peer reviewed ; This paper endeavors to understand the role of arts in migration-related issues by offering insights into the different ways in which artistic practices can be used by migrants, and migrants’ differing objectives in participating in the arts. Through the exploration of the initiatives of undocumented and refugee migrants involved in two artistic groups in Belgium, this paper compares the motivations of the performers and concludes that art can operate as an empowering tool for migrants as it constitutes a space for agency, notwithstanding the specific scope of which it is contextually charged. It allows migrants to render themselves visible or invisible, depending on their contrasting motivations. The theatre productions of the first group, composed by members of “La Voix des sans papiers de Liège”, a collective of undocumented migrants, corresponds to an explicit effort of political engagement in the local context (Salzbrunn 2014). The collective was recently created by those occupying some vacant public buildings in Liege and offered a way for participants to advocate for the right to regularization. Liege is an urban context that has been the theatre of similar struggles for migrants in the past, and that takes the form of a "welcoming city" (commune hospitalière) in terms of migrants and their rights. A network of actors from different social spheres (politics, NGOs and associations, cultural actors) support the emergence, at the local level, of artistic initiatives by members of the collective, and these initiatives become social spaces for migrants to raise their voices. More specifically, the undocumented people go on stage as non-professional actors to narrate their story and to claim their rights as active citizens despite their legal status, thus positioning themselves against the restrictive policies on migration operating at the federal level of the state. In this example, art is a way for undocumented migrants to become visible actors and contest the process of invisibilization ...