Counter-mapping Brescia. Alternative Territorialisations Through Asylum Seekers' Counter-Cartographies

The institutionalisation of cartography has contributed in obscuring ontologies of knowledge that differed from “official” and “scientific” cartographic practices. Nevertheless, these ontologies of knowledge did not cease to exist, rather they developed while countering or negotiating with official cartographies. Similarly, international mobility, undertaken by transnational dispossessed individuals, has recently been the target of migration policies that aim at deterring or deflecting migration flows, but have instead created a translocal geographical place, the margin, where asylum seekers find themselves countering or negotiating with dispossession and policies stemming from global power dynamics and structural factors. Asylum seekers, residing in the margin and having their ontologies of knowledge marginalised, can be agents in the investigation on different perceptions of space and on the impact of migration policies in space negotiation. Using participatory practices and approaches, such as counter-mapping, participant observation, and highly unstructured interviews, this research aims at uncovering asylum seekers’ spatial ontologies of knowledge, profiting from their intakes and perceptions of the city of Brescia, as a methodological tool for the analysis of their marginalisation on the local level that stems from migration policies based on categorisations grounded on difference and alterity. With the added value given by the comparative approach of the translocal spaces’ representation, the research further aims at uncovering the differences and similarities in spatial depiction as a way to explore the transmission and loss of values or habits happening within the migration process and its modalities as dictated by global power imbalances. In line with the theoretical assumptions given by the theoretical frameworks presented in the first chapters of this contribution, the research demonstrates that spatial and social marginalisation is experienced by asylum seekers on the translocal level, moreover, the findings show that the spatial and social realms interplay in the creation of impediments for asylum seekers’ empowerment. Finally, the findings suggest the joint employment of critical cartography and of the transnational approach as a key tool in the observation and investigation of marginalised groups’ experiences as it allows for the emergency of individuals’ agency and subjective, original, and personal perspectives.