"Searching for Commonality through Difference: spatialising homemaking practices in everyday urban (super)diversity".
Human Settlements
Faculty of Engineering and Department of Architecture
Promoter: Associate Professor Viviana d'Auria
Academic Year 2021 - 2022
Melbourne, Australia Ken MasterNguyen(ofScience)
Acknowledgements
Without written permission of the thesis supervisors and the authors it is forbid den to reproduce or adapt in any form or by any means any part of this publication. Requests for obtaining the right to reproduce or utilize parts of this publication should be addressed to Faculty of Engineering and Department of Architecture, Kasteelpark Arenberg 1 box 2431, B-3001 Heverlee.
A written permission of the thesis supervisors is also required to use the methods, products, schematics and programs described in this work for industrial or com mercial use, and for submitting this publication in scientific contests.
This thesis would not have been possible with the patience, guidance, and support of my supervisor Associate Professor Viviana d’Auria.
Finally, to those near and dear - thank you for all the kindness and encouragement along the way.
© Copyright KU Leuven
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I also like to extend a big thank you to my participants; your stories and enthusiasm contributed a much richer layer to my research that would have otherwise been absent.
DEPARTMENT ARCHITECTUREOF
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4 5 difference:throughfor"Searchingcommonality homemakingspatialising practices in everyday (super)diversity".urban
the concepts of ‘sense of belonging’ and ‘homemaking’ to provide new and alternative meanings of displacement, I define the spatial, temporal, material, and political dimensions of home in migration as a multiscalar and socio-spatial phenomena, arguing that fear of social fragmentation arising from increased diversity are derived from a limited understanding of the metamorphosing nature of diversity today. I show that interacting with a limited range of social networks in a mixed society does not infer social segregation or the failure of multiculturalism, but rather how humans are inherently relational beings. Instead of hunkering down in difference, migrants exert individual agency and develop strategies to overcome urban and cultural barriers to social participation through forming multistranded connections well beyond the fixed imaginaries of the ‘neighbourhood’, building networks of trust and bridging social differences along the way. Whilst a superdiversity lens points us to the salience of ethno-cultural differences particularly in an urbanised Melbourne, I call for more dialectical planning responses that address the hidden reproduction of inequalities rendered invisible by institutional and structural barriers such as housing access, legal statuses, and selective migration policy.
The study of urban diversity has traditionally been centred around specific communities or diasporic groups originating from a single ethnic or national origin settling within delineated neighbourhoods. However, superdiversity has bought about new demographic transformations arising from migration-driven diversity, shifting local configurations of minority and native groups across large cities. Using superdiversity and mapping as analytical tools to unpack and inquire into how these complex conjunctions of multiple axes of difference arising from global mobility play out in the context of Melbourne (Australia), this thesis aims to understand some of the potential planning implications arising from these new forms of difference and social relations. Using ethnographic data from a small group of interlocutors, I propose that through spatialising migration and diversity, we can provide a view on how individuals are entangled with the city, showing that the city is not only a by-product of, but also actively shapes the reproduction of categories based on distinction, commonalities and relationality bounded by urban Engagingspace.with
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Abstract
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[06]
Discussion & Conclusion
Contents
[01]
Re-framing the migrant, mobility and integration Understanding which differences really matter Socio-spatial dependence
Conclusion 91
Migration Patterns & Demographic Changes in Australia 17
The need to look beyond the 'neighbourhood' scale 74
Use of ethnography Open Interlocutorcategoriessample choice InsiderLimitationsstatus & MappingDataFramesSemi-structuredreflexivityinterviewsofinquiryanalysis
FormingFamiliarityconnections (a community in which to belong)
Research Framework
Mapping lived experiences 51 Homemaking and belonging - new challenges for urban planning in the era of superdiversity 64
Moving towards superdiversity in Australia Exploring new commonalities through difference 'Sense of Belonging' and 'Homemaking'
[02]
[05] Research Findings
8 9
A growing Socio-SpatialMelbourneCaseDemographicnationDistributionStudyMelbourneEthnicityMapImplications of Diversity 32
Everyday experiences of dealing with difference Cities are spaces of contestation and negotiation
SenseSenseExclusionofsecurityofopportunity for social advancement
Multiculturalism and migration governance in Australia Australia is not the US or Europe (or is it?)
Bridging concepts with superdiversity 'Sense of 'Home'Re-defining(Un)belongingbelonging'belongingand'Homemaking'
[03]
Introduction
The politics of bordering in Australia Suburban bordering Current challenges in understanding the complexity in diversity
[04]
Methodology
Understanding Relational Diversity 41 Concepts 42
Dealing with Urban Diversity
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However, superdiversity was not intended to reflect the presence of ‘more diversity’ in society, but rather provide a more complexity sensitive approach to understanding diversity and the underlying processes of diversification, illuminating how such variables may interrelate and interact with each other to shape the composition of communities, their needs, and their future directions (Vertovec 2007). Melbourne (Australia) presents as an interesting case study for superdiversity, and how this unprecedented scale and speed of migration has not only bought about substantial
According to Meissner (2020), the term superdiversity has been engaged with across three distinct, yet entangled and intertwined domains – [1] the descriptive work documenting a diversification of diversity, then [2] the practical applications of how to engage with the information gleaned from its initial documentation, and currently, [3] the theoretical and methodological innovations needed to allow superdiversity to engage with diversification processes using novel tools or data.
Whilst it has become a central anchor in migration and ethnic studies to study emerging social configurations, detractors of superdiversity claim an epistemic and political normalisation of difference, that neglect “the historical basis, severity, and foundations of racism and the pervasiveness of power structures and hierarches of whiteness… [translating] into the capacity of majorities to invade and appropriate these normative spaces by speaking a complex language of inclusion and vulnerability” (Doytcheva 2020, 18).
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In the context of London, it was observed that migrants are being increasingly channelled (jointly by patterns of country of origin; migration streams; legal status; gender; age; human capital, etc.), into highly differentiated positions (marked by variable socio-economic opportunities or constraints, political rights or restrictions, and geographic locations), thus creating new national and urban configurations of economic development and inequality; integration and exclusion, conflict and conviviality, privilege and precarity (Vertovec 2007, 2010).
[01] Introduction
physical transformations in the character and scale of the city, but also social transformations arising from changing and diversifying patterns of immigration in a contemporary era. The spatial concentration of migrants in the city and urban areas across Australia arising from the centralisation of labour and favourable socio-economic opportunities has bought about a rapidly changing demographic distribution of native and non-native residents across Melbourne. A superdiversity lens therefore has the potential to be a powerful conceptual tool that can further our understanding of the new complexities arising in the urban reality and implications for urban diversity in a longstanding multicultural Melbourne.
The concept of superdiversity was introduced to social science and migration studies to describe the manifold impacts of complex new conjunctions of variables that play out in social interactions in diverse settings (Vertovec 2007).
This thesis asks then, ‘how does a superdiversity lens reveal the conditions that influence the way urban diversity is experienced through space and place?’ and ‘which processes give rise to differentiated social patterns of urban concentration, segregation, inclusion, exclusion, and isolation?’. Building upon the work of Sandercock who points to the need for a planning orientated response to urban diversity, this thesis draws attention to the way migrants engage with space, providing an understanding of how one’s engagement with or dependence on places shapes social relations and can help us move beyond a single ethno-focal lens and help urban planners deal with new forms of diversity. By examining how everyday urban diversity is
a superdiversity lens points us towards, limits to a large extent the way the nation can capture migrant-driven diversifications and engage with these new conditions of superdiversity. There is also increasing recognition in current literature that past work on migration fails to recognise migration as a complex issue requiring a complex approach, pointing to how policy is often formulated on the use of reductive strategies to comprehend difference (Scholten et al. 2019; Spencer and Charsley 2021).
Superdiversity was “proposed as a ‘summary term’ to encapsulate a range of such changing variables surrounding migration patterns – and, significantly, their interlinkages – which amount to a recognition of complexities that supersede previous patterns and perceptions of migration-driven diversity” (Meissner and Vertovec 2015, 542 – emphasis added). For Australia to move forward in dealing with diversity, there is the need to actively engage with the multidimensional conceptualisations of diversity to understand which differences really matter, and recognise diversity as something that is omnipresent, rather than exceptional. Rather than engaging with superdiversity as a descriptive tool to describe continuously increasing levels of difference, this research aims to use superdiversity as an analytical tool to understand how the dynamics of diversity is altered by these new configurations across multiple social, cultural, and economic domains, raising caution to the risk of assuming difference in isolation.
The concept of superdiversity was first introduced to specifically describe the changing social configurations in London. However, the concept has remained largely confined to European academic circles to date and in the Australian context, academic incursions into superdiversity as a research subject remains limited: linguistic and discursive practices of African diaspora in New South Wales (Ndhlovu 2013); changing religious profiles of British migrants in Australia (Bouma and Halafoff 2018); implications for social work practice and service delivery (Williams and Mikola 2018); within-group variation in ‘New African Diaspora’ (Hiruy and Hutton 2020); multicultural governance and Indigenous Australian (in-)visibility (Moore 2020); ethnic compositions and population dynamics of local communities (O’Donnell and Evans 2022); religious pluralism and new forms of ethno-religious identifications in Melbourne (Bouma et al 2022). Of course, this is not an exhaustive list in the way superdiversity has been engaged with in the Australian context but illustrates not only the reluctance to engage with superdiversity, but how it is often viewed through a single focus of interrogation.
Nevertheless, perhaps one of the most significant bodies of work on superdiversity to date in the Australian context is the ‘Superdiversity in Melbourne’ Report by Davern et al. (2015), the output of a collaborative research project between key urban research institutes in Melbourne and the Institute for Research into Superdiversity (IRiS) at the University of Birmingham in the UK, headed by Professor Jenny Phillimore. Professor Phillimore is the Director of IRiS, one of the first research centres to focus on the issues of superdiversity and is widely regarded as a world leading scholar on issues of migrant integration, ethnicity, and social welfare. The research mapped and explored demographic patterns across Metropolitan Melbourne using 2011 Census Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, providing an interpretive understanding of the nature of changes in Melbourne by offering up a snapshot of cultural, ethnic, religious issues linked to disadvantage in relation to Melbourne neighbourhoods.
One of the difficulties of engaging with a superdiversity lens thus far, as indicated above through the literature review in the Australian context, was that because superdiversity was never conceived as a theory (Vertovec 2019), it makes its use
Leonie Sandercock, an Australian urban planner now based in Canada, encapsulated this change in Australian society as the coming together of “three socio-cultural forces – transnational migrations, post-colonialism, and the rise of civil society – had converged to place the concept of difference on the agenda of the planning and design professions” (Sandercock 2000, 14). Well before the concept of superdiversity was conceived by Steven Vertovec in 2007, Sandercock was drawing attention to the need to consider the local contextual differences, history and changing demographics of neighbourhoods in devising planning strategies to manage difference in multicultural cities (Sandercock 2003).
methodologically challenging in approach and to theorise research in the field. Secondly, owing to the malleability of the concept (Meissner 2015), the term has become so frequently invoked and misinterpreted, leading to a confusion over what the term was originally intended to describe (Vertovec 2019).
As a settler-colonial society, Australia is founded upon and characterised by its long history of migration, making it a nation of migrants that is inherently diverse by default. Successive waves of migration, commonly accompanied by shifting (yet interlinked) discourses on how to ‘manage’ migrants and migration-driven diversity, has also changed the nature of diversity over time. Even though multiculturalism remains a key identifier and celebrated facet of Australian nationhood, diversity in Australia remains conflated with the salience of ethno-cultural differences, a potential legacy of post-colonial and multicultural conceptions of difference. That is, difference is only highlighted when it deviates from outdated imaginaries of a ‘White European’ Australia.
Exploring new commonalities through difference
Moving towards superdiversity in Australia
Whilst Australian planners took heed of the work of Sandercock highlighting the need to consider and accommodate cultural differences in the Australian planning system, two decades on much of the way difference is managed on the national and local level remains ethno-culturally focused. The inability to grasp the wider spectrum of social changes arising from these multi-dimensional complexities that
I posit that migrants do not operate in isolated circles, but rather draw upon an interdependent network of social and familial bonds to reconstruct home after displacement. Networks are important in the study of migration as they reveal the interactions between individuals and groups “with related interests who want to achieve goals and find solutions to problems” (Carrington and Marshall 2008, 118). Whilst a history of migration that has supported multiculturalism has built a strong base of cultural capital for newcomers to draw upon, I argue that new configurations of migration-driven differences are poorly understood in Australia, concealing important differences that create structural barriers and inhibit certain newcomers from drawing upon sources of social capital to fulfil their individual needs. I show how shifting migration policies has bought about new socioeconomic processes that drive changes in labour and housing markets, leading to shifting demographic patterns and the diffusion of disadvantage outside of the urban centre of Melbourne. The resulting spatial clustering of ethnic diversity does not necessarily mean social fragmentation but point to emerging inequality based on different and intersecting aspects of superdiversity.
situated and positioned at the level of the individual actor, I uncover how these multidimensional configurations of differentiation arise through the ways they are practised (Meissner 2016) in space, which is an area that has not yet been studied in detail in superdiversity research (Berg and Sigona 2013). Individual practices are central to the study, as they provide the basis to understand “differential and shifting salience of configurations of diversity” (Meissner 2016, 28).
