Migration, the Archive, and the Map

In recent years, archiving and countermapping have emerged as popular and powerful instruments to represent unauthorizedmigrations and criticize contemporary border regimes. This resulted in a variety of political projects involving academics,migrants, and advocacy groups, using archiving and mapmaking as vectors of dissensus and affirming politics. This parallelbetween maps and archives is not just a contemporary trend; it speaks to their longstanding relationship throughout politicalmodernity, as well as the overlap between the archival and cartographic critiques over the past century. This article reviewscontemporary projects that mobilize this nexus to challenge contemporary border regimes. In doing so, I direct attention to howtheir goals, methods, and designs align with different conceptual approaches to archives and maps. The analysis explores thecontributions of geographic thought to this conceptual framework, and it encourages further reflection and participation fromgeographers in projects making political interventions through archival and countermapping methods.