Inclusive counting: an essential but insufficient approach to account for missing migrants in Panama and Colombia’s shared Darien Gap

Abstract

ABSTRACT International organisations increasingly call for, and support efforts to gather, more comprehensive data on missing migrants incidents. This article explores current practices of counting missing migrants, focusing in particular on Panama and Colombia’s shared Darien Gap. Drawing on a novel database of some missing migrants cases in the Darien, I demonstrate how insufficient counting practices can still provide essential information on the missing. The article examines, first, how detailing the demographic and event patterns of known missing migrants incidents can assist in estimating what may have happened to others travelling on the same migration pathway. Second, the article demonstrates how current institutional enumeration practices privilege state actors’ knowledge while failing to account for other forms of crucial knowledge on missing migrants held by non-institutional actors. To remedy these challenges, this article incorporates information held by migrants’ families and travel acquaintances on the missing together with institutional information. Ultimately, this article argues that by implementing a more inclusive counting approach for missing migrants, we can more explicitly begin accounting for the missing in the Darien Gap.