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The framework allows us to “contextualise and nuance the lived experience of immigration incorporation ‘from below’, as a matter of claims for inclusion and recognition, within specific socio-material and environmental circumstances” (Boccagni and Hondagneu-Sotelo 2021, 12), and simultaneously understand the reciprocal effects of macro-scale factors on diversity that influence urban configurations and social relations on the micro- and meso- scale [Figure 1.1].
Photo by Ian Woodcock (Sandercock 2000, 19).
‘Sense of Belonging’ and ‘Homemaking’
14 15 Managing Cities of Difference 19 fo r th e Sidewalk’ : in the Springval e shoppin g precinc t in th e oute r sout h area , Vietnames e an d Chines e trader s ar e locked in battle with the local of complaints from local residents , abou t ho w man y centimetre s of thei r
Figure 1.1. Signange reflecting bicultural practices by first generation migrants in Melbourne, Australia.
Rather than focusing on normative ethno-cultural differences, I propose merging the concepts of ‘sense of belonging’ with practices of ‘homemaking’ (Boccagni and Duyvendak 2021; Boccagni and Hondagneu-Sotelo 2021) with superdiversity as an analytical frame of reference. Sense of belonging is a core feature of humanity and urban co-existence, intrinsically linked the affective constructs of ‘home’, as it is central to self-identification and individual emplacement in society. It presents as a neutral ground for exploring difference, for qualifying ‘home’ means to understand the social and emotional appropriation of space through individual practices, allowing us to spatialise place attachment and social interactions. Doing so, allows me to also interrogate how personal networks interplays with other biographic dimensions that impact directly on the “unequal diffusion of ‘homemaking’ practices” (Boccagni and Hondagneu-Sotelo 2021, 11),
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Thus, in considering the spatiality of diversity and how urban configurations are influenced, homemaking has the “potential to emerge as an original category of analysis in immigrant integration, moving beyond the contraposition between assimilation and transnationalism” (Boccagni and Hondagneu-Sotelo 2021, 1).
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Over 1 million people migrated to Australia between 2016 and 2021, despite 84% of those having arrived prior to the imposed border restrictions on international travel in early 2020 brought upon by the COVID-19 pandemic (Wright et al. 2022).
Accounting for around 1% of this historic growth was net international migration which has been the key driver for population growth in Australia since 2005-2006 (Centre for Population, 2020, 7). Whilst the accelerated scale and speed of global movements has bought about new and metamorphosing patterns of migration globally, attributed to economic globalisation and the interdependence of world economies, immigration has always central to Australian history. Often recognised as the poster child for multiculturalism, multicultural difference is not only accepted, but a celebrated facet and key identifier of Australian nationhood that transformed the social and cultural landscape of the nation.
Migration Patterns & Demographic Changes in Australia
Prior to the onset of the pandemic, Australia’s population had been growing at an average rate of 1.4% per year since 1971, a relatively faster rate when placed in comparison with other developed countries (Centre for Population, 2020, 7).
A Growing Nation
[02] Dealing with Urban Diversity
1847
Pre-1788
The gold rush brought more than 600,000 immigrants to Australia between 1851 and 1860.
Approximately 58,000 free settlers arrived under various migration schemes, of whom many were assisted by government funding.
The First Fleet arrived in Botany Bay carrying more than 1,300 convicts and military personnel.
Approximately 390,000 new settlers predominantlyarrived,British.
A weakened economy and severe drought resulted in widespread unemployment, poverty and industrial strikes, and brought immigration to a standstill.
Estimated 40,000–60,000 years of Indigenous settlement and civilisation.
18 19 1880 19001780 1800 1820 18601840
1890s
Immigration Restriction Act 1901 introduced, a key part of what became known as the ‘White Australia Policy’, which included a dictation test.
Indigenous population estimated at between 300,000 and 1.5 million.
Federation of the Commonwealth of Australia.
Immigration increased as a result of a thriving economy.
1914–18
Australia received a net gain of more than 340,000 immigrants, of which two-thirds arrived under assisted migration schemes.
1905–14 1929–30s
1939–45
Immigration virtually ceased during World War I.
First indentured labourers from the Pacific Islands brought to New South Wales to work on private farms.
1880s
2017, 9 & 17. (2017)AustraliaofCommonwealth©
1815–40
1788
1850s–60s
During the Great Depression, unemployment rates increased to nearly 32 per cent and community attitudes towards immigrants hardened. Australia
Population1939reached7million.19501900 1910 1920 19401930 Figure 2.1. Australian Migration History (Pre-1788 to 1945). Image by Commonwealth of
Population1889reached3million. 1901
1920s
World War II brought major immigration to a halt, with the exception of small numbers in need of a safe haven.
The Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948 created the status of ‘Australian citizen’.
More than 100,000 migrants worked on the Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme.
The remnants of the ‘White Australia Policy’ were further dismantled under the Whitlam Government, which took a non-discriminatory approach to immigration and provided additional services to migrants.
1972–74
1956–57
The Department used advertisements to emphasise the importance of immigration in boosting the population.
1949–75
The Department of Immigration was formally established on 13 July 1945, with Arthur Calwell as its first minister.
1971–75
Immigration restrictions on non-Europeans were further relaxed.
1948
To reflect its multicultural role, the Department became the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs.
1978
1940 1950 1960 1970 1958
1976
20 21
1949
1970 1980 1990 1977
1976–81
populationAustralia’s1981was15million. Major theresearchandskilledintoMigrationreformsimmigrationdividedtheProgrammethreestreams(family,andhumanitarian)developedacapacitywithinDepartment. 1988–89 Figure 2.2. Australian Migration History (1945 to 1990). Image by Commonwealth of Australia 2017, 33 & 57. (2017)AustraliaofCommonwealth©
The revised Migration Act 1958 abolished the dictation test and reformed entry processes.
Population1959reached10million. 1963–66
1947–54
The Australian Government signed an agreement with the International Refugee Organization to settle persons under the Displaced Persons Scheme, admitting more than 170,000 Europeans by 1954.
The Galbally Report presented to Parliament stressed the need for additional services and programmes for migrants.
Concerns over increasing unemployment levels led to significant reductions in the planned intake of the Migration Programme.
Between 1976 and 1981, a total of 56 boats carrying 2,100 Indochinese refugees landed on Australian shores.
1945
Presentation of the ‘Heroes of Freedom’ medal to the grandson of former immigration minister Athol Townley for his grandfather’s role in the humanitarian resettlement of Hungarian refugees.
The rise in the number of refugees prompted the government to introduce a refugee policy framework and administrative machinery that set the foundations for Australia’s Humanitarian Programme.
1995
systemsitsprogrammeagency-widetochangeculture,performance,andbusiness.
Greater priority was given to the business and skilled migration streams.
2001
Figure 2.3. Australian Migration History (1995 - Today). Image by Commonwealth of Australia 2017, 75. (2017)AustraliaofCommonwealth©
On 1 July 2015, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection and the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service will officially amalgamate as a single department, with the commencement of the Australian Border Force.
2000 The ParalympicSydneyattendinginternationaloffacilitatedDepartmenttheentrythousandsofvisitorsthe2000OlympicandGames. Population2003reached20million. 2005
Whilst it is not the intent of this thesis is not to delve into the semantics of how a ‘superdiverse’ city is qualified, as defining it would go against the main intent of the concept itself, Vertovec provides a working definition of what constitutes a superdiverse city – “urban populations that show fluctuating combinations of nationalities, ethnicity, language, religion, age, gender, legal status, class and human capital, where changing combinations of traits can be observed” (Vertovec et al. 2022). Notwithstanding, research is often focused on any context defined as, or moving towards being a ‘majority-minority city’, where the population of the historically majority group becomes a minority themselves and replaced by firstand second-generation immigrants (Vertovec 2007; Geldof and Phillimore 2016; Scholten et al. 2018).
In 2021, 35.7% of residents in Melbourne were born overseas, compared to 34.4% in other capital cities. Yet, these figures do not describe how accompanying this international migration is also the associative contribution to natural population increase resulting from a younger average age of migrants compared to the resident population (Centre for Population, 2020, 7), making it more likely that the birth of Australian born, ‘second-generation’ children attributed greatly to this natural increase. In fact, the 2021 Census revealed that 48.2% of Australians have at least one parent born overseas, with that figure up at 58% (ABS 2022b) for the Melbourne population, reaffirming its status as a multicultural city.
22 23
Between 1945 and 1995, Australia accepted more than five million migrants, including over half a million refugees and displaced persons.
The Department received criticism for its handling of Vivian Alvarez Solon’s and Cornelia Rau’s cases and, in response, initiated an
1997–98
1999–2001
The Tampa incident provided the catalyst for a revised border protection regime and the creation of the Pacific Strategy.
2001–03
2015
The Department underwent a major restructure that aimed to align policy and operational areas and to strengthen border management.
2009–13 1990 2010 20202000
Demographic Distribution
Despite a landmass of over 7.7 million km2, an area covering almost three quarters of Europe, the total Australian population according to the 2021 Census is only a modest 25.6 million, though there was an increase of 8.6% since the 2016 Census (ABS 2022a). In fact, the Australian population has more than doubled over 50 years since that 1966 Census, at a time when a population of 11.6 million was recorded, and now, more than two-thirds of Australians live in a metropolitan area, with the number of people living in main cities growing twice as fast as regional centres (ABS 2022b). According to Davern et al. (2015), there are no geographical areas within Metropolitan Melbourne as defined by the Australian Bureau of statistics populated with people from less that 17 countries of origin, with the two suburbs of Dandenong and Point Cook being called home to residents arriving from 132 and 138 countries respectively.
In 1999 and 2000, over 6,600 illegal maritime arrivals reached Australian shores, with a further 5,500 arriving in 2001.
The September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, an economic downturn and the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic all had significant but short-term impacts on international travel.
Over this five-year period, Australia saw more than 50,000 people arrive on boats seeking asylum.
METROPOLITANNORTHERNREGION
24 25 CentreDandenong Narre CentreWarren SunshineCentre BroadmeadowsFootscrayCentreCentre CentreEpping Box CentreHill CentreRingwood CentreFrankston REGIONALVICTORIA PORT BAYPHILLIP
METROPOLITANWESTERNREGION
Figure 2.4. Map of Metropolitan Melbourne.
(2022)NguyenKen©
METROPOLITANMETROPOLITANEASTERNREGIONSOUTHERNREGION
A 10964321578111213 109643258111213 B C D E F G H J K L M N O P A B C D E F G H J K L M N O P 5km 10km
According to Plan Melbourne 2017-2050, the Victorian Government’s long-term metropolitan planning strategy which guides growth and change across the city, Melbourne is projected to grow from a population of 4.5 million to close to 8 million by 2051 (DEWLP 2017, 7). Correspondingly, Melbourne is also projected to overtake Sydney for the first time to become Australia’s largest city in 2026, with a population of 6.2 million by 2030, compared to 6.0 million in Sydney (Centre for Population, 2020, 4). The patterns of migrant settlement in Melbourne for example, the capital city of the State of Victoria in the south-east corner of the country, are revealing the emergence and geographic spread of migrants in super-diverse contexts, not only are they arriving from a more diversified number of origins in smaller numbers, but they are also concentrating unevenly across national, regional, and sub-regional levels (Davern et al. 2015). Whilst the Australian population overall is ethnically mixed by statistics, this uneven distribution in urbanised areas makes cities such as Melbourne an excellent case study to examine the complexities and multi-dimensionality of super-diversity, and its implications for migration studies, providing fertile research ground for disentangling specific migrant patterns.
