call for closer scrutiny of the political, ethical and intellectual possibilities of stories and storytelling within geography. Whilst an interest in stories and storytelling remains prevalent – both through attention to the multilayered stories underpinning the subjects of research, as well as the burgeoning of different modes of storytelling as method and the ethics of telling “othered” stories – we argue that the roles and meanings of “story” and “storytelling” remain under-theorised. Bringing scholarship on stories and storytelling from geography and cultural and literary studies into conversation with critical migration research, we examine how stories shape and are shaped by the politics of bordering, belonging, and encounter. Doing so, we explore the potential of stories to resist and disrupt dominant narratives and ideologies that seek to define, to (b)order and to exclude. The paper puts forward an argument for treating stories as relational and ongoing encounters through which regimes of mobility, bordering, and belonging are contested, and where possibilities for hope and resistance may emerge.