Graziella Parati has made the claim that, in order to become visible, Italy’s migrants had to become texts. The aim of this paper is to explore the implications of this claim, not in order to approve or contest it, but to attempt a clearer understanding of precisely what kind of migrant has been made visible through the process of textualisation. The paper will focus on the production of agency in autobiographical texts written by migrants to Italy, and how it is further managed by the texts’ disciplinary framing that in turn produces and authorises particular versions of the migrant subject. It will also examine texts that offer versions of the biographies of otherwise ‘silenced’ migrants whose circumstances forbid the very public act of self-inscription. What do the phenomenon of migrant writing and its reception say about the range of positionalities available to migrants in Italy? What range of subjectivities do they confer? What exclusions are effected by the ascription of agency to migrants who write?