Evacuative settler colonialism: Peter Adey, ‘Settler-colonial-evacuative infrastructures of mobility’, Geographical Reserach, 64, 2, 2026, e70057 | settler colonial studies blog

Evacuative settler colonialism: Peter Adey, ‘Settler-colonial-evacuative infrastructures of mobility’, Geographical Reserach, 64, 2, 2026, e70057

16Mar26

Abstract: This paper explores the origins and early years of the Flying Doctors of Australia and what I call counter circuits or infrastructures of settler-colonial-evacuative mobilities—an important but overlooked modality of settler-colonial mobility and infrastructural development. While drawing an important distinction between the service today and its origins, I argue that the service’s early provision of medical care constituted not only a particular form of settler-colonialism but a particular infrastructural technique that made possible its pursuit. Circuits of evacuative mobility under the logics of supporting the settler-state promised the hope of both projection and an assurance of return—often supported by numerous affective and emotional constructions such as relief, consolation, and reassurance. The Flying Doctors evolved not just as a symptom of colonialism but as a supporting practice, driven by a colonial, administrative and cultural logic that has imagined Australia’s inland, and especially its north, as semi-vacant, natural, and problematic. The article is not intended to make any broader application to the services of the present-day, but to rather understand the incredible and difficult origins of the service. It considers what this might tell us about the emergence and evolution of settler-colonial extractive formations through aerial medical infrastructures and mobilities, and how “evacuative” logics of mobility may persist, and complicate and coincide with other more projective or reparative ones.

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