Mapping the Shift: From Anti-Immigration to Anti-Islam Discourse

Isa Thulin

Through layers of legislation, political movements, wars, key events, and shifting migration patterns, my map uncovers how ‘the immigrant’ became synonymous with ‘the Muslim’ in Danish politics starting from the 1960s—tracing the contours of exclusion as they were drawn, redrawn, and hardened over time. To the right, it is traced how the anti-Muslim discourse paved the way for the legitimisation of demolishing multiple racialised neighbourhoods across Denmark and thereby displacing large groups of racialised individuals. The cartoons work to show questions, discomforts, and realisations that emerged as I confronted urban racism in Denmark through a white lens.

Before diving into the practice of experimental or counter-cartography, we must understand where counter-cartography stemmed from and what it is a response to;

Cartographical representations of the world reflect particular realities and “truths” whilst reinforcing the dominant world and thus often perpetuate uneven power structures. We are socialised to decode maps, just like we are socialised to understand space in a particular way. A map is a mediator between humans and space, but of a very particular political and geographical projection of space. Cartographic maps project what is considered a Eurocentric conceptualisation of space and reality: one in which space is ordered, bordered, controlled and territorialised.1 Cartography played a central role in the legitimisation of colonialism and the creation of nation-states. In their assumed objectivity, they naturalise an understanding of space as being spatially divided in nation station as if this were the “natural order of things”. In their proclaimed scientific objectivity cartography does not allow for “ambivalence or contradiction” or any “'buts' and 'ifs” further making the observer more likely to see maps as a “precise portrayal of reality”, rather than recognising “the interpretative nature of the mapping process.”2 In cartographic maps the creator is removed, the “neutrality” of science becomes the creator and thus it is not recognised that maps are portrayals of (subjective) interpretations of space and are highly connected to social power relations. Cartography has a violent history of imposing a dominant world view and for naturalising uneven social relations by connecting them to physical space.

This diagram3 highlights the constructedness of maps and of the realities they create, making the creator of the cartographic representation visible. This three-step procedure can also be useful in understanding the process of counter-mapping.

The practice of counter-cartography has a long history and has been used as tools of resistance by various indigenous groups. However, it was only in the 1980s that the (academic) debate around it unfolded. There are many branches to the field of counter-cartography all drawing on slightly different fields (arts, academia, activism) techniques and with differing political aims, however, they all have the thing in common of being critical of the dominant power structures and to invite for a more complex, nuanced, critical and multifaceted projection of reality.4 Counter-cartography will be referred to in this essay as an umbrella term encapsulating the “political practice(s) of mapping back”.5 Countering hegemonic narratives is central to counter-cartography and at the heart of this practice lies making commonly overlooked or invisibilised connections visible by tracing out complex interconnections.

Tip

Tip