This article examines the use of digital media by irregular migrants in their preparation to cross the Moroccan–Spanish border. Based on long-term exploratory research that includes active participation and in-depth interviews, we analyse the videos produced by sub-Saharan young males while they live in the settlements near Ceuta. By focusing on processes of self-representation and border crossing, we highlight the role of digital media as it embodies a liminal physical experience against the violence applied by the Moroccan border security forces and the surveillance systems implemented by the Spanish Guardia Civil. Departing from recent contributions to digital migration studies, this article develops the concept of digital placemaking as an assemblage of discourses and spatial practices that serve opposite interests and generate an extremely violent confrontation through the use and control of borderspace. Therefore, we claim that the migrants’ placemaking strategies can be understood as mobile counter-discourses against border control. In this sense, the physical and digital activities of the migrants in the settlements are examples of what we call tactical placemaking, insofar as they become ways to stay alive and link their persons and futures to discussions about access to place and its consequences. To examine the migrants’ spatial tactics and their social meaning, first we will offer a brief infrastructural and historiographical account of the Moroccan–Spanish border in Ceuta. Second, we will explain our methodological perspective to shed light on the modes that placemaking experiences are created and circulated among migrants during and after their stay at the settlements. Finally, we will study the self-recordings shot in the clandestine camps of the forest in Fnideq and the border of Ceuta and consider how these videos materialize legal, cultural and physical imaginaries on migration while they simultaneously disrupt official attempts at controlling placemaking.

本文研究了非正规移民在准备穿越摩洛哥-西班牙边界时使用数字媒体的情况。基于包括积极参与和深入访谈在内的长期探索性研究，我们分析了撒哈拉以南年轻男性在休达附近定居点生活时制作的视频。通过关注自我代表和越境过程，我们强调了数字媒体的作用，因为它体现了针对摩洛哥边防安全部队施加的暴力和西班牙Guardia Civil实施的监视系统的初步身体经验。与最近对数字迁移研究的贡献不同，本文发展了数字场所的概念，将其作为各种话语和空间实践的集合，这些对立的利益服务于对立的利益，并通过使用和控制边界空间产生了极为暴力的对抗。因此，我们声称，移民的场所营造策略可以理解为反对边境管制的流动话语。从这个意义上讲，移民在定居点的体力活动和数字活动就是我们所谓的战术场所营造的例子，因为它们成为了生存的方式，并将他们的人和未来与关于场所获取及其后果的讨论联系起来。为了研究移民的空间策略及其社会意义，首先，我们将简要介绍休达摩洛哥与西班牙边界的基础设施和历史学情况。第二，我们将解释我们的方法论观点，以阐明在移民居住期间和之后在移民中创造和传播场所体验的方式。最后，我们将研究在Fnideq森林和休达（Ceuta）边界的森林秘密营地中拍摄的自我记录，并考虑这些录像如何实现关于移民的法律，文化和自然想象，同时又扰乱了官方控制场所营造的尝试。