Missing Migrants and the Politics of Disappearance in Armed Conflicts and Migratory Contexts

In this article we set out to understand the issue of enforced or involuntary disappearance in two seemingly different situations: the missing persons produced by armed conflict and the missing migrants resulting from increasingly rigid migration policies focused on deterrence. Empirical examples from the Guatemalan and Bosnian genocides and from contemporary illegalised migration flows from Guatemala to North America and across the Mediterranean are provided. Special attention is given to differences and continuities in who the affected people and communities are, the politics behind their disappearances, and the use of biometric technologies across the cases presented. Contrary to criticism often voiced in relation to the use of biometric technologies for migration control purposes, forensic techniques are embraced almost unanimously by people searching for relatives who have disappeared in both conflict and migration situations.