METROPOLITANSOUTHINNEREASTREGIONINNERMETROREGION
Case Study Melbourne
26 27 2022LimDerrick© Figure 2.5. Melbourne Ethnicity Map (2016) UnitedChinaItalyKingdomVietnamIndiaAustraliaNewZealand 1263 4 65 7 8 109 1112 13 14 1615 17 18 19 212023222524 27 28 29 30 31 2 REGIONALVICTORIA PORT BAYPHILLIP A 10964321578111213 109643258111213 B C D E F G H J K L M N O P A B C D E F G H J K L M N O P 5km 10km Figure 2.4. Map of Metropolitan Melbourne. (2022)NguyenKen©
of birth (Figure 2.5) and primary occupation (Figure 2.6) as recorded in the 2016 Census are spatialised visually as a dot map, with each dot representing 50 persons (Lim 2022). The accumulative impacts of successive waves and diversifying patterns of migration to Australia are thus most evident in capital cities such as Melbourne, compounded by internal migration flows, in particular patterns of spatial assimilation, whereby “as social status rises, minorities attempt to improve their socioeconomic achievements into an improved spatial position which is primarily dominated by ethnic majorities” (Wen 2019, 1). Whilst recent immigrants are disproportionately settling in already highly diverse areas, there is little evidence that minority populations are concentrated in segmented clusters (O’Donnell and Evans, 2021).
Observing the distribution of self-reported occupations across metropolitan Melbourne show an over-representation of higher socio-professional group concentrated in neighbourhoods closer to the centre of the city and along the eastern edge of Port Phillip Bay. The ABS classifies occupations under 8 categories defined as: (1) labourers; (2) machine operators; (3) sales workers; (4) clerical and administrative workers; (5) community and personal service workers; (6) technicians and trade workers; (7) professionals; and (H) managers (ABS 2016).
Broadly speaking, high socio-professional groups are defined as categories 7-8; middle socio-professional group as categories 3-6; and low socio-professional groups as categories 1-2.
Lower socio-professional groups representing more unskilled workers are conversely dispersed to the suburban periphery, highlighting the need to consider the growing spatial divide between top and bottom socio-professional groups driven by the growing levels of income inequality and issues with housing affordability (Sydes and Wickes, 2021, 244). Despite the self-perception of Australia being the land of the ‘fair go’, an egalitarian society where everyone has the opportunity to achieve the ‘Great Australian Dream’ of home-ownership, Melbourne is ranked the 5th most expensive city in the world for housing affordability (Urban Reform Institute 2022) based on a median multiple (median house price/median household income) of 12.1. Whilst the most expensive city is Hong Kong (23.2), this puts Melbourne (12.1) in front of other large international cities such as San Francisco, U.S. (#86 - 11.8), London, U.K. (8.0) and New York, U.S. (7.1).
Notwithstanding, there is evidence of coexisting increasing dispersion and concentration of mainland Chinese nationals in Australia’s metropolitan areas owing to substantial intakes of international students, as well as temporary skilled migrants who go on to obtain permanent residency (Guan 2019).
CommunityAdministrationManagerProfessionalSalesServiceLabourMachineryTechnician/Trader
One of the key features of superdiversity is how new migrants are inhabiting places where migrants from previous waves and generations still reside (Vertovec et al. 2022). Not only are homogenous groups of post-war European and Asian migrants, who settled in ethnic residential clusters or ‘ethnic enclaves’ as a consequence of migrant receiving hostels and reception centres (Agutter and Ankeny 2016), they are now being replaced by a critical mass of migrants originating from Asia and the Middle East, but there is also increasing evidence of fragmentation in the number of migrant countries of birth (Davern et al. 2015, 15).
In the UK, this phenomenon was studied by Wessendorf (2018), showing how new migration patterns of migration also bought about an influx of ‘pioneer migrants’, individuals arriving from a wider spectrum of origin with limited or no historical connection in the receiving country. The article sought to shift the way diversity was studied through groups living together in super-diverse contexts, towards examining how these individuals overcame a lack of resources and support from a co-ethnic community, finding that legal status and cultural capital were the main factors (rather than ethnicity and country of origin) that supported their economic
28 29 2022LimDerrick©
Figure 2.6. Melbourne Occupation Map (2016)
Melbourne Ethnicity Map
Theintegration.top7countries
Figure 2.7. Bivariate modelling indicating intensity of empirical relationship between Income and Rent (2016)
Income Rent low high high
Figure 2.6. Bivariate modelling indicating intensity of empirical relationship between Age and Income (2016)
30 31 2022LimDerrick© Age Income low high high 2022LimDerrick©
Large cities and metropolitan centres have acted traditionally as attractive immigrant gateways owing to favourable labour and socio-economic opportunities, where new flows of migration have bought about newly mobilised and diversifying ethno-cultural communities in Australia (Laukova et al. 2022).
Socio-Spatial Implications of Diversity
The planning system’s inability to deal with difference is not only implicated once in the same story, but twice, with the episode continuing onto describing how Buddhist monks recognised the inability for their elderly and transport-disadvantaged worshippers to access these newly constructed temples and responding to this unfulfilled need by purchasing suburban houses and converting them into small temples. The complaints that followed from neighbours regarding ‘excessive’ burning of incense, raised the awareness of council authorities who subsequently shut these makeshift temples based on the non-conforming use of the house and air pollution. Sandercock argues that the real reason was the ‘fear’ (of the other) and aversion to change, and how this increasingly became “constitutive elements of planning practice in cities of difference” (Sandercock 2000, 21).
After several decades of a multicultural model of citizenship beginning in the 1970’s, Sandercock and Kliger (1998a) argued that the planning system still had not fully grasped the implications of this societal shift “when people with different histories, cultures, and needs arrive in our cities, their presence inevitably disrupts familiar and taken-for-granted patterns of social life and uses of urban space, both public and private, parks and open spaces and shopping centres as well as back and front yards” (Sandercock and Kilger 1998a, 127).
article, Sandercock (2000) highlights research on planning issues in culturally diverse municipalities in Melbourne arising from religious difference and how a fear of the ‘other’ subversively influenced planning decisions. The arrival of migrant groups with Islamic, Buddhist, and Hindu faiths were followed with community request to local planners for sites to build their own places of worship and were directed to the suburban fringes or industrial zones, adjacent to incompatible uses such as storage depots and refuse centres – on the account that adequate parking was required, and to minimise disruption of neighbourhood amenity in existing residential zones. She asserts (though cautiously without proven evidence), that these groups were discriminated against by the planning system, either by pressure from establish groups uncomfortable by the presence of new neighbourhoods, or because planners had ‘foreseen’ conflict and had preemptively sought to neutralise it.
Despite the body of literature in the past decade that has sought to test Putnam’s hypotheses, the findings have been rather inconclusive, indicating the difficulty in grasping the complex nature of diversity: the meaning of diversity can take variety forms thus have different effects (Newton and Stolle 2007); the effects of social deprivation and economic precariousness emerging from societal processes have a greater impact on the social connectedness of individuals than ethnic diversity (Colic-Peisker and Robertson 2015, Sturgis et al. 2011); that trust is a necessary condition for reducing complexity in society, allowing individuals to freely go about with their daily lives (Ward et al. 2014); ethnic diversity can undermine local cohesion but only for individuals who already view ethnic out-groups as a
1035). Not to be confused with ‘cosmopolitan capacities’ or ‘convivial sensibilities’, Ye calls for more focus on differential inclusion, by examining how boundaries drawn within policy discourse could be realigned to reflect the reality of on-ground experiences.
As new demographic compositions form across the city, established hierarchies or long-standing rivalries were challenged, “manifesting themselves in conflicts over language use, state-church relations, cultural symbols and narratives, schools, neighbourhoods, access to local institutions and resources” (Csergő et al. 2015).
In fact, multiculturalism had existed well before European colonisation, given that “Indigenous Australians have a complex history encompassing people, places, languages, custodianship, practices, and cultures” (Howitt 2019, in Ratnam 2019, 1199). Sandercock and Kilger (1998) raise the issue of how in urban design, heritage and public spaces, the planning system privileged the values of the one dominant Anglo-Celtic culture in seeking out to preserve and recognise the “importance of collective memory in the built environment, and therefore of the need to preserve historic precincts and streetscapes as well as individual buildings” (Sandercock and Kilger 1998b, 223), despite already decades of modification by successful migrant groups. In doing so, they question why decades of settlement was not part
threat (Laurence et al. 2019); the neighbourhood context has a greater effect on the attitudes and actions of certain groups, thus diversity is likely to affect some members of the community more than others (Wickes et al. 2014).
Notwithstanding, even after accounting for contextual differences, the ‘contact theory’ is often relied upon to suggest a counterclaim that diversity erodes the ‘us-against-them’ interactions, and that there is the need to move beyond merely living together and accepting difference through intergroup contact (Kilson 2009, Hewstone 2015), where increased diversity is correlated to wellbeing as it reduces differentiate stereotypes in a ‘melting pot’ environment (Bai et al. 2020). Wessendorf (2013) provides a mapping of this ‘melting pot’ environment across public, private, and parochial spheres in her study of Hackney, an Easter London neighbourhood. She elaborates on the variegated forms of social engagements and how multiple differences are defined by specifical relational forms that take place in these different social territories. In the public realm, ‘commonplace diversity’ is conditioned by the assumption that everyone comes from somewhere else, making it unremarkable in the everyday. However, in the semi-public or ‘parochial’ sphere where social infrastructure such as schools or sports clubs are found, interactions across more categorical differences are recognised, whilst in the private realm, interactions are commonly situated between shared class or co-ethnic and national
of a council’s heritage, and should preserving a colonial legacy of Anglo-Celtic streetscapes remain prioritised over the needs of subsequent generations and Incultures?aseparate
Since then, there has been a growing preoccupation with ‘managing diversity’ in political spheres to stem public anxiousness and address the perceived dangers to social cohesion arising from continued flows of immigration and ethnic diversity.
Cities are spaces of contestation and negotiation
Everyday experiences of dealing with difference
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Accordingcategories.
to Wessendorf, the presence of ‘civility towards diversity’ suggests there is a level of respect for difference, however, it leaves in question which behaviours are tolerated and to what extent? On the national level, the Australian Government attempts to address this by promoting a set of ‘Australian values’ as the foundation of social cohesion. These are the democratic rights of both individuals and communities for access to a secure, prosperous, and peaceful place to live, based on freedom, respect, fairness, and equal opportunity. At the same time however, this concept of ‘Australian values’ are most difficult to configure on the ground, resulting in ambiguous norms that enable the ‘public’ to self-codify; sharing spaces thus becomes a “ritualised form of selective incorporation where acceptance is dependent upon people subscribing to established norms and values” (Ye 2017,
Whilst Melbourne has always been a multi-ethnic society built upon historical waves of immigrant groups, interrelated issues of ethnic diversity, urban planning, and social cohesion has reinvigorated debate amongst politicians and social scientists alike on the effects of immigration and socially mixed and multicultural populations. In 2007, American political scientist Robert Putnam painted a bleak picture of urban diversity in the US, making a contentious sweeping claim that diverse communities with higher ethnic and racial compositions resulted in lower perceptions of social cohesion (Putnam, 2007). Social cohesion could be understood as the intersection between community and social capital, predominately situated in ethnically diverse, English-speaking ‘immigrant societies’ (Robinson 2005). The dissemination of Putnam’s findings that diversity had an adverse impact on society owing to ‘conflict theory’, which resulted in increasing social withdrawal and caused residents to ‘hunker down’ in the face of difference, was a rather untimely publication given that the western world was still reeling from the aftermath of the September 11 Attacks in 2001 and the 2005 London Underground bombings.
It comes as no surprise then, only 1% of respondents noted immigration and population growth as a major concern in the 2021 Mapping Cohesion Report (Scanlon Institute 2021, 32) at a time when international borders were closed due to the pandemic, despite it being consistently the third highest concern in the previous years. The more overall positive tone publicly reported by the Scanlon Institute needs to be received with caution, as there has been mixed accounts on the public perceptions of urban diversity and social cohesion in research. Cheong (2007) cautions the use of social capital as the main goal for social cohesion, arguing that social capital is dynamic and itself value-based, and changes over time according to the prevailing ideological climate – in the case of the Scanlon Institute findings, meanings of solidarity shift and re-emerge in the context of how to deal with a global health pandemic. The use of social cohesion as a policy goal is thus called into question (Wessendorf and Phillimore 2019, Sharples and ColicPeisker 2020) due to the term’s entanglement with the meaning of community and social capital and how in public and policy discourse the term is too loose
For over a decade, the Scanlon Foundation Research Institute, Australia’s leading research institution on social cohesion, has been conducting ongoing longitudinal research into a range of indicators for social cohesion using survey data on public attitudes of Australians. There is a growing recognition for the need of both quantitative and qualitative research to inform policymaking and how individuals must negotiate co-existence with other urban dwellers along multiple axes of difference that can include race and ethnicity, language, citizenship, class, and wealth, as well as gender. Published annually as the ‘Mapping Social Cohesion Report’, the report heightens public and policy awareness to advance support for immigration and multiculturalism, trust in the government, and
and interchangeable and does not reflect the ‘social unit’ into which the migrant is supposed to integrate.
