Interstitial ecologies: Everyday cosmopolitics of pigeon-human cohabitation in the urban margins

Focusing on road interstices in Karachi as sites of pigeon-human cohabitation, this article develops a more-than-human approach to understanding urban liminal or in-between spaces. Tracing interactions between humans and pigeons on urban roads and beyond, this article brings into view the city as composed of edges, highlighting how human-animal relations in the urban margins produce space as relational, multiple, elastic, and porous. Writing towards interstitial ecologies or ecologies of the in-between, the article focuses on interconnected processes and practices in the making of human and non-human inhabitation, often in overlooked, marginal or in-between spaces, where human-built environment and non-human vitalities intertwine, offering opportunities for co-living, encounter, and interaction. Unsettling the ‘human’ as a uniform category, I emphasise non-secular cosmologies in the makings of more-than-human cosmopolitics and argue that relations with non-humans are shaped by intersecting forms of social difference, such as class, gender, and spiritual belief. Drawing on ethnographic research in pigeon-feeding sites in Karachi, I reflect on various thresholds of in-betweenness: spatial, ecological, and corporeal that shape the makings of interstitial ecologies and cultivate grounds for ethical relations with non-human others.