Mechanisms of invisibility: the contradictions of localising and decolonising humanitarian aid

Localisation refers to shifting the ownership and leadership of crisis response to local actors. Within the humanitarian sector, localisation has been framed as making aid delivery more reflective of needs on the ground, supporting more equitable structures, and addressing concerns of colonisation by Western-European actors operating in the Global South. In light of debates about “going local,” this article contributes to literature on the “local turn” by offering a feminist critique to scrutinise localisation. Drawing upon a multi-sited ethnography of digital humanitarianism in Lebanon, the article puts forward “mechanisms of invisibility” as an analytic framework to illuminate how local humanitarian labour becomes invisibilised through localisation. First, local actors are marginalised through predatory inclusion in partnership structures. Second, local identity is devalued through delocalisation that prefers local actors with transnational qualities. Third, local skills are degraded through paternalistic capacity building and its technologisation. Together, these mechanisms of invisibility reinforce racialised and racist hierarchies that perpetuate the silencing, erasure, and exclusion of local actors. In doing so, this article argues that, in practice, localisation can impede broader decolonisation efforts by legitimating the continued dominance of foreign aid organisations over humanitarian programming, leadership, and status.