There are calls to depoliticise diversity altogether to allow for meaningful engagement with difference and inclusion, moving beyond simplistic understandings of the city as “either (only) sites of resistance or (only) sites of full-blown accommodation of nativist and austerity imperatives” (Cianetti 2020, 2697). Considering Australia’s long-established history as a settler-colonial state, one which “effectively decimated and then numerically overwhelmed the Indigenous inhabitants, [where] only 3.3% of its population are Indigenous” (Fozdar 2021, 148), the narratives between nation-state and the local level are often left contradictory due to perpetuating power dynamics and colonial hierarchies (Meissner and Heil 2021, 740) and reveal the politics of representation and the hidden power structures in the constitution of ethnic identities. Scholten (2020) also makes the criticism that policy making is repeatedly derailed by the failure to deal with the complexification of migration and diversity, often leading to ‘one-size-fits-all’ models.
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At the core of the 2021 report is the introduction of the Scanlon-Monash Index of Social Cohesion, constructed on five domains of social cohesion: belonging, worth, social justice and equity, participation, and acceptance and rejection/ legitimacy. In 2021, despite a minor decline from previous years (possibly owing to the COVID-19 pandemic), an average of 88 points was recorded across the 5 domains (Scanlon Institute 2021, 24), reflecting the relative stability in the Australian context. Nonetheless, it would be overtly complacent to assume that Australia is immune to the strengthening of anti-immigration populist movements in other developed and high-income countries such as the UK, United States, and mainland Europe.
Multiculturalism entered Australian political discourse in the early 1970s following the election of the Whitlam Labour Government, who sought to liberalise public policy by removing methodological practices of racial discrimination of the past fostered by seventy years of a ‘White Australia’ policy that sought to exclude migrants from non-European origins (Commonwealth of Australia 2017, 51). This opened the door for recognition of ethno-cultural differences and the embedding of diversity along ethno-specific lines for a more inclusive and democratic approach to policy and planning practice. It created space for ethnic minorities to enjoy their distinct ways of life, based on ethnic, religious and/or cultural differences, and ensure access to public space and community affairs associated with ‘rights to difference’ and ‘rights to the city’ (Sandercock 2003).
Multiculturalism and Migration Governance in Australia
However, more so in the UK and the US, many detractors have denounced the efficacy and contemporary relevance of the multicultural model claiming increased social fragmentation (Kundanani 2002, Ongur 2011, Ossewaarde 2014). In Australia, the situation is less severe, though multicultural terminology no longer features as an official part of policy discourse in Australia, but rather buzzwords such as ‘integration’, ‘cohesion’ and even ‘belonging’ are increasingly favoured. Driven by the ‘fear of others’ (Sandercock 2000) and a model that legitimises “a retreat into culturally and physically separate minority communities” (Vertovec 2010, 90), ‘social cohesion’ policy was first introduced into the policy sphere by the Howard Liberal Government (1996-2007), that sought to “pursue[d] a model of diversity management that emphasises national identity, social cohesion and harmony, but retreated from the ideology and policy of multiculturalism” (Sharples and Colic-Peisker 2020, 218).
“When I became Prime Minister, I set myself three broad goals. I wanted this country to be secure. I wanted it to have strong defences, to have strong alliances and steadfast friends on whom we could rely in times of need. I wanted it to have economic strength. I wanted it to have an economy of which we could be proud and would generate jobs and generate investment and create small businesses and keep interest rates down and return the benefits of that strong economy to families. I also wanted Australia to be socially cohesive. I wanted this country to be an example to the world of religious tolerance, of understanding and of diversity, under the umbrella of an overriding commitment to the fundamental values of Australia” - Howard 2004 (as cited in Sharples and Colic-Peisker 2020, 218).
The authors point out the Howard’s reference to ‘fundamental values’ were linked to ‘Judaeo-Christian ethic’, emphasising Anglo-Australian identity in a time of strengthening links with the United States. Social cohesion in a way, implies the need for a degree of homogeneity, which constraints the task of re-imagining Australia beyond the majority white population’s sense of attachment of national, cultural norms, symbols, and practices (Fozdar 2021, Saggar 2020). In a separate study by Fozdar, compassion to others and openness to difference existed in Australia but was characterised by ‘multicultural nationalism’, an orientation that “celebrates internal diversity within limits, but remains hostile to post-national material formations and global cosmopolitan ideological formations” (Fozdar 2021, 146).
sense of belonging (Scanlon Institute 2021). In 2018, the Scanlon Foundation also produced a narrative piece titled A Changing Australia: How migration is shaping the nation, stating that “the success of multicultural Australia has been built on level of public acceptance that have grown stronger over time, especially during the current period of relative economic strength” (Scanlon Institute 2018, 5), reflecting how diversity is embodied in the national identity and nationhood.
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Australia is not the US or Europe (or is it?)
Whilst Australia is often compared to other developed nations such as UK, Western Europe and Northern America, comparisons of ethnic compositions are likely to be distorted by a range of factors from which superdiversity makes a call to illuminate. Lichter et al. (2020) reported new forms of multiscale segregation emerging in Europe, where the concentration and distribution of immigrantnative patterns vary widely due to differing economies, demographic conditions, and histories of immigration. They found that these differences were “reflected in the large numbers of regional ‘hot spots’, which are driven by public policy and idiosyncratic political considerations at the national and regional level” (Lichter et al. 2020, 465).
In addition to surveillance of its borders, the Australian Government also subjugates its territory and externalises its borders by undertaking transnational marketing campaigns to ‘educate’ and deter people about the ‘dangers’ of irregular migration, devising a narrative that is used to normalise not only a spatial imaginary of ‘home’ (the arrive ‘By Boat, No Visa’ campaign), but also how it is used “to reshape the symbolic and imaginative dimensions of the transnational space of irregular migration to Australia among ethnic groups the Australian Government deems at risk of asylum seeking” (Watkins 2017, 282).
The return to selective migration policies that reinforces power geometrics and differentials could translate into daily practices by people because of new demographic changes, and perhaps influence some of the findings on social cohesion by the Scanlon Research Institute. It is through this selective visa process that Australia mobilises the ‘ordering’ (van Houtum 2021) of who the ‘we’ community is, and through this self-construction, defines a norm in which abnormalities and exceptions are being defined through ‘othering’ and in need of addressing (migrant integration). Van Houtum’s triad of bordering, ordering, and othering in the Australian context is thus rendered through the social construction of Australia as a multicultural nation, but one that is only open for economically contributing citizens.
In 2020-2021, humanitarian visas available for refugees and asylum seekers accounted for only 13,750 (5.85%) of a total of 235,000 migrant visas, a figure which is a ceiling rather than a target, as reflected by how only 5,947 humanitarian visas were granted in the same year, despite almost 40,000 applications (Department of Home Affairs 2021, 1). Of the 13,750 visas available, only 2,000 are allocated for ‘on-shore’ applicants - those who have already arrived in the territory as asylum seekers, reflecting Australia’s stance on irregular migration.
The politics of bordering in Australia
Australia’s history of deterring refugees goes as far back as 1992, with amendments to the migration acts that echoed a return to the Australia’s restrictive policies as a push back to multiculturalism (Ratnam 2019). An incident in 2001 called the ‘Tampa Affair’, where the then Prime Minister John Howard refused the entry of a freighter ship carrying 433 rescued asylum seekers triggering the ‘Pacific Solution’, a policy which saw the effective removal of neighbouring island states from the Australian migration zone, thereby (unlawfully) stripping the ability of arriving non-citizens to claim asylum status in Australia (Ratnam 2019).
Saggar claims the need to consider these structural variances, pointing out the impact of policy proposals relating to health and social care, taxation, education, and property ownership can disproportionally affect ethnic minorities, who are generally younger Australians of Asian, African, Middle Eastern and Pacific Islander heritage. In his article, Saggar is quick to point out that issues of inequality in Australia are becoming more salient, citing the government’s wage-subsidy program during the COVID-19 crisis, as specifically excluding residents on temporary skilled visas, a vast majority of whom are people of colour originating predominantly from Asia.
Owing to its remoteness in the Oceanic region bounded by the Pacific, Southern and Indian Oceans, Australia is an island nation without in situ territorial borders and does not have a great need to rely on physical fortification of its borders to manage migration, in particular irregular travel and migrants seeking to enter sans papiers. However, irregular migration remains a highly politicised topic in Australia, with narratives of ‘stop the boats’ supported by the ‘Operation Sovereign Borders’ which commenced in 2013, a border protection operation led by the Australian Defence Force to stop maritime arrivals of asylum seekers.
If we examine migration policy more closely in the Australian context through van Houtum and Naerrssen’s triadic framework on ‘Bordering, Ordering and Othering’ (2002), which describes the dynamic and multilayered construction of geopolitical borders, it is not only physical borders that are mobilised to shape and demarcate a socially ordered identity of the ‘we’, against a constitutive outsider of the ‘them’.
Most of the total amount of migrant visas in Australia are thus allocated under the ‘skilled migrant steam’ and ‘family steam’. Australia’s offshore processing of irregular migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers “problematises the official categorisation of migrants into administrative and legal domains and the consequent construction of a normative hierarchy of good and bad migrants” (Tazreiter 2017, 242). The favouring of migrants with advanced ‘skills’ is often politically rationalised by the need to ‘boost the economy’, though this legal status categorisation creates with van Houtum (2021) calls a ‘paper wall of visas’.
Khazaei (2018) calls for the need to consider the historical, social, economic, and legal context, anchored in a specific time and space, to expose the mechanisms in which race-, gender-, and class-based inequalities are reproduced. In the context of Australia, a history of practiced racial exclusion under the ‘White Australia’ at the turn of the 20th century reflected a racial hierarchy of the post-Victorian era, persisting well until the 1970s before being abolished. Consequently, very few Australians beyond their 50’s is of non-European descent, reflecting a demographic feature that is hard wired into politics and policy debates today, given that white Australians are “generally older, better off and homeowners, so they are more reliant on (and exposed to changes in) these services and policies” (Saggar 2020).
The vagueness of the meaning of ‘community’ and how it is poorly understood in policy and practiced in public, most likely lends to Putnam’s hypothesis that diversity brings about a reduction in the social cohesion and social capital. In Melbourne, spatial concentrations of co-ethnic immigrants arriving during the post-war waves of migration emerged not only because they served as an invaluable socioeconomic resource for newcomers and later generation ethnics but also because of exclusionary policies and discrimination (Pulles and Lee, 2019). This pattern was first described by Li (1998) as the rise of the ‘Ethnoburb’, areas of high levels of multi-ethnic communities in the US, where one ethnic minority has a significant concentration without necessarily being the majority group. The patterns are no different in Australia; there are no geographical areas defined by the Australian Bureau of Statistics that are populated by less than 17 different countries of origins (Davern et al. 2015).
In ‘Cities: Reimagining the Urban’ (2002), Amin and Thrift provide a new challenging perspective on the contemporary city, arguing that urban theory clings too much on the notion of the city as being bounded. Instead, they offer a ‘different knowledge of the city’ by arguing that urban encroachment and rapid urbanisation has reorganised urban life scattered along a series of sites and circulations, shifting centralities of distant connections whilst redefining the proximate encounters through three key principles: connection, tension, and novelty. In a separate paper, Amin (2006) suggest the potential of a more practical urban utopia based on solidarity that is woven through the ‘repair’, ‘relatedness’, ‘rights’, and ‘reenhancement’ in everyday urban life.
Li highlights how ethnoburbs as dynamic communities that fluctuate in concentration, size, and scale over time, dependent on a wide range of factors: the size and pace of newcomers in terms of flow and origin; stability of ethnic economies, the welcoming or discouraging attitudes and behaviours of longterm residents; and policies that facilitate or hinder ethnoburban development (Li, 2019). In Melbourne, many of these ethnic suburbs sprouted from the ‘firstwaves’ of migrants arriving into migrant reception centres on the fringes of the city, supported by the post-war economy of manufacturing, where over time, they became attractive hubs for supporting new migrant communities. Following changes in immigration policies, welfare state restructuring and decline in manufacturing economies, not only were these areas becoming less accessible to newcomers, but long-term residents were also being slowly pushed out further away from the centre due to housing pressure and the attractiveness of the wellestablished public amenities and transport infrastructure (Easthope et al. 2018).
Current challenges in understanding the complexity in diversity.
“they fragment and dis-integrate. Some people leave, while the remaining groups and individuals compete for dwindling resources. People look for both saviours and scapegoats – and become depressed when neither can be found. In places where the scars of colonial racism run deep, these communities have never really shared common ground. They see the place they share differently” (Howitt 2020; 4).
