The Invisibility Bargain

Understanding what factors ensure that immigrant-receiving nations will be havens for people who flee their homelands is the question for 21st century migration researchers. Jeffrey Pugh's exhaustively researched study of Colombian immigrants living in Ecuador gives us fresh answers. The Invisibility Bargain shatters important assumptions about how countries can offer peace and security to their foreign-born populations and offers rich evidence for the pivotal role played by perceptions of immigrants as bringing value and non-state actor allies who convey and advocate for the interests of those immigrants. Pugh's book is absolutely critical research for anyone working in contemporary migration studies. -- Elizabeth F. Cohen, Professor of Political Science, Syracuse University This book offers the most comprehensive analysis of Colombian forced migration in Ecuador to date, showing how particular assemblages of non-state actors, migrant organizations, and local state actors may be the most appropriate response to human security and peace building. In doing so, it offers important clues to understand how forced migrants negotiate their access to rights and protection in states with strong gaps between formal and effective rights. -- Gioconda Herrera, FLACSO Ecuador In rescaling the politics of reception, Pugh incorporates actors and processes into the making of politics that others all too often overlook. By providing the framework and theoretical orientation needed to foster global and comparative work, he reinserts questions of migration, conflict, and human security into the centre of contemporary scholarly debate. While his analysis and findings are from Latin America, scholars from elsewhere in the world will find deep resonance with their own work. Indeed, this text is destined to become a reference for discussions of governance and mobility for years to come. -- Loren Landau, Professor of Migration and Development, Universities of Oxford and the Witwatersrand Jeffrey Pugh's compact, seminal work is the product of 8 years of fieldwork in the area and living with the people. It shows how numbers of illegal migrants made their way above, below, and around the state through an invisibility bargain, but also alternative strategies or negotiation with civil society on the other side. A thorough, detailed, insightful study of a subject that has so far fallen between the cracks of comparative politics and interstate relations and faces the challenges of researching and analyzing human security with enormous implications for understanding the growing topic of immigration. -- I. William Zartman, Jacob Blaustein Distinguished Professor Emeritus of International Organization and Conflict Resolution, SAIS-Johns Hopkins University