Amenity migrants, animals and ambivalent natures: More-than-human encounters at home in the rural residential estate

In light of increased development pressure in rural landscapes, understanding how amenity migrants understand and experience nature is a vital project for rural studies. This paper investigates how residents living in a rural residential estate (RRE) negotiate more-than-human encounters in domestic settings. RREs are emergent forms of master-planned residential development on the rural urban fringe, marketed and designed to meet an idyllic rural lifestyle. In the RRE, domestic nonhuman transgressions are both presumed as a part of the amenity migrant experience, and pre-empted by estate design and regulation. Border encounters in gardens were explored via semi-structured walking interviews with 27 residents of an RRE, located on the rural urban fringe of Sydney, Australia. Nonhuman transgressions were found to both contribute towards, and challenge, homemaking practices. Some residents expressed a vernacular ecology at home entangled with more-than-human company, where nonhumans are 'neighbours'. Gardens were shared, and maintenance practices altered. When domestic expectations of cleanliness and order were challenged, native nonhumans were negotiated in gardens with a 'hoped-for absence' (Ginn, 2014). These stories illustrate that a native politics of belonging foreshadows the homemaking practices of amenity migrants. The paper suggests settlements similar to RRE can be a positive intervention on the rural urban fringe, encouraging different registers of interaction with nonhuman nature. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.