Migrant Trajectories in Barcelona

This atlas is comprised of three ethno-cartographic sections which explore trajectories of queerness and migration: walking interviews, auto-ethnographic story mapping and the community workshop. The atlas is made up of a total of 12 maps, 5 of which have been created using ethnographic data that I collected over the last 6 months and another 7 maps which were created as part of the Community Workshop that I ran at Futch Club in March 2021. The research site is Barcelona, with the data collection occurring since December 2020.

Barcelona is a city that can be understood as a ‘hub’ for Queer Latin Americans. (Maldonado, 2009) The politics of the city are deeply entangled with Catalonia’s quest for independence from Spain; in an attempt to set themselves apart from the rest of Spain, Catalonia has introduced a number of pro-migrant and pro-LGBTQ+ policies. For example, in Catalonia it is very easy for a same-sex couple to gain what is known as a ‘formal partnership’ (Pareja de Hecho) which allows the couple to live and work together in Spain, as if they were married. The process involves low levels of bureaucracy/cost, compared to the high levels of surveillance and high costs of ‘official’ marriage in most European countries. This has been extremely useful in allowing Queer migrants to live and stay in the region. Furthermore, the current mayor Ada Colau and her city council administration are openly vocal about welcoming LGBTQ+/ migrant people and have carried out a number of awareness raising campaigns.

This research is also particularly significant due to the change of Queer spaces in the city due to the pandemic. Many Queer spaces that existed before the pandemic no longer exist, leaving many Queer people without the support networks they once had. Furthermore, as migrants, many of my interlocutors described feeling very far from their friends/families/support networks and unable to go visit them. This moment of distance is thus the setting for this atlas’ inquiry into the Queer Migrant experience in Barcelona.

Theoretical framework of the atlas:

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This atlas brings together a number of practices from Anthropology, Human Geography, Migration Studies and Queer theory. More specifically the ethno-cartographic work which makes up this atlas draws upon the traditions of Social and Critical Cartography and Psychogeography.

Pickles (2004) describes Social Cartography as ‘the art and science of mapping ways of seeing, mapping of relational spaces’; this atlas has experimented with a range of perspectives in order to challenge our gaze upon the Queer Migrant community and our perception of western constructs such as space, time and affect.

Kim (2015) explains that ‘Critical Cartography abandons a deeply flawed and problematic traditional pursuit for an ideal map that can communicate universally’ (pg.85) She argues that critical cartographies also ‘engage a discussion about the politics of aesthetics’, explaining that maps are not just pretty drawings but are instead ‘visual representation of spatial relationships which are political knowledge claims’. Thus, Kim explains how Critical Cartographic approaches aim to challenge ‘the history of cartography’s ‘positivism’, denying the idea of “factness” and instead presenting a subjective understanding of epistemology.’ This atlas has attempted to use visual and text based ethnographic maps, to produce a cartography of affect and experience, instead of rational facts and figures.

The atlas draws upon two key research methods, the first being ethnographic walking interviews and the second being community-based mapping. Walking interviews derive a great deal of their creative approach to the work of psychogeographers. The term psychogeography was first used by Guy Debord in 1955; Debord was a marxist theorist who wanted to understand how different places make us feel and behave. Debord drew upon Baudelaire’s concept of the ‘flaneur’, loosely translated as an urban wanderer, to find creative ways of studying urban space. One of the key ways in which psychogeographers attempted to explore their creative relationship with space was through walking as a way to unleash the subconscious imagination; drawing upon ideas in art movements such as dadaism and surrealism. This atlas has complemented psychogeographic walking interviews with sensorial mapping practices, to invoke what Audre Lorde (1984) calls ‘deep participation’. Sensorial mapping allows us to speak about affective meanings which we are unable to reproduce; this can be understood as a type of synthesis, using one sense to talk about another. Furthermore, this atlas’ focus on feeling and affect has been influenced by the work of Lynchian cartographers who Wallace (2010) characterises as being ‘more interested in the sense of people who live in the space than the science behind the structures within it.’.

