Geographisches Kolloquium

The politics of migration management is peppered by maps promoting specific spatial imaginaries of human mobility and its control. These maps are key sites where a space to be bordered is visualized and reaffirmed. Building on the insights of critical cartography, this piece examines the development of FRONTEX‘s ‘migratory routes’ maps and their evolution over time. The role of these institutional cartographies prefigures sites of the border through an implicit moral geography, one imbued with a strong postcolonial legacy. This work suggests how norms and values contribute to knowledge production on borders and the longer histories that underlie these maps of purportedly recent events.