Mapping Local Resistance to Anti-Immigration National Law: A Carto-Essay

This article revolves around a map titled Resistenze locali al Decreto Salvini [Local resistance to the Sal-vini decree], which was created with OpenStreetMap by geographer Cristina Del Biaggio on the 5th of January 2019. The map aimed to dynamically visualise local protests arising against the new legislative de-cree on immigration and security approved by the Italian Senate in November 2018 (the so-called “Salvini decree”). Soon after its first appearance, the map had been circulated within national newspapers’ and mag-azines’ online articles, NGOs’ webpages, blog posts, Facebook, and Twitter comments. Adopting an exper-imental format, this article is assembled in the form of a “carto-essay” which includes: original texts by the mapmaker (Del Biaggio C.), comments by curators (Rossetto T. and Boria E.), and a series of screenshots capturing moments in the map’s life. Written on the spur of the moment and following the impulse to grasp in real time the rapid “movement” of a map and the spatial political statement it bears, this carto-essay al-ludes to questions such as the possibilities for a cartographic academic public engagement, the importance of feeling cartographic data in the public sphere, and the opportunity to provide progressive cartographic imageries of the nation.