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This paper unravels the intimate and irritant more-than-human encounters in hostel accommodation used by migrant farm workers in regional Australia. These are communal places of inhabitancy that draw attention to the intersecting concerns of highly mobile populations, seasonal labour, migration politics, and the socio-material relationships that flourish within such spaces. I examine the presence of bed bugs and other nonhumans through interviews with farm workers, hostel operators and managers, and ethnographic observations, to highlight broader implications of such 'communal' forms of living. The communal nature of living alongside others is challenging, especially when the arrangement is for work and migration, rather than leisure, and due to a lack of affordable housing options. The paper uses a more-than-human lens to bring into dialogue the mobilities of these workers with notions of communal living, which are intrinsically tied to visa conditions and labour migration. In doing so, the paper contributes to broadening the understandings of how and where mobilities take shape, and the impacts that more-than-human agencies have on day-to-day life in communal living situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores diverse ways of experiencing the city through an experimental field-based workshop supported by the Institute of Australian Geographers and this journal. The two-day methods practice workshop attracted 40 participants and aimed to train doctoral students and early career researchers in practices of observing, feeling, listening, mapping and visualizing the city. This paper aims to demonstrate how learning new methods that include Embodied Observation, Qualitative GIS, Locative Media Ethnography and Sonic Methodologies enabled 16 participants to encounter and experience the City of Melbourne in novel ways. The group learning environment and co-authored pieces that assemble diverse reflections demonstrate that the workshop is a form of innovative teaching and learning that has implications for Higher Education in Geography, but is yet to be explored more fully in the pedagogic literature. The experimental workshop has ongoing pedagogical benefits given the leadership, participatory and collaborative skills that unfolded when leading scholars, doctoral students and early career researchers came together to produce lively geographies of the city.

Creative practices have made a standing contribution to mobilities research. We write this article as a collective of 25 scholars and practitioners to make a provocation: to further position creative mobilities research as a fundamental contribution and component in this field. The article explores how creative forms of research—whether in the form of artworks, exhibitions, performances, collaborations, and more—has been a foundational part of shaping the new mobilities paradigm, and continues to influence its methodological, epistemological, and ontological concerns. We tour through the interwoven history of art and mobilities research, outlining five central contributions that creativity brings. Through short vignettes of each author's creative practice, we discuss how creativity has been key to the evolution and emergence of how mobilities research has expanded to global audiences of scholars, practitioners, and communities. The article concludes by highlighting the potency of the arts for lively and transdisciplinary pathways for future mobilities research in the uncertainties that lay ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]