Mobility Humanities

While kinetic elites enjoy seamless movement through international airport terminals, we know that global aeromobilities rely upon infrastructures of immobility. For those without the correct passport, visa, or wealth, mobility is denied, passengers are detained, and such frustrated travellers and unwanted migrants are often held in detention centres. These infrastructures of immobility are just out of public view, tucked around the back of major airports or situated deep in the urban industrial sprawl. In this visual essay we traverse the suburb of Pinkenba, a small industrial port area on the Brisbane River, Australia. This site is home to many of the infrastructures of international mobility that connect Brisbane-Meanjin with the world, including a large detention centre and a new quarantine station. However, the shorelines of Pinkenba serve as another important kind of mobility infrastructure: they are the seasonal home of migratory bird species. This ecological hub within the global network of avian mobilities is being threatened by inexorable expansion of mobility infrastructures. Our exploration, therefore, manoeuvres between two very different types of migrants rendered immobile by the geopolitical forces of mobility hubs—from the asylum seeker to the avian species.