Paper short abstract:

This paper tracks the global mobilities of the so-called African Swine Fever Virus. Tracing ASFV's travels, reveals the multispecies patchy relations that have formed around the trade of pigs, dead and alive, and the infrastructures of production, distribution and waste disposal connected to them.

Paper long abstract:

The so-called African Swine Fever Virus (ASFV), formerly considered to be eradicated in Europe except the Iberian Peninsula, recently made a return to the continent. Since 2007 ASFV has spread throughout Europe with serious consequences for both wild life and domestic pork industries. This paper tells the story of ASFV's recent appearance in Europe. It traces the ways in which this virus has hitched a ride on wild life, on global pork commodity chains and infrastructures. ASFV has followed the heels of colonial trajectories to East Africa, and finally travelled back to Europe - and went feral in the process. Tracking ASFV's travels, I argue, reveals the multispecies patchy relations that have formed around the formal and informal trade of pigs, dead and alive, and the infrastructures of production, distribution and waste disposal connected to them. But even more, ASFV's global mobilities open the view onto the complex ecologies that emerge in the cracks and gaps of industrial meat production, agriculture, urbanization and climate change - ecologies that incite desires to fortify national borders while interfering with capital's trajectories. These desires emerge at a time when the desire for purity and building fences too often shapes dominant political and cultural responses to displacement and ecological destruction. This paper therefore argues that creating more livable habitats for both swine and people requires alternative forms of care that do justice to the entangled landscapes - and unexpected neighbors - that make up our world today.