Assembling traces of border violence. Counter-mapping as counter-archiving

Abstract

This article 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, both in the present and in the past, the article proceeds in three sections. It starts by introducing the analytics of counter-mapping as counter-archiving, and it takes into account migrants’ maps, showing how these rely on sort of counter-archiving processes. The second section draws on archival material and provides a historical insight into migration paper trails at the French-Italian border during the timeframe 1945–1966. The paper moves on dealing with the present context, retracing bio-geographies, drawing on heterogenous administrative traces. The article concludes by pointing to the need of re-articulating a critique of the border regime that centers on the continuum of violence experienced by migrants, which includes the impact of paper trails.