Date: 11 November 2025

In Pakistan, millions of pigeon flyers raise, train, and fly their birds through embodied, affective, and ethical practices of care and labour. Soaring in the sky, these cherished pigeons become carriers of joy, symbols of aspiration, and bridges across entrenched caste, class, ethnic, and sectarian divisions. But what happens when a treasured bird becomes a national security threat? In this talk, I will talk about my ethnographic journey into the world of pigeon keeping in Pakistan, exploring how pigeons who enliven rooftops are sometimes recast as intruders when they cross the heavily militarized India-Pakistan border. As pigeons traverse human-made boundaries, their contested flights expose the fragile threshold between welcome and suspicion, acceptance and rejection. By tracing the layered meanings of arrival, both at home and in the homeland, I intertwine stories of play, companionship, threat, and danger, and ask: what does it mean to welcome, or to refuse, a more-than-human Other at home? And what might these delicate bonds between humans and birds reveal about belonging, borders, and the uneasy dance between hospitality and hostility?