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Airports and seaports inhabit multiple geographies that dictate global mobility across political, economic, social, and environmental borders. In Australia and across the Asia-Pacific, large-scale mobility developments are being undertaken to connect local businesses and industries with global markets. However, these projects are proceeding without regard for the impacts that these mobility hubs will have on local and global ecologies. This is certainly the case across the Asia-Pacific region, where industry is impacting on the routes of migratory shorebirds along the 'East Asian-Australasian Flyway', which spans 18 countries and carries over 50 million migratory birds each year. Key sites that make up the Flyway are established and prolific hubs for these nonhuman mobilities, yet encroaching land reclamation practices are resulting in considerable avian population declines. This paper explores how more-than-human conceptualisation of the EAA Flyway and the "borders" it instigates through global conservation and nation-state governance are inadequately protecting the migratory shorebirds. We examine the recent and contested developments in Moreton Bay, in Brisbane, Australia, and the many bordering practices that take shape in this local place along the EAA Flyway. We argue that the multi-sited path that compose these global Flyways challenge our all-too-human-centric conceptions of space, borders, and movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Art' and 'memory' are prominent areas of inquiry in geographical research. Artistic and memory work often overlap in our studies through practices and processes aimed at bringing people together in experimental, affective, and collective ways. In this introduction to the special issue, we write collectively as 12 authors to reflect on the histories, inspirations, and future trajectories of these intersecting concerns in geographical research. Our reflections stem from our collective participation and discussions of issues at the intersections of art, memory and geographical research, during an online workshop and our individual-and-collective reflections later through the process of writing this piece. We hope our discussions further interest on the possibilities for creative, collaborative, and decolonial interventions to memory in geography. And, incidentally, we hope that our editorial may be of interest for future research into the value and practices of collective geographic scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the 'frictions' felt by international backpackers who have been stuck and locked-down while they were living and working in regional Australian hostels. Backpackers play a central role as both tourists and migrant workers in Australia, where they undertake significant periods of required farm work in order to extend their visas. They are a highly visible and long-standing mobile population in Australia and are relatively under-studied given their significance to tourism cultures and economies. Based on forty semi-structured interviews with backpackers living and working in Bundaberg, Australia, we explore how experiences of immobilities prior to and during the pandemic restrictions manifest as experiences of escalating and alleviating frictions. Friction is understood as an embodied and relational feeling of tension produced by a shortage of space. Friction has always been a feature of hostel living but prolonged lockdowns and inconsistent health messaging escalated frictions into open conflict. We propose that the concept of friction sits between mobilities and immobilities, and that particular mobility contexts exacerbate such frictions. The article contributes to ongoing discussions on pandemic immobilities and the interwoven concerns of tourism, migration, and labour mobilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biosecurity restrictions regulate the types of materials that international travellers can bring into certain countries. Australia is well known in international travel cultures for stringent customs regulations and checks on all incoming passengers. This blanket approach to biosecurity governance implies that all materials, even banal personal possessions or luggage, pose a potential threat to the nation's biosecurity. This article explores how individuals prepare for and experience declaring personal belongings while migrating to and entering Australia. Drawing from interviews with recently arrived migrants on temporary visas, analysis of the required customs declaration card and government information, I highlight the inconsistencies of how materials, and the people who carry them, come under close scrutiny at the border. The findings show that the stringent surveillance of biosecurity perpetuates perceived risks and threats, relying on stereotypes of certain migrant and traveller profiles in the way biosecurity is promoted, monitored and enforced. Biosecurity manifests social, spatial, and material concerns in how it is performed and regulated, thereby transforming passive materials in a person's luggage into active threats to national security, further complicating the rigid governance of international mobility and migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper stems from cross-disciplinary dialogue and collaboration between community music and human geography which sought to interrogate and understand claims of social sustainability and social change often cited in evaluation reports of community music projects. The lead authors (Parks and Cassidy) took this dialogue forward by organising a geography conference session which incorporated an instant choir workshop to test how we might 'do' social sustainability through practice. Drawing upon ideas from both disciplines, the paper synthesises the reflections of nine participants in the session to explore the capacity of creative, embodied, geographical practice to transform hegemonic experiences of academic conferences, and to create a sustainable and inclusive community of practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large public inner-city events require a significant amount of temporary security infrastructures and altered mobility designs to safely facilitate the movement of the public throughout already highly mobile spaces. Recent security risks from vehicle attacks have resulted in increased security in order to mitigate potential threats. Issues arise as increased security infrastructures interrupt and redirect pedestrian mobility, reconfiguring traditionally 'safe' pedestrian and leisure spaces into 'unsafe' spaces under the pre-emptive atmosphere of unknown threats. This paper explores how im/mobilities arise through increased security during fireworks events in Brisbane, Australia. Using ethnographic observation and visual documentation of crowd movements, we critically examine the temporal alterations to wayfinding and mobility infrastructures. Although increased security serves to foster a safe and secure environment, we suggest that the altered mobilities and heightened visibility of security risks impacting on the overall festive atmosphere of the events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this creative mediation we explore measures of the coronavirus pandemic—unfolded through the seemingly simple act of 'physical distancing'—to show the myriad of mobility, wayfinding, and spatial orientations that shape the socio-material fabric of collective life. Physical distancing has mandated new measures of how people orient their body amongst other bodies in public space. In-situ measurements of spatial and affective registers attempt to alleviate possible contagions while adhering to health advice. The importance of measurement and the practice of measuring has never been as obvious and integral to daily life. However, the notions of measure—how one feels, moves, acts, thinks, and reflects—have been long imbued in the governance of collective goals, practices, and action. We highlight performative, sensory, and aesthetic responses to these new measures, suggesting these individualised performances of measure should be indicative of the sensory shifts required to tackle possible future crises and changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Working Holiday Maker visa encourages young people from 44 nations to live and work for up to three years in Australia, contributing immensely to the temporary migrant workforce in regional areas. However, the conditions they experience while completing 88 days of mandatory 'farm work' to apply for visa extensions often place them in vulnerable situations and states of immobility that are counter to the perception of backpackers as mobile. Types of accommodation specifically for temporary migrant farm workers are known as working hostels and in some cases the ways in which they are administered have perpetuated the precarious and immobile situations in which backpackers find themselves. This article explores the lived experiences of backpackers who have undertaken farm work in the Bundaberg region, a new 'hot spot' for seasonal migrant labour. Drawing on ethnographic observations and interviews with 35 working holiday makers, the article advances the suggestion that recent shifts in hostelling accommodation practices and increased competition for agricultural jobs in the region place individuals in increasingly precarious states of immobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent "national security panics" demonstrate that aeromobility assemblages are more fragile than they appear. This fragility will become more acute as the growing global aviation industry is stretched by the short-term demands of contemporary security politics, and the long-term challenges of environmental and economic sustainability. The individual tourist traveler inhabits an uneasy space between these concerns. In this article, we develop the theoretical linkages between material cultures and practices of tourist travel and the resilience, sustainability, and security of global aeromobility assemblages. We examine the effects of recent "national security panics" on airport systems and inquire about the ways that such systems are impacted by the ways that travelers pack their bags, carry their goods, and move through the airport space. Drawing on this reconstructive analysis and interviews undertaken with tourist travelers, we argue that there is a prevailing culture of "travelling heavy" that militates against the realization of secure and sustainable aeromobilities. We argue that these findings signal the need to cultivate a tourist culture of "travelling light" that includes the reduction of the material footprint of travel and the self-recognition of the integral role that travelers play in producing secure aeromobilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]