‘Like yelling bomb in an airport’: bed bugs and more-than-human geographies of migrant farm worker hostels

Abstract

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.