Lobo (2010) provides an account of ‘community’ and the interactions that take place in a super-diverse migrant enclave of Melbourne, illustrating how tensions arose from living together with difference due to loose definitions and configurations of what community meant between multiple individuals. Despite this, they were able to overcome inter-ethnic tensions by welcoming and even humourizing difference. She argues that these everyday ‘chance encounters’ are difficult to dismiss as inconsequential, bringing about serendipitous opportunities that show that “everyday negotiation of cultural difference also provides the potential to blur fixed ethnic boundaries and contribute to interethnic understanding and a sense of belonging” (Lobo 2010, 85). It shows that despite different communities drawing and redrawing symbolic group boundaries, these discussive boundaries do not always necessarily lead to reduced social contact and result in segregated social patterns (Albeda et al. 2018, 470).
If we point the lens away from superdiverse areas for a second and examine ‘community’ in suburbs which are dominated by a majority of Anglo-Australian, social cohesion is not often raised as a policy concern in local government discourse. The irony here, however, is that these areas become the “antithesis of local connectedness” (Sharples and Colic-Peisker 2020, 218), characterised by quiet and privatised low-density living, car dependency, high residential mobility, and planning instruments that allow for the construction of high street fences and the protection of privacy from overlooking neighbours. These differences culminate
In the next chapter, I outline how belonging, and difference is grafted to the everchanging contours of diversification in the city (Ye 2017), making it a relevant to the study of superdiversity.
Suburban Bordering
The question is not whether there a need to ‘manage’ diversity, but rather how can we better understand the processes that govern the way diversity is experienced on the ground? Can this desire for demographic homogeneity result in too much cohesion that stifles diversity and lead to new forms of exclusion and segregation? What can a superdiversity lens reveal in the Australian context? Concepts of multiculturalism, social inclusion and social cohesion all have their practical limitations – they paint a picture of how social relations ‘ought to be’. It is not uncommon for governments and institutions to respond to these inherent tensions by managing difference – however, in the face of increasing complexity in diversity, many aspects of these policies are reverting to normative categorisations of race, ethnicity and citizenship to promote civility and social cohesion.
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Spencer and Charsley (2021) argue that policy discourse has not yet fully grasped the complexity of migration, leaving it unable to provide a consensus on how integration should be defined, let alone measured. The authors provide 5 core critiques on the current approaches to managing migration: normativity; negative objectification of migrants as ‘other’; outdated imaginaries of society; methodological nationalism; and a narrow focus on migrants in the factors shaping integration processes. There is no escape from the reality that rapidly changing demographics in cities is forcing researchers to reconsider how newcomers are sharing the same social and geographic space with other native and non-native majority populations. Howitt (2020) highlights that when groups are competing for the same resources;
in the social production of borders in superdiverse areas that are thought to be at odds with the normative suburban characteristics of a ‘normal Anglo-Australian community’.
[03] FrameworkResearch
as the analysis of social complexity is provided through a reductive strategy. In doing so, we return to what Meissner (2020) describes as the same juncture where migration and ethnic studies literature was marked by a ‘stalemate’ (the time when the superdiversity term was first conceived by Vertovec).
Dr. Fran Meissner has published a growing body of academic literature on superdiversity research examining: the need to go beyond the nature of migration origins and trajectories (2015); the role of post-migration social networks in describing diversity as relational and complexly configured through migrationrelated differentiations (2016); the social and economic implications arising from legal status differentiation (2018); convivial disintegration and the need to move beyond migrant integration (Meissner and Heil 2021), to name a few.
To place this in the Australian context, If we look closer at the work of Williams and Mikola (2018) which examined the potential implications of superdiversity on social work practice and service delivery in Melbourne, it was found that whilst superdiversity provided an interesting shift in refining service delivery, they offered “cautionary notes on the wholesale adoption of the superdiversity perspective, noting the significance of co-ethnic tracks in help-seeking behaviour” (Williams and Mikola 2018, 1). The findings could be understood as recapitulating the ethno-focal approach that the superdiversity lens aims to point us away to,
If this continues to be the status quo, then how will planners effectively respond to this need to consider and accommodation cultural differences that Sandercock (1998a) calls for, in an era of superdiversity? Can local city councils continue to build a community centre for each new community in the sprawling city? Even if services were adapted accordingly, how do we keep up with the metamorphosing nature of diversity? Ultimately, there is a need to move beyond seeking simple explanations and conclusions in superdiversity research (Meissner and Vertovec 2015; Vertovec 2017) “by emphasising simultaneity, emergent patterns, processes, and multidimensionality a superdiversity lens will always point to social configurations that cannot be summed up by simply adding up its constituent parts” (Meissner 2016, 26).
In superdiversity research, reverting to normative ethno-cultural categories is currently not the only research limitation in migration studies. This thesis takes the position of Meissner and Heil (2021) where they calls for theoretical and methodological innovations needed to allow superdiversity to engage with diversification processes using novel tools or data.
Understanding Relational Diversity
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Belonging could be understood to be an age-old, anthropological construct; the intrinsic human need and desire to belong to a particular group over time, serving primarily as a protective function (Allen et al. 2021). Belonging is fluid and relational process, a state of being that mobilises “place-belongingness” (Antonsich 2010; Yuval-Davis 2006) through constructed feelings of being ‘at home’. As such, the term is often straddled together with migrant well-being (Birka 2013, Da Costa et al. 2020, Decieux and Murdock 2021) and thus is used unequivocally as a positive term in community and social cohesion discourse. However, Birka claims that “within the integration discourse much of how belonging is understood and felt depends on others and political structures, that integration should be based on fostering a sense of belonging is a topic emphasised by prominent politicians and academics” (Birka, 2013, 10). As pragmatic as the term may be, belonging can become problematic if situations arise where groups are formed, and belonging is forged based on the exclusion of others (Allen 2020).
Politicising of the term risks evoking social cleavages based on essentialist concepts of the ‘collective’ delineated along social, political, and territorial demarcations that are applied and reproduced (Youkhana 2015). She suggest how this ‘methodological nationalism’ (Wimmer and Glick-Schiller 2006) - the naturalised concepts of belonging constructed by the nation-state, can be subverted by drawing “attention to the creative poetic acts within everyday practices and how they transgress dominant ideologies, political practices, and the politics of social boundary making” (Youkhana 2015, 11). However, when this is examined on the meso and micro-social scale, there is the risk that when an individual moves closer to one group by distancing themselves from another, “belonging can materialise in forms that satisfy the motivation to belong but threaten the healthy functioning of the individual and the cohesion of society” (Allen et al. 2021, 1134).
Re-defining Belonging
of Belonging’ and practices of ‘Homemaking’ with Superdiversity
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(Un)Belonging
The interactions between transnationalism, assimilation, diaspora, and racialisation are navigated in migrant lives through discursive and material practices, a reflexive process where actors craft their own ‘positioned belongings’ to circumnavigate exclusion and ‘in-betweenness’ (Brocket 2018). Rather than internalising the institutionalised stigmatisation of their difference and deviance as youths in Parisian banlieues, van de Wetering and Lucia (2020) observed that instead, youths employed a range of normalising strategies to actively exclude the stigmatisation of the banlieues from their self-identification, by defining what their neighbourhood meant to them – normalcy. The authors identified them as ‘passive victims’ that are subjected to a norm, that were provoked to rework the dominant understanding of what normalcy meant as a new reality for France, one that was “inclusive of their diverse, but shared banlieue identity” (van de Wetering and Lucia 2020, 303).
This reflects on the group level, the role of geographic and political stigmatism in mobilising such a diverse population, living together in diversity, to manoeuvre around social structures of society.
Belonging is a subjective experience, where its definition is simply not the inclusion of oneself in a particular social group, but also how one emotionally positions themselves in the society. It has the potential to be used as a “discursive resource that constructs, claims, justifies, or resists forms of socio-spatial inclusion/ exclusion” (Antonsich 2006, 644). Homemaking on the other hand, bridges some of the social and spatial aspects of belonging that evolves from feelings of connectedness, embeddedness, attachment, and fitting in. It is a field of research that connects belonging and place, revealing how it is both a relational and exclusionary endeavour when situated in wider urban environments, particularly in areas where there is an absence of a native majority (Massa and Boccagni 2021).
BridgingConcepts‘Sense
‘Sense of Belonging’
Blachnicka-Ciacek et al. (2020) points us towards how macro-level politics can enable anti-immigration sentiment and racialized discourses of non-belonging, portraying migrants as undeserving abusers of the welfare system in times of austerity. Specifically examining Poles and Lithuanians in the UK, they found that despite diversity enabling the formation and presence of ethnic communities over time, these minority groups simultaneously distanced themselves from new migrants, entrapping them in a process of drawing boundaries to distinguish them as ‘good’ and not ‘bad’ migrants (Blachnicka-Ciacek et al. 2020). Whilst national variations exist that shape institutionalised categories of and limits to belonging, “constructing boundaries of belonging is a social process in which perceptions and ascriptions of ‘us’ and ‘them’ are shaped” (Pries 2013, 186), illustrating the persistent need for migrants to prove their own deservingness and worthiness to society.
Whilst theories of transnationalism and bi-cultural identity describe to a limited extent how individuals reconcile their different cultural belongings, they have not yet provided clear explanations for the underlying processes of how individuals actually develop their sense of belonging in the receiving context (Albert and Barros, 2021).
Revealing how interlocutors ‘struggle for normality’, superdiversity can be also used “to challenge and change negative representations of marginal urban areas and populations” (Mass and Boccagni 2021, 21). When explored in combination, they provide a more subjective reference point in which we can meaningfully and coherently engage with context-sensitive conceptions of superdiversity through longitudinal framing of the receiving context (Australia), migrant acculturation, (navigating) ethnic-cultural differences, (representations of the) country of origin and (the significance of) transnational connections.
We must also consider the two concepts being closely related to the ‘politics of identity’ (Berg and Sigona, 2013), where migrants must rework existing and hegemonic normativity, illustrating how differences in migrant life trajectories and contexts can give rise to ‘stratifications of experience’ (Mijic 2022) and differentiated outcomes of identity reconstruction and belonging. Bridging ‘sense of belonging’ and ‘homemaking’ with superdiversity thus provides us with the potential to capture and critique some of the arising complexity and multiplicity in urban diversity, in a way which identity theory has not yet been able to ‘conceptually unpack’ how individuals relate to collective groups (Jones and Kryzanowski 2011).
Fathi (2021) analyses scholarly contributions to the topic of ‘home’ in migration studies, providing a critical reflection on how academic scholarship has shifted towards the term as a process that is situated and intersectional, rather than a status. Fathi points to the expansive use of the term as a subject of study across multiple disciplines such as arts, humanities, urban studies, architecture, history, geography, and archaeology, highlighting the centrality of the concept within our everyday lives.
Measuring diversity through the multiple axes of difference and how they interact with each other is a methodological challenge, and I do not attempt to presume which differences would be socially significant for any given individual, nor do I expect a singular definitive response. Rather, I borrow from Berg et al. (2019),
The processes of ‘homemaking’ in migration studies arises from the notion that ‘home’ is a lived experience of place, rather than the domestic space of the current or past. It is particularly relevant in the context of superdiversity, as it opens up how individuals, together with groups, articulate their identity and sense of belonging through struggles of how it is emplaced in their everyday lives (Boccagni 2022).
It is a social, cultural and place-bound process, where tensions can arise from the conditions of displacement, “whether this be forced, chosen or the result of changing climates, landscapes, global geopolitical and economic conditions or population demographics” (Beeckmans et al. 2022, 11), showing us the potential of understanding how displace (i.e. migration) “intrinsically relates to the shaping of the built environment… [an area that] remains underexplored in existing literature” (Beeckmans et al. 2022, 14-15).
Accordingly, if the processes of homemaking enable conditions that are conducive to a sense of belonging and recognition, then we must examine how ‘home’ emerges from the existing social and built environment, as well as how are the individual and the context reflexively impacted by these reciprocal processes. Is their presence legitimate in the eyes of established groups, where they can substantiate their belonging and attachment to the place? Fathi (2021) provides a reading into the term that that it is distinct from the physical act of constructing a home, though it does include embodied practices in the domestic setting, placing it within a temporal perspective, where home is no longer the idea of the ‘homeland’ as the primary identifier in homemaking practices, but consists rather of the emotional attachments and complex entanglements in relation to places, people, objects, and relationships (Fathi 2021, 980), elements of being spatialised in the now.
[04] Methodology
I draw ethnographic data from a small group of interlocutors and the choice to sample an ethnically diverse group of interlocutors, rather than focus on a collective or single-ethnic group, was motivated by the descriptive potential of super-diversity, that could enable comparative analysis of how structural and biographical variables inform belonging and homemaking practices in migrants beyond the ethno-focal lens. It casts light on how different urban cleavages are experienced spatially on the individual level, moving away from census data and statistically informed measures, underlining the need to cast a superdiversity lens over the social processes that determine migrant residential segregation or concentration, and consequently how that impacts on social cohesion.
