Mapping Migrant Commons

This chapter explores the role of cartography within struggles for migrant rights by connecting the concepts of migration, community, and commons. Drawing on Roberto Esposito’s notion of community, the chapter rethinks the map beyond its historical association with territorial control and state power, proposing instead to understand mapping as a space of collective action and solidarity. Through the analysis of participatory mapping practices and forms of map activism, the chapter shows how maps can function both as logistical platforms that support migrant mobility and as media devices that make visible the violence, abuses, and deaths occurring along European borders. The discussion also engages with the concept of mobile commons, highlighting how migrants themselves produce and circulate spatial knowledge about routes, shelters, and strategies of border crossing. In this sense, cartography emerges as a cartographic commons: a relational and plural device that connects activists, organizations, and migrants, contributing to the formation of solidaristic networks and new forms of political agency within contemporary geographies of mobility.