Connecting the Dots

This chapter examines the challenges and triumphs of stories told with data, articulating a methodological approach for humanities-driven data narratives that resist reproducing state-centered narratives of forced migration. The chapter first articulates the problems of visualizing forced migration through the gaze of the state by examining Lucify's “The Flow towards Europe.” It then identifies mixed methods that address these challenges through the projects “Exodi/Esodi” and “Crossing the Mediterranean Sea by Boat,” and finally articulates a series of precepts for using quantitative data to turn the gaze of data narratives back onto the state through “Torn Apart/Separados.”