This presentation develops the analytics of counter-mapping as counter-archiving in order to account for the continuum of violence that migrants experience during their journeys: building on administrative traces produced by states – such as expulsion orders, refusal of entry, identification papers - and combining these with migrants’ testimonies, it investigates how migrants’ geographies are affected, disrupted and rerouted by heterogenous paper trails. Focusing on migrants’ passages at the French-Italian Alpine border, and drawing on archival material from the timeframe 1945-1966, I introduce the analytics of counter-mapping as counter-archiving and take into account migrants’ maps, showing how these rely on counter-archiving processes. In the final part, the presentation engages with the present context, retracing bio-geographies, and drawing on heterogenous administrative traces. I conclude by pointing to the need of re-articulating a critique of the border regime that centres on the continuum of violence experienced by migrants, which includes the impact of paper trails.
Speaker bio:
Martina Tazzioli is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and Cultures at the University of Bologna. She holds a PhD in Politics from Goldsmiths, University of London, and an MA in Philosophy from the University of Pisa. Martina’s research is situated at the crossroads of Political Geography, Critical Migration and Border Studies, and Political Philosophy. She is currently working on three projects: One on the memory of border controls and migrants’ struggles, a related project about counter-mapping and legal geographies of border violence on the central Mediterranean route, and a research project about social reproduction activities in camps, with a focus on Greece.