In recent years, there has been a call to shift away from inter-group relations when examining how diversity is dealt with in the neighbourhood and moving towards examining individual differences (Cianetti 2020). However, there is still a limited understanding of how individual attributes impact on the way ethnic diversity is perceived and accepted in society. According to Decieux and Murdock (2021), current evidence that examines the role of individual mentalities as determinants of the strength of social cohesion in society remains varied, however it is generally understood that there exists a “complex relationships between the cultural characteristics of the target country and the factors related to an emotional settlement in differing cultural contexts” (Decieux and Murdock 2021, 283). Therefore, to gain a wider appreciation of the processes of change on social cohesion at a macro level, closer examination of the relationship between emotions, attitudes, and behaviours of individuals and how they are embedded within the social environment is required.
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Open Categories
who examine the “how, what, when, where, why, and for whom differences are produced, made socially significant, experienced, and represented” (Berg et al. 2019, 2724). By operationalising the concepts of ‘sense of belonging’ and ‘homemaking’ composing the conceptual framework, I circumvent crude raceethnic categorisations, ensuring that categorical representation of their identity was not imposed upon them, but rather opened the space for the categories of difference to emerge naturally from individual accounts (Meissner and Vertovec 2015).
Use of Ethnography
If we situate these conceptualisations of home against Hage’s anthropological theorisation (1997) that migrants rely on four key ‘feelings' in the process of affective home-making: that the (new) place must offer a sense of security, a community in which to ‘belong’ to, familiarity and a sense of opportunity for social advancement, then can we being to merge the embodied experiences of migrant with both spatial and “material practices of home-making that are focused in the present and immediate locations” (Fathi 2021, 980). Home as such, is always anchored within a particular time space, “an exercise that articulates one’s shifting priorities in evoking the dear ones, the materiality of place which offers everyday protection, the possibility to exert control on it, and one’s own roots” (Boccagni et al. 2021, 20). Drawing upon the work of Bourdieu’s theorisation of habitus, Hage describes how ability to feel at home is largely affected by the familiarity of the space that one occupies - it is a space whereby the individual can maximise their bodily disposition and exert control within that space. In short, home is the entanglement of moving and making a home.
‘Home’ and ‘Home-Making’
Interlocutor Sample Choice
Thus, by uncovering some of the historical and socio-cultural determinants in the interrogation of home and homemaking in the study of migration, are we able to “illuminate how understandings of the ‘reality’ of home and the aspirations and ‘imaginations’ associated with it, are in fact situated understandings (e.g., how one understands, feels, and enacts home is deeply rooted in the intersection of ethnicity, gender, class, sexuality dis/ability, etc.)” (Fathi 2021, 980). Homemaking therefore is not an entirely individual construct but is rather predicated on "an aggregate and societal dimension, particularly whenever it unfolds in the public domain, which lies at the core of research on superdiversity” (Boccagni 2022).
4.3 Individual perceptions of diversity
Limitations
At the beginning of each interview lasting between 1-2 hours each, I outlined the aim of the research and stated my hypothesis and positionality on the subject. I pointed out the general structure of the interview - that it was composed in two sections. However, I ensured that the approach to the interview was rather informal and flexible, encouraging them to explore or raise issues in more detail in areas they felt more personally relevant to them.
Owing to multiple constraints arising from the COVID-19 pandemic (travel restrictions to Australia and a condensed thesis course structure) interviews with my interlocutors were conducted exclusively online, where I rely on my intimate knowledge of Melbourne as a local and ‘native’ to navigate my interlocutors accounts. Though ethnographic fieldwork by shadowing my interlocutors and observing interactions within the course of their daily lives would have enrichened the study (and accounted for variations in individual interpretations of topics), the core of this thesis was to engage with superdiversity to “reflect and trace those dynamics of how migration-driven diversity comes to matter in time and place” (Meissner 2020, 12). Ethnographic accounts are therefore used not to indicate ‘more diversity’ and how individuals are different from one another, but to illustrate relational diversity (Meissner 2016) and how migration-related aspects can reshape and condition how we interpret difference.
In this first frame, I situate my interlocutors in the context of metropolitan Melbourne by asking them to reflect on the factors contributed to their decision to reside where they do. It is expected that economic reasons will be the primary driver for housing choice, given the ongoing Melbourne’s ‘affordable housing crisis’ (Urban Reform Institute 2022). What are some of the positive aspects of their surroundings? If an interlocutor reports negative aspects, what are the factors that are limiting their mobility to another area of preference?
Four Frames of Inquiry (Interview Questions)
In the second frame, I ask my interlocutors to provide an account of their activities and weekly routines, and with who are they engaging with? Are these egocentric networks homogenous, are they with ‘close’ friends or with acquaintances? How does length of stay affect these networks and are they concentrated in the vicinity of their residence or dispersed across the city? Wessendorf and Phillimore (2019) suggests that migrant embeddedness is only truly supported by “a combination of serendipitous encounters, crucial acquaintances and more enduring friendships with other migrants, co-ethnics and members of the majority population” (Wessendorf and Phillimore 2019, 123).
Semi-Structured Interviews
gender, age, sexuality, class, education and so forth, as indicated above in the study limitations and interlocutor sampling. Secondly, my own personal, and ongoing experience of emigrating away from Australia makes myself a research subject and may unconsciously influence the way my research knowledge is reproduced. However, I operationalise my reflexivity as both a family, and a high-skilled migrant as a tool to understand migrant motivations.
I expect that being an Australian-born person of colour, with a family history of migration and first-hand experience of growing up with multiculturalism in Australia will position myself as an ‘insider’ and provide an element of trust between my interlocutors. At the same time, I acknowledge that firstly, my positionality as researcher may be affected by my own personal biographical dimensions –
My interlocutors were recruited directly, or via a personal network of friends and acquaintances in Australia, and subsequently using a ‘snowballing’ method to ensure that a diverse participant group for comparative analysis.
In the third frame, we then open the discussion to how the interlocutor perceives diversity in their neighbourhood and across Melbourne as a whole. Do they perceive diversity as a positive or negative attribute, and how has this changed over time? How important is the representation of diversity in their community, and conversely, what are the impacts of community behaviours or narratives portrayed through mainstream media (both local, national, and international)?
In the final frame, I begin by asking my interlocutors what ‘neighbourhood’ means to them, before asking them to define what they perceive to be the boundaries of their ‘neighbourhood’. Is it a construct that they can relate to at all? Do individuals relate to the term in an affective construct or is it simply interpreted as a materially or spatially bound area in the vicinity of their house (physical home)?
Though excluding asylum seekers and refugees from my research group may yield some ‘blind spots’, the decision to do so was based on not only difficulties in finding suitable interlocutors, but I take the position that it constitutes an entirely separate (but very much related) body of work that goes well beyond what could be reasonably captured in this thesis. Furthermore, in Australia, humanitarian visas represent only a fraction (5.85%) of the total migrant intake, and form part of a very different and distinct policy setting in Australia, with a focus on regional settlement in non-metropolitan areas (Carrington and Marshall 2008). It is not to state that this numerical fact is an oversight and diminishes the relevance of this cohort, but I also contend that it is not specifically the individuals that I am investigating, but rather how my methodological approach could be applied to other ‘groups’ or scaled up to meso- and macro levels. To cover these ‘blind spots’, I suggest that examining superdiversity through practices of homemaking (Boccagni 2022) will show how individual agency is differentiated between relational groups, leaving the door open to draw parallels with some of the contemporary discourses on humanitarian and forced migrants, but also reflect how Aboriginal communities, despite being the natives, are also “outliers and represent a special case, important to acknowledge and consider, though the product of very different historical circumstances” (O’Donnell and Evans 2020, 18).
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4.1 Housing choice and residential (im-)mobility
Insider status & reflexivity
4.2 Composition of social networks, routines, and activities.
4.4 Establishing their perceived boundaries of ‘neighbourhood’
Mapping
I expect discrepancies will arise between individual accounts owing to certain social and territorial markers, presence/absence of low-threshold social infrastructure in the vicinity of home, and the level of mobility (not limited only to transport, but to migrant trajectories). I also anticipate that most interlocutors will have dispersed lives due to the urban and economical restructuring of the cities, coupled by a dispersion of services and increased mobility, meaning most individuals are less reliant on their local surrounds for their daily activities. This will provide some critique on whether the neighbourhood is an optimal spatial scale at all for studying diversity, though I expect that other biographic determinants may surface that suggests the need to consider the neighbourhood from the perspective of social
Data Analysis
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In the second half of the interview (frames 4.3 and 4.4), I dive deeper into the affective constructs of homemaking and discuss individual perceptions of diversity. I seek to understand how do social relations (non-enduring friendships or limited to specific contexts) with other members of the community act as a practical and emotional resource, and where do they often take place? Are these crucial in developing deeper connections to the local community and generating a stronger sense of belonging? Here, I attempt to understand how diversity is transcribed in the migrant experience through ‘fleeting everyday encounters’ in social interactions
The first half (frames 4.1 and 4.2) of the interview was to enable the interlocutor and opportunity to provide biographical information, an account of their migration journey to date and their post-settlement experiences in Melbourne. Here, I intentionally do not make any specific references to urban diversity, using these questions to potentially reveal to what extent are positive and negative daily experiences and attributes of the neighbourhood were correlated to issues of diversity? For example, the salience of ethnic co-presence has been shown to strongly influence location choices of family migrants on the suburban level, whilst skilled migrants respond to employment opportunities on a regional level (Laukova et al. 2022).
An account of their activities and weekly routines will enable me to undertake a visual mapping exercise which spatialises a personal constellation for each interlocutor, illustrating how social networks and activities co-situated are situated across the city. Doing so allows me to understand the relevance of the neighbourhood scale for each individual and to what extent are these social relations linked to local community groups or social infrastructure, and whether there are other social groups to which they belong that take place elsewhere in the city? Are there any hidden underlying historical, institutional, social, or cultural barriers? In drawing these connections, I examine how these relationships to various groups may shape the individual’s homemaking and sense of place-attachment; safety and self-identification; and mental health well-being.
with neighbours and strangers, and how they may differ in their immediate surrounds and across the city. Measuring the qualities and characteristics of the neighbourhood, with a backdrop of diversity, reveals partially the racial and ethnic composition of the area that may lead to an understanding or residential patterns and migrant hosing mobility.
individual perceptions of neighbourhood, and understanding the composition of their personal constellations, I situate ‘sense of belonging’ and ‘homemaking’ within a spatial scale that moves beyond administrative boundaries as a potential unit of measurement, calling for an examination how the emergence of super-diversity plays out in differentiated forms of social integration, embeddedness, and perceived sense of belonging within the city.
Byisolation.interrogating
The use of mapping could be used as a heuristic tool to visualise the qualitative data collected from the interlocutors, connecting the three dimensions of social structures, affective belonging, and place/urban space (geographical). At the same time, it provides a visual indication of the spatial distribution of movement, activities and spaces that are made more exclusive owing to security, familiarity, and control. Tracing the way in which individuals reconfigure their experience of the city reflected through the superdiversity dimensions (gender, race, ethnicity, class, age, sexual orientation, etc.), reveals also how the city limits of excludes the individual’s comfort or participation. The dynamism between mobility and ‘place’ thus shows how the city can condition and reconfigure one’s experience of home, and helps us “avoid reinforcing binary relationships, for example, between empowered and disempowered, legitimate and unauthorised, allowing them instead to be viewed as embracing multiplicity and diversity” (Beeckmans et al. 2022, 24).
[05] FindingsResearch
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In 2013 shortly after graduating from medical school, Farana married her Bangladesh-Australian husband in a religious wedding in Bangladesh, who at that time, was already living in Australia since 2006, coming to Melbourne initially for study. After awaiting for and receiving a family reunification visa for Australia, Farana moved to Melbourne in 2014, settling first in Fawker for a brief period before moving to Werribee, where she found it be a “nice place, and as Muslim people, we were looking for the Halal thing, and there are mosques here”. When she settled in Werribee, she found the other residents in “Werribee they are mostly old, white people living there. It’s an old suburb as I found it. Surrounding my neighbourhood, I found mostly single old women, or man is living. Some are from India, some from Pakistan, many from China. So, I found it to have diversity. I’d say 60-40”. However, she mentioned she was often mistaken as being ethnically Indian - “after moving to Australia, initially I knew nothing of Australia, at that time many people would see me and saying you are Indian, I was not happy to hear that. I asked my ex-partner, why are they saying me Indian? Then my husband said that, yeah here people from Bangladesh, they are also addressing us as Indian”.
