Humanitarian complex: the paradoxical tension of migration narrative and mapping

Abstract This essay critically examines the role of deep mapping in representing migration experiences, focusing on how contemporary humanitarian frameworks engage with and reproduce the method’s historical entanglements with imperial and colonial power. The analysis centers on Migrants on the Move, a digital visual archive that combines geospatial data with narrative storytelling to trace irregular migration routes in Libya and Mali. To interrogate this case, I draw on Nicholas Mirzoeff’s concept of “Visuality 2,” which describes the shift from traditional forms of visual control to technologically mediated systems of knowledge production. Extending this framework, I introduce the notion of the “humanitarian complex,” a concept that captures the paradox in which data-driven migration projects operate. They embody this material paradox by facilitating humanitarian aid while enabling surveillance and control, reinforcing power structures, revealing power’s inescapable, co-opting influence, and limited possibilities for truly resistant alternatives. The study finds a central tension in Migrants on the Move: while narrative elements foreground migrant voices and humanize experiences, the overarching reliance on aggregate data and risk-based framings tends to abstract migration into cognitive maps of systemic peril rather than sites of lived subjectivity. This abstraction risks transforming migrants into epistemic objects within humanitarian infrastructures, with their agency diminished by the very practices intended to amplify it. The essay concludes that visual archives of migration are not neutral records but active platforms shaping public perception and policy. By examining the intersections of visuality, humanitarianism, and critical cartography, the article underscores the ethical and political stakes of representing migration and presents more equitable narrative approaches to human mobility.