From Space to Experience: Digital and Analog Cartographies of Educational and Urban Segregation

Introduction: This paper presents findings from nationally funded research supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, examining the educational trajectories of racialised migrant youth in Barcelona. The study explores how structural racism, segregation, and institutional practices shape experiences of exclusion, while highlighting resilience and creative engagement. Addressing these dynamics required methodological strategies integrating analog and digital tools to capture multi-layered narratives of youth experiences.

Goals and Methods: The study aimed to identify inequities in educational trajectories and to develop participatory strategies enabling youth to co-create solutions. A central innovation was a web-based platform for critical participatory cartography, developed within the university, which allowed youth to map their experiences in urban environments interactively. This tool captured multiple layers of data—visual, textual, and audio—while engaging participants in active exploration of their surroundings. The digital platform was complemented by in-depth interviews, analog cartographies, and audio narratives, enabling analysis of structural, spatial, and affective dimensions of segregation and educational exclusion.

Results: Using the web-based cartography in combination with other qualitative methods provided nuanced insights into migrant youths’ experiences of urban segregation and educational inequities. Patterns emerged around gendered mobility restrictions, language barriers, and emotional geographies of belonging and disaffection. The approach also revealed strategies of resilience and the role of affective networks in navigating urban and educational spaces.

Conclusions: This study demonstrates the methodological value of integrating a web-based critical cartography with traditional qualitative techniques. Multimodal and participatory methods capture complex social realities, actively involve participants as co-creators of knowledge, and advance qualitative research in digital contexts, offering rich insights into migrant youth’s lived experiences. The approach highlights how digital and participatory methods can innovatively enrich qualitative inquiry in educational and urban research, illustrating the potential of web-based tools to expand qualitative methodologies in online and digital environments.