Whilst her prior socialising was generally with other Bangladeshi friends of her husband, “I used to know society through him, I came to Australia on a spouse
After separating from her husband, and also being asked to vacate her rental property by her then landlord, she found another rental property in Truganina with her two son (7) and daughter (2). “In Werribee, we are so much welcoming, so much nicely greeting people. But here [in Truganina] I found the people are not nice or welcoming actually”. “What I found here in Truganina, is almost all of the Indians are living here. India. My right side is India, my left side is India, my front is India, my back is India, India, India. I will tell you know, after moving to Truganina, I found it really negative that I’m just only surrounded only by India people, just one community. I’m not positive about that part; I want to be in an area truly surrounded by diversity”.
visa, so I socialised with the friends of his, or their wives and his extended family”, however after separating with him last year she no longer has social contact with them. Being a full-time mother as well as “studying 12 hours a day”, leaves no time for Farana to socialise, and extend her limited network. “I’m always staying home, that’s another limitation to make new friends, to make a new circle, to get to know the Australian work environment, and culture”. She expresses the desire to meet new, non-co-ethnic friends, however after moving to Truganina, she has found it difficult to maintain contact with some other friends she made earlier in Werribee.
Farana Arriving(33/f)from Bangladesh
52 53 REGIONALVICTORIA PORT BAYPHILLIP A 10964321578111213 109643258111213 B C D E F G H J K L M N O P A B C D E F G H J K L M N O P X X X X XX X X MosqueAl-TaqwaLocalHomeTruganinaParkCommunityQuantinMelbourneMosqueBinnahCentreWestgrovePrimarySchool HalalWerribeeShopsWerribeeRental RentalFawkner EastTruganinaPrimarySchool 5km 10km
“I have limited friends, and most live in Werribee. I used to hang out with them, they have the kids too, so it was easier for me and my kids to be involved with their kids. Here, in the new neighbourhood, I interacted with one of my son’s friends, they live in the adjacent lane. They are also from India. I went to the park and interacted with many new people, but they are not my friends, it’s just random interaction”.
Figure 5.1. Farana's interview mapping in relation to Metropolitan Melbourne
Quoc described their life in Wellington as difficult – “we didn’t have the support of a big Vietnamese community; it was tough, and we didn’t have much money either. At work Ha would pack me a tiffin box for lunch every day, but at the lunchroom, the white people would say that my food stunk, and that this table was only for white people”. It was only after enduring long-term harassment and racial taunting at work, Quoc finally heeded the suggestion of his brother to come to Melbourne and live with him where there was a “big and strong Vietnamese community”. Persuaded by his brother and enamoured by his visit to Melbourne, Quoc decided to relocate first, finding a rental home in Keysborough not far from where his brother was living in nearby Springvale, where a concentration of Vietnamese community settled through migrant hostels from the late 1970s onwards, and secured a job before Ha followed shortly thereafter.
REGIONALVICTORIA PORT BAYPHILLIP A 10964321578111213 109643258111213 B C D E F G H J K L M N O P A B C D E F G H J K L M N O P Δ Δ Δ Δ BuddhistTempleQuoc’sBrotherDoctorKeysboroughRentalHa’sWork WorkQuoc’sLynbrookHome Groceries 5km 10km
Quoc and Ha arrived in Australia in 2005 on New Zealand passports, two countries who have shared longer-term Trans-Tasman relations and open travel arrangements. According to the 2021 Census, New Zealand is the ranked 4th in the list of (foreign) countries of birth for Australian residents (ABS 2022). However, Quoc and Ha’s migration journey did not originate in New Zealand, but rather at the end of the 1970’s when they fled Vietnam by boat following the end of the Vietnam War. Arriving in a refugee camp in the Malaysia, where they spent over a year for international humanitarian processing, they were subsequently assigned refugee status in New Zealand. Though Ha was able to reunite in New Zealand with other extended family members fleeing Vietnam, Quoc’s brother (and only sibling who fled Vietnam) settled in Melbourne. In Wellington, they went on to have two daughters and raised the family in what they recalled was a “very small Vietnamese community” in Wellington.
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Arriving from New Zealand
Ha (65/f) & Quoc (65/m)
They are now residing in the small suburb of Lynbrook further out from Keysborough and Springvale, after purchasing a detached house in a housing estate not far from Dandenong where they used to work. Quoc was forced to leave his job as a welder in nearby Dandenong due to long-term health issues and Ha lost her job recently due to the closure of the company. Being both unemployed, Ha and Quoc rely on financial support from their daughter Mai, as they are ineligible for disability pension, unemployment benefits and housing assistance from the Australia government due to their New Zealand passports.
Figure 5.2. Ha and Quoc's interview mapping in relation to Metropolitan Melbourne
56 57 REGIONALVICTORIA PORT BAYPHILLIP A 10964321578111213 109643258111213 B C D E F G H J K L M N O P A B C D E F G H J K L M N O P * * * Home WorkPreviousWork *MSAC 5km 10km
Figure 5.3. Julie's interview mapping in relation to Metropolitan Melbourne
Julie Arriving(33f)from Tokyo, Japan
Julie first arrived in Australia in 2009 from Belgium on a working holiday visa shortly after graduating from university. After a brief time travelling the country, she settled in Melbourne where she found herself a job as a graduate architect in a small firm located in the city centre. At the end of her one-year visa, her employer offered to sponsor her for a skilled-work temporary visa, to enable her to remain in Australia and continue working on projects with the office. However, after a few months on a bridging visa, she was notified by the Department of Home Affairs that the application was unsuccessful, as the office did not meet the requirements for
Returningsponsorship.toBelgium
briefly and then onwards to Japan, Julie kept in close contact with her employers whilst away. In 2014, she decided to apply for a work visa to return to Australia, and was able to obtain a skilled-worker permanent visa, returning at the end of 2014 to her previous employer. Rather than moving back into the previous suburb of South Melbourne where she lived last, she decided on a rental property to the west of the city in Flemington, as rent prices had increased significantly in the inner-south in the years. She remains living in Flemington, though she returns weekly to the area to go swimming at the Olympic pool. Last year, she moved on from her previous office to a larger office in the inner-eastern suburb, increasing her daily commute by bike from 15 minutes to 35 minutes. After 5 years living and working in Australia, she was able to obtain Australian citizenship.
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Figure 5.4. Mai's interview mapping in relation to Metropolitan Melbourne
58 59 REGIONALVICTORIA PORT BAYPHILLIP A 10964321578111213 109643258111213 B C D E F G H J K L M N O P A B C D E F G H J K L M N O P # # # # ### # # ParentsJosh’s ParentsMai’s HomeRentalArmadaleGlenIrisParkCarnegiePSGESAC Springvale Work 5km 10km
Mai moved to Melbourne in 2006 on her New Zealand passport for work. After graduating from university in Wellington and unable to find a job, she decided to apply for graduate positions as an urban planner in Melbourne where her parents Ha and Quoc had recently moved to. After successfully receiving a job offer in Melbourne CBD, Mai relocated to Australia and moved into a rental apartment in inner-city Armadale. After meeting her Australian husband Josh, they purchased a house together in Carnegie where they now live with their two children Jasmin (13) and Kobi (10).
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Mai Arriving(39/f)from New Zealand
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60 61 REGIONALVICTORIA PORT BAYPHILLIP A 10964321578111213 109643258111213 B C D E F G H J K L M N O P A B C D E F G H J K L M N O P HSMelbourneVolleyball O O O VolleyballManningham VolleyballSpikers Club O O Clyde NorthHome WorkNino’s RentalElwood O O OTrainCranbourneCory’sWorkStation 5km 10km
Nino Arriving(42/m)from Abu Dhabi
Figure 5.5. Nino and Cory's interview mapping in relation to Metropolitan Melbourne
Nino left the Philippines when he was 27, moving to the Middle East to work on international finance projects as an accountant. Due to the contractual nature of the projects and unsecured line of work, Nino decided to apply for a permanent visa under the skilled-worker stream in Australia – a process which took almost two years, requiring several reassessments of his qualifications. In 2012, he finally moved to Melbourne, only finding an entry level job after 2.5 months of job seeking due to the lack of his local experience. Wanting to advance his career and return to a mid to senior level position which he held in the Abu Dhabi prior to relocating, Nino decided to undertake a 3-year certified public accountant accreditation and an MBA programme, now working as an accountant manager.
At the time, Nino and Cory had already been living together for some months in Elwood and decided to apply for a partner visa that would enable Cory to remain in Australia as a partner of Nino, however had not yet met the 12-month threshold for established relationships. Instead, they took an extended break to the Philippines, and Cory returned to Australia on a holiday visa entitling him to a stay of 3 months, however this time with no access to employment. After applying for a partner visa, Cory was automatically placed on a bridging visa, providing him temporary residency and access to employment until a decision was made.
Cory Arriving(38/m)from California
Nino and Cory met each other on a Melbourne tram, and they have been married since 2017, living together in the south-east suburb of Clyde North. Both obtained Australian citizenship in 2017 and 2020 respectively, however Nino lost his Filipino passport upon receipt of a foreign passport, in accordance with Filipino law.
Cory is originally from Colorado, United States, however spent many years travelling and working through the United States. In 2013, he heard about Australia’s working holiday programme, entitling foreign nationals under the age of 31 to stay in Australia for a maximum of 1 year to travel and work, moving to Melbourne in the same year. After his arrival, he had access to employment, however with the restriction that no job could be longer than 6 months. After working several casual jobs, he found himself a long-term contract as a shop clerk. Towards the end of his visa, he unsuccessfully requested his employer to sponsor him for a longer-stay visa.
Romina (42/f) and Mattia (42/m) Arriving from Switzerland
62 63 REGIONALVICTORIA PORT BAYPHILLIP A 10964321578111213 109643258111213 B C D E F G H J K L M N O P A B C D E F G H J K L M N O P + + + + + + + + +DannyNICA+ IVF Clinic Lygon St Work HomeSorrento TrainFrankstonStation ClubTennis RentalRichmond +WOSPWoodworkers 5km 10km
Though Romina and Mattia both resided and worked in Zurich for 5 years, they both expressed the desire to return to Australia, and that opportunity came about in 2017, when both were not content with their lifestyles in Switzerland, Mattia decided to apply for and successfully received a skilled-worker permanent visa for Australia. Together, they returned to Melbourne in 2018, settling first in Richmond, not far from their previous house in Hawthorn. In 2020, during the first COVID-19 pandemic, they purchased a house at the edge of Metropolitan Melbourne in Sorrento, at the tip of Mornington Peninsula on the mouth of Port Phillip Bay, spurred on by the flexibility of being able to work remotely. As the decision to relocate was primarily that of Romina's, who desperately sought a tree and sea change away from the city, Mattia concurrently kept their Richmond rental "just in case things didn't work out in Sorrento", but primarily as lodging for the days he made the journey into the city for work. Today, Mattia continues to run his own business and works as an independent consultant in IT security, whilst Romina is making time for her woodworking hobbies in between establishing a small drafting business.
Figure 5.6. Romina and Mattia's interview mapping in relation to Metropolitan Melbourne
Romina and Mattia first arrived in Australia in 2009 on a working holiday visa from Northern Italy, moving to Perth where Romina secured a job as a graduate architect. Due to the instability of the economy at the time, Romina lost her job in the same year, and they both decided to move to Melbourne, settling in the innercity suburb of Hawthorn where Mattia obtained a research position at the nearby Swinburne University. As Mattia held a skilled-worker temporary visa, Romina was entitled to unrestricted employment as an accompanying spouse, finding herself a job shortly thereafter in the Melbourne CBD. At the end of 2013, upon completion of Mattia’s research project, with no options for continuing or vacant positions to fill, his visa was automatically terminated by the Australian Government, forcing them both to leave Melbourne. Prior to leaving, Mattia was able to secure a job in his field of research in Zurich.
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older, and with the possibility for Mattia to work remotely from his job in Melbourne CBD, the natural environment in Sorrento offers them with the familiarity of their hometown but still with the seclusion they sought earlier on –“okay it’s not Dolomites, but it’s good enough, I mean we have parks and forest all around us, and there is a beach 10 minutes either side of us” (Mattia). In Sorrento, they are acquainted with their neighbours, but the situation is somewhat different – “we know the Russian woman next work, but all the other houses around us are holiday houses, so there aren’t usually people around us” (Romina).
