Unseasonable seasons: Shifting geographies of weather and migration mobilities

Abstract The seasons are part of and produced through weather cycles and climate knowledge, yet they are also a distinctive temporal and spatial framing that has been hinted at in aspects of geography and mobility research but is still relatively underexplored. Seasonal concerns underpin not only the weather, but also migration flows, tourism and trade, farming, and are an integral part of sensing and being in a specific place. This paper hones in on a specific aspect of seasonality: the experiences of seasonal migrants in horticultural communities. I reflect on interviews with workers, businesses and communities, alongside ethnographic accounts from Queensland, Australia, where seasonal labour has been a driving migration force since colonisation. For farming communities around the world, the increasingly ‘unseasonable seasons’ are becoming more challenging to cope with as climate change takes hold and reliance on seasonal labour continues to expand. The paper contributes to a broader conceptualisation of seasonal concerns that link with geographies of weather and climate, as well as how Western colonial assumptions about stable seasonal conditions have been imprinted on contemporary labour mobility practices.