Though forced displacement is prominent within academic research, as well as within public, political, and media debates, all too often the image of forcibly displaced persons is that of voiceless victims and the structural causes behind their trauma are overlooked. The article works to disrupt this problematic visualization through an original study of walking tours offered by refugees and internally displaced persons in Berlin and Jaffa. It utilizes walking as the method and theme of research, mapping the potential of walking as a collaborative pedagogy and a subaltern design tactic to claim political participation and belonging in the city. Through this, the article offers a new analytical perspective concerning the agency of discalced persons to navigate the politics of their (im)mobility and (in)visibility. The main argument is that these guided tours or ‘autotopographies’ of forced displacement hold the political capacity to alter the public visibility of displaced people, but also to illuminate aspects that are overlooked or erased within the city’s official display of memory. The article therefore advances debates about the politics of urban space and heritage sites and contributes to research which seeks to theorize the multiple geo-temporal colonial entanglement of forced displacement regimes.

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Urban displacement is receiving growing visibility within urban studies. However, most literature centres on the logic of late capitalism and tends to neglect colonial history and local resistance to displacement. This paper takes an alternative path: it relates (a) the history of colonialism and ethnic cleansing of the city of Jaffa with (b) the present‐day gentrification and displacement caused by neoliberal urbanism. To unpack this entanglement, the article focuses on political city walking tours led by Internally Displaced Palestinians in Jaffa, alongside a broader repertoire of urban subaltern tactics to reclaim it—ranging from community meetings to more overtly politicised acts of protest and initiatives to disrupt gentrification. The article therefore advances debates on urban displacement and urban citizenship mobilisation through the lens of post‐colonial theories, and by adopting a participatory interdisciplinary approach—from a novel perspective that centres local knowledge, lived experiences, and grassroots activism.