenges of the reconnecting work of search and forensic identification in the context of irregular or undocumented migration. It argues that migrant disappearances often result from migrants being exposed to dangerous circumstances and being left unprotected by any state. The uncertainties and agonies as well as practical and judicial problems of families and communities left behind are foregrounded. Moreover, the article argues for paying attention to various forms of symbolic ‘reappearances’, such as memorial practices and political activism. The article argues that there is a need for more empirical data and theoretical understanding of the complexities of migrant disappearances and reappearances across the globe, both on global systemic level, and in the multiple localities touched by disappeared community members.