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Over a two-month period, twice a week, in May and June 2013, two researchers, three contemporary artists, twelve refugees and a photographer met together in Grenoble, France. The workshops were intended to create encounters around mapping performances, to produce alternative narratives on migrations, experiences of socio-spatial exclusion and in-betweenness.From a methodological point of view, we tried not to reproduce some ethical biases of the ethnographic life-story method by using mapping. The maps were a framework within which collective and individual interactions evolved, so that they were a third party in the relationships build up during the workshops. This critical mapping experience raises methodological and ethical questions as to the conditions on which the migrants, researchers and artists took part, on the alternative narrative methods used, and on the scientific, aesthetic and political uses of the maps produced.