Hyper visible but unseen: Minoritized European citizens on not feeling politically represented

Western European electorates are increasingly diverse, but national parliaments hardly anywhere reflect such changing demographics. While their identities are invisible in politics, racially minoritized groups are at the center of politicized debates about immigration and Islam, making them hyper visible. Considering a joint context of invisibility and hyper visibility, this paper investigates (1) how minoritized citizens experience not feeling politically represented and (2) how such experiences vary intersectionally and across country-contexts. Classic political representation scholarship considers the visibility of minoritized groups in legislatures as a key indicator of whether groups are well represented or not. Yet, building on constructivist and intersectional thinking, representation scholars argue that a group’s mere visibility is insufficient to know whether representation occurs. Constructivists highlight that politicians make citizens visible by speaking for- or about constituent groups. Hence, politicians can ‘misrepresent’ citizens by portraying them in ways that are at odds with how they see themselves or their political interests. Political scientists taking up intersectional analysis show that visibility is unequally distributed: intersectionally disadvantaged group members and their concerns are more invisible in political representation. I argue that including citizens’ experiences in political representation research is needed to comprehend when and for whom visibility leads to emancipation or marginalization. I draw on 29 focus groups with 143 minoritized citizens conducted between 2020 and 2023. I examine minoritized citizens’ experiences across three Western European countries with varying political systems and traditions: France, Germany, and the Netherlands. The findings complicate the idea that minoritized citizens are represented when they are visible in politics. I show that misrepresentation, in which citizens are visible but in distorting ways, drives not feeling politically represented as much as invisibility does. Participants discuss misrepresentation as increasing their invisibility in politics by distracting from real political concerns and by discouraging minoritized politicians to advocate for minoritized group interests. The intersectional and country-comparative analysis shows that citizens’ experiences differ depending on self-identification with an (intersectional) minority group, relative privilege, political views, electoral systems, and citizenship models.