This atlas attempts to engage in counter mapping practices, which Tazzioli (2015) describe as ‘an analytical gesture which engages with the very limits of (political) representation at stake in the attempt to ‘map’ the spatial turbulence generated by migrants’ unexpected presence, or by their being out of place’. Casas et al (2017) state that ‘The long tradition of counter-mapping teaches us how cartography goes beyond representation, and when practiced among movements, the practice of map-making facilitates forms of collective power’, this atlas has been produced through active collaboration with and for the Queer Migrant community in Barcelona. For instance, all of my interlocutors (for both the walking interviews and the Community workshop) were presented with the first draft of the maps and analysis that I created from the data collected; I then made changes following their wishes, to reflect the participatory co-creation of knowledge.

This atlas has also attempted to critically approach the concept of time. Rosenberg and Grafton (2013) argue that ‘Our idea of time is so wrapped up with the metaphor of the line that taking them apart seems virtually impossible.’ The ethnographic walking maps in this atlas have not attempted to maintain the figure of the line, but to repurpose it; to maintain its depiction of geographic proximity, but to protest against the macro focus which timelines usually provide and instead show multiple non-chronological micro moments of Queer Migrant meaning. Migrants are often understood as living transnationally between two places; during my ethnographic research I became aware that spatial memories may take on more significance for migrants due to their geographic distance; perhaps this could mean that the experience of migrating critically challenges our western understanding of time?

What about Queer Migrants? Mole (2018) explains that 'until relatively recently, the academic study of migration did not explicitly deal with sexual difference, implicitly assuming the ‘typical migrant’ to be heterosexual.' As such the majority of migration studies have focused upon the ‘nuclear family’ model, demonstrating and analysing migration patterns based upon hetero-patriarchal ideas of the male breadwinner who migrates to provide for his family. Despite Queer Theory’s refusal to fit into neat identity categories and to instead create an inclusive community that celebrates difference, the Queer community has faced criticism for its bias towards white male forms of Queerness. The work of Angela Davis (1983) has been important in gaining a critical approach to the ways in which Queer and Feminist movements do not automatically account for racist and classist biases. This feeling of marginalisation from the mainstream understandings of Queerness and Migration, was echoed by participants in the Queer Migrant Mapping workshop; participants described the feeling of being too Queer for migrant spaces and having different needs/experiences for most Queer spaces.

When attempting to understand the relationship between Maps and Queer Migrant trajectories, Sara Ahmed’s conceptualisation of orientation is a useful starting point. In Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology she asks, 'What does it mean to be oriented? How do we begin to know or to feel where we are, or even where we are going, by lining ourselves up with the features of the grounds we inhabit, the sky that surrounds us, or the imaginary lines that cut through maps?'. Expanding on her idea of Queer Orientation, Ahmed states that, 'The direction we take excludes things for us, before we even get there' adding, 'Depending on which way one turns, different worlds might even come into view. If such turns are repeated over time, then bodies acquire the very shape of such direction.' Instead of understanding Queer Migrant trajectories as directions that exclude, this atlas draws upon the idea of Queer Kinship (as conceptualised by Butler 2002) in order to argue that Queer Migrant communities have alternative ways of space making and community building which in fact open up other ways of knowing, feeling and inhabiting space. Queer Kinship can be understood as an alternative form of community and family building, which often diverges from heteronormative ideas of the kin and relations. (Butler, 2002) Work on Queer Kinship have emphasised the unique social potential that Queer people have for creating empathy and accepting different ways of having relationships. (Heckman, 2019) Furthermore, Queer kinship can also allow us to question our western conceptualisation of time; Butler argues that Queer relationships can be more fleeting than others, which may attribute greater meaning to micro events. This atlas demonstrates this differing understanding of time, by focusing upon spaces of Queer meaning and affect, which may appear transient or ephemeral.

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The term 'Queer Migrant Trajectories', also leverages the idea of time; a trajectory is traditionally defined as the path taken by a moving object or in terms of career progression. Despite the traditionally linear nature of this metaphor, this project has chosen to re-appropriate the idea of a trajectory in order to question the lineality/inevitability of Queer Migrant journeys; to instead present a range of non-linear affective trajectories.

To conclude, the way people tell stories tells us a great deal about how they are oriented and so this atlas has attempted to map the personal stories and/or trajectories of Queer Migrants through a variety of visualisations: an ethnographic walking map, a text-based ethnography, a story map, a carto map, sensorial mapping, hand drawn maps and community made palimpsests. As Harley (2018) illustrates ‘there is an immediacy about the message in a map that makes it more readily perceived than knowledge encoded in other ways’, thus I hope that this atlas serves as a practical form of Queer Migrant activism.