ABSTRACT One way of challenging hegemonic narratives about migration to Europe is to foreground aspects we do not know for certain. Representations of uncertainties point to a challenge to critical migration researchers: how does human movement exceed predictable responses to borders? This is a conceptual, but also an ethical question, as it compels us to reflect on how we can stop the knowledge we produce from being adversely co‐opted into hostile policies. We use a story‐mapping approach to highlight uncertainties experienced by displaced Syrians in Tunisia, border guards and mapmakers, and how these contest simplistic displacement narratives. Building on visual solutions from critical cartography and counter‐mapping, we demonstrate how our own ‘policy‐oriented’ map can be made less policy relevant through tweaking its scaffolding and including uncertainties—represented through fogs, ripples and changing frames. This allows us to tell different stories about displacement and problematise how we can tell displacement stories at all.
Zuntz et al. (2026) studied this question.