This paper examines the encounter between so-called ‘locals’ and ‘migrants’ or individuals with a migration background through the two intellectual senses of perception: seeing and hearing. It argues that this encounter is predominantly structured by a regime of seeing, which is not neutral but deeply embedded in socio-historical power dynamics. This visual regime is characterized by objectification, fixation, and distancing–modes of perception that distort social interaction and reduce the ‘migrant’ to a visible marker of otherness. As a result, the migration background moves from a contextual detail to a defining feature of identity, a process called‘migrantification’.In other words, the migration background becomes a foreground. To critically investigate this process, the paper employs a critical phenomenological approach, beginning with lived experience and moving beyond the classical Sartrean emphasis on the gaze. Instead, it reveals how the ‘migrant’ condition is shaped not only by being seen but by being seen in a particular way. Given the limitations of liberal discourses that aim merely to include ‘migrant’ voices, I propose an alternative orientation–one that centers the primacy of listening, or more precisely, hearkening. This auditory openness introduces a relational ethic, emphasizing receptivity, mutuality, and conceptual transformation in intercultural encounters.
