Paper short abstract:

Native nature plays a key role in identity and environment discourses in Aotearao New Zealand. I show how weeds mobilities are conceptualised as a threat to an idealised urban nature in Auckland and how their elimination is deeply entangled with power processes, belonging and exclusion in the city.

Paper long abstract:

The elimination of "invasive" plants is common practice in Aotearoa New Zealand. Auckland, the biggest agglomeration of the country, is known for being one of the weediest cities in the world. Native biodiversity forms an important part of national and local identity. Numerous campaigns ask citizens to take local action for native species as "weed busters" and thus to create a defined form of urban nature. Weeds are transgressing boundaries in space and time: firstly they come from far away to strike roots and make their place in Auckland, secondly they recede a harmonised past of native abundance into the distance and thirdly they counteract an imaginary future. More often than not military vocabulary is used to describe the tension between "good" plants to be protected and "bad" plants to be combatted. The local discourse refers to native species as vulnerable and in need to be cared for. Animate mobilities form part of daily city experiences and are conceptualized as a threat to the desired urban lifeworld. How citizens relate to weeds - if they remove them, do not care about or even plant them in their gardens - works as a local scale of belonging to Auckland. Ways of dealing with nature are closely tied to urban identity. Drawing on my empirical fieldwork, I highlight in my talk how animate mobilities shape social subjects and affiliations in the city and, finally, play out as a powerful dividing line between different socioeconomic and ethnic groups.