For Nino and Cory, the typical characteristics of a sprawling Australian suburb also came to the fore, but in different ways to Mattia and Romina. Cory was attracted to the ‘suburbaness’ of the Clyde North, as the urban structure of the suburbs and its
Farana continues to wear her religious dress as a wilful subject to satisfy her basic need of fostering a homely space, despite these accounts of her inability to freely wear her religious dress in public without harmful threatening otherness (Hage 1997). Public perception of what is normal and acceptable, in terms of attire, is beyond her power and prevents her from accessing a deeper sense of security, as “recent fears against Islamic religion and Muslims (known as Islamophobia) in popular discourse might have generated further hostility and prejudice between the majority and some minority groups especially Pakistanis and Bangladeshis” (Wang and Ramsden 2018, 14). It also reflects how for many Muslim women like Farana, wearing a headscarf is often seen as a sign of hostility and oppression, religious propaganda, and a symbol of refusal to integrate, but at the same time can become a site of individual struggle and belonging that indicates a women’s lack of agency (Phoenix 2017).
row of detached houses and wide streets closely resembled what he had grown up with in Colorado – “my only requirement was that it had to have a backyard, it’s not as big as what I had when I was young, but it’s big enough”. Nino on the other hand, struggled with “the lack of a community feel” in the suburbs, having grown up in the Philippines where everything was shared and daily contact with others was a normal part of day to day living. Over time though, he has come to accept his new environs as a new, future reality of his life – “I feel much more at home now, but maybe more because of what our home means to me now, it’s something Cory and I built up together, it’s my new life in Australia, but with Cory” (Nino).
Homemaking and belonging – new challenges for urban planning in the era of superdiversity.
Mattia and Romina, when they first moved to Australia, were attracted by the scale of Melbourne and better job opportunities that it afforded over their small rural towns in Italy. For them, it was the (un)familiarity of the city – “back in our hometowns, everyone knew everyone. They would know what you were going to do tomorrow even before you did, so I didn’t like that aspect of home, the gossiping and everything” (Mattia). It was the unremarkableness of their difference in their neighbourhood that provided them with the ‘privateness’ that the typical Australian suburb offered – “we didn’t really know our neighbours in Richmond, people just live their lives and come and go, I mean, you say hi to each other, but that’s about it”
Now(Romina).slightly
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A sense of familiarity fits within Bourdieu’s theory of habitus, where a person can deploy maximum disposition of their body (or mind) within a particular spatial setting (Hage 1997). It is thus relevant to the study of migrants and urban diversity as it relates to feelings, claims, and practices beyond the domestic setting, illuminating a sociological understanding of how minorities interact with majorities within shifting boundaries of public and private (Boccagni and Duyvendak 2021, 10). Between my interlocutors, a sense of familiarity with their new surroundings was derived across various sources - for some it was spatial, whilst for others it was social and certain factors shifted in relevance or significance over time.
For Mai, her decision to purchase a house in Carnegie was what she saw as a ‘compromise’ between her and her husband Josh – “We couldn’t’ afford Armadale, but I still wanted to be on the same train line, because Springvale and my parents are on the same line” (Mai). On the other hand, for Josh it was a combination of living close to his parents in Camberwell, but also the familiarity of “growing up in the inner suburbs, where you could have your own house and just walk down to the shops, where there is the butcher and grocer”.
Whilst Mattia, Romina, Nino and Cory spoke affectively about attachments to their rural and suburban living environments, Farana was the only interlocutor who did not spatialise her bodily disposition, but rather spoke of her decision to continue wearing a hijab (an Islamic head covering worn by Muslim women) in Australia. However, this decision to wear the hijab has also been met with experiences of racial discrimination – “I always saw this white woman at the school when I went to collect my son. She always had eye contact with me, but that eye contact was not positive, always negative. At first, I didn’t know, I always waved and said hello, but she never responded, ever”. Farana’s negative experiences transcended the public space, recounting how she also feels discriminated against when receiving services – “in the queue, before me, if there is a white one, they are talking very nicely, very friendly, very smiley face, but when I am going in front, I found it that when I greet them very nicely with a smiley face, but they are not showing that much friendly face to me”.
Familiarity
on the other hand, moved to Australia for family reasons, but integrated instead into a co-ethnic Bangladeshi network based on existing connections developed by her (1st generation) Australian-Bangladeshi ex-husband who had moved to Australia earlier on a student visa. Despite expressing always having a desire to search out inter-cultural connections, “I feel totally comfortable there [in Werribee], I want to be in diversity. I don’t want to be in my own community, it’s
a good opportunity to explore diversity, by living surrounding by it actually”, she did not develop many personal friends outside of those from her husband as she was “always busy looking after the kids and didn’t have any time for it”. Now, much of her socialising revolves around activities based on her children, where she relies on chance encounters with other people at local parks, the indoor play centre, the library, shopping mall and at the school of her son. For example, at the local shopping mall “I can do the shopping, the groceries, and they have playgrounds so the children can play too”, just like the local park in Truganina where she “interacted with many new people, but they are not my friends, it’s just random interactions”.
Nino describes the time where Spikers organised a cigarette butt collection day with the City of Port Phillip and assisted in counting them as part of a clean streets campaign, or the BBQs that are organised a few times in the year outside the local Bunnings store (an Australian hardware store chain with almost 400 stores across the nation). The Bunnings sausage sizzle is an iconic part of Australian community supported by the business and takes place every Sunday as a way for local community groups, non for profits and charities to raise funds, as well as build awareness of their organisation – for many Australians, it is consider unAustralian to visit the store without purchasing a sausage on white bread.
(Easthope et al. 2018), as we have seen in the case of Ha and Quoc who live some 20km away from the Vietnamese community in Springvale.
For Mai specifically, she has developed a social network of friends and acquaintances arising from her involvement in the school community that her two children attend, where she regularly helps with fundraising events. In Carnegie, she finds that there is a ‘good mix’ of diversity represented by the diverse mix of kids. Through this participation with other parents and the building of social capital, she has formed a support network for herself that she is able to call upon when in need – “I can ask other parents to look after the kids for a few hours if I’m held up at work”. The experience of conviviality in the school environs experienced by Mai, but contrasted by Farana above suggests that the ‘ethos of inclusion’ that Berg et al. (2019) speak of, may be more based on discursive practices rather than institutionalised across all schools, and that we need to look deeper into widening participation to achieve an ‘ethos of mixing’ (Wessendorf 2013).
For Julie, the situation was slightly different to that of Mattia and Romina, as there is no distinct Belgian community existing in Australia owing to a relatively low cohort migrating there, making her what Wessendorf (2018) defines as being a ‘pioneer migrant’. Instead, she draws upon a diverse network of social connections through her workplace, a group of people who she describes as being a “bunch of expats who hang out together because we work too much and don’t’ have kids to go home to”, referring to how most of her colleagues are skilled-migrant employees living in Melbourne. Though arrived in Australia with different legal status and migrated to Australia for different reasons, they have bonded together over their ‘institutionalised cultural capital’ of professional knowledge and skills as architects, formal tertiary education and knowledge of the majority language (Wessendorf Farana2018).
She describes how in Werribee, she found the diversity mix to be “50-50, I found that most of the white people, the older people, they were so nicely interactive to the strangers, to the unknown people, whilst we were pedestrians. Here it is only Indians, we can smile at each other, but we don’t feel like talking to each other. It’s the opposite”. Whilst this account contrasts to her experience at the school gates with another ‘white woman’, it shows how Farana’s affinity with Werribee as a long-standing diverse area made it easier for her to settle and develop a sense of belonging as a visibly different migrant (Pemberton and Phillimore 2016), and now she feels somewhat displaced in a newly developed housing area dominated by what she perceives as one single ethnic group of ethnic Indians.
Forming connections (A Community in Which to Belong)
Whilst their ‘home’ base is located in the inner suburb of Collingwood, at the public high school sports hall where members gather on Sunday for training sessions, most members participate together in other weekly organised social competitions that take place across the city in other schools and sports venues. For Nino (and now Cory too), “one of the best parts of Spikers is the feeling of inclusion, whatever age you are, skill level, nationality, ethnicity or cultural background, straight, gay, trans, everyone’s welcome” (Nino). Not only have they both improved their volleyball skills and kept physically healthy, but participation in team competitions and fundraising events have bought them sense of belonging and “comradery” with other club members, as well as engaging with the wider communities.
Melbourne, an aspect which was not present in their lives back in their hometowns, nor in Zurich where they had lived previously. In fact, they both admitted that their experience of social exclusion based on discriminatory practices by native Swiss residents towards foreigners as a motive to pursue (again) a ‘new life’ in Australia. Their Australian and Swiss experiences show how “cultural diversity increases regional attractiveness [whilst] on the other hand, cultural distance greatly weakens regional attractiveness” (Wang et al. 2016, 176). In Melbourne, they draw upon a network of long-term friends established through their respective workplaces during an earlier stay in Australia before moving to Zurich, as well as an Italian friend named ‘Danny’, which they met through a mutual connection from their Italian hometown. After Danny moved to Melbourne, they began to socialise and formed a friendship through which they could also share social capital, where they house share between the city centre and Sorrento.
Mattia and Romina on the other hand, do not intentionally seek out co-ethnic relationships with other Italians, as they appreciated the multicultural diversity of
Her return trips to Werribee are dependent on a bus journey of 1 hour with 1 interchange in between, despite the car journey taking only 18 minutes, as she does not know how to drive. Prior to separating from her husband, “we drove to other places in Melbourne, like the city, or the beach, sometimes even to the other side of the city in Dandenong to see other place. But now, because I never had to learn how to drive a car myself, because back home no one had a car you know, you didn’t need one”. In comparing the mobility of Farana against Nino and Cory, we see that how socio-spatial differentiation driven by socio-economic processes of the city result in transport disadvantage for both, however there is also an underlying cultural difference as well as socio-economic disadvantages at play. It also highlights how housing pressures across Melbourne are pushing vulnerable individuals away from the areas where their community support is centralised
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Ha and Quoc sought co-ethnic connections in Springvale when they first arrived in Melbourne for social support as vulnerable individuals with a history of forced migration and limited knowledge of English language. However, they admitted that they didn’t create strong friendships from these early connection - “we don’t really have many friends, we’re old, what’s the point of making new friends?”. The trauma from their experience of forced migration away from Vietnam at a young age, their inability to form strong co-ethnic ties in New Zealand suggests that Ha and Quoc see themselves belonging only to a community which in their view, no longer exists (Mijic 2022). For Mai and Nino, who identified more strongly with their ethno-cultural identities as being Vietnamese-New Zealander and Filipino respectively, both enjoyed having co-ethnic connections not based on a need for support, but rather for cultural and social reasons. The different accounts show us that “not all immigrants need to rely on ethnic enclaves for support, specifically those immigrants with high levels of education attainment or skill as entrepreneurs” (Ziegert McCombs 2017).
For Nino, besides his co-workers, his inner circle of friends is centred around his participation in a LBGTIQA+ volleyball club which he joined in 2012, the year he arrived in Australia. The Spikers Volleyball Club was first established in 1985 as a grassroots organisation that sought to provide a friendly and supportive recreational sporting environment open to all members, regardless of their sexuality or gender identity. With just over 100 members today, they operate as a not-for-profit organisation, and raise funds through volunteer fundraising events, seasonal tournaments, annual membership fee, and contribution fees to participate in organised weekly matches.
Exclusion
For Nino and Cory, they have no intention on starting a family, though still feel socially excluded from their friend’s family events. They recall how on numerous occasions, they found out through Facebook that they were not invited to certain gatherings. Unlike the distance between Mattia, Romina and their friends, Nino and Cory’s friends live around the corner from them – “just because we’re gay, people think we don’t like children or something”. Unlike Romina, who’s dis-ability acts as a social barrier, it is the perception from others that because of Nino and Cory’s sexual orientation that they are not interested in participating in family gatherings. If we compare the social formations of Farana and Cory, both rely on the existing social networks of their spouses. However, Farana’s marriage breakdown has culminated in the feeling of social isolation, where after the separation, most of these friends severed their ties with her. Despite her desire to build new social relations, she is also limited in time to make new friends by her “obligations” as a single parent of two young children, her need to undertake “12 hours of study” for her medical registration and that she is now surrounded by only “Indian neighbours” who are not interested in engaging socially with her.
In the case of Romina, she finds it difficult to connect with a local group of women who she meets up with weekly to play tennis – an established group of mothers who “only talk about their kids and what activities they do”, recalling an awkward moment where she reached out to the women and invited them over to her house “if they ever wanted to escape their children”. To date, no one has taken her up on the offer. Despite her strong desire to be a mother and after countless attempts at IVF conception, it is her dis-ability that leaves her excluded from the social group of mothers, rather than any ethno-cultural differences.
The accounts above show the need for urban planners to give more consideration to how urban design and planner can facilitate social interaction to mediate social cohesion concerns in diverse areas. Pemberton (2020) asserts that community Neighbourhood Development Plans need to consider spaces of encounter that into account three core issues: “i) a focus on facilitating micro-public spaces is equally
While I have already established that having children for Mai, was a source of social inclusion and belonging stemming from the school community, the same cannot be said for Mattia, Romina, Nino, and Cory. Instead, they all reflected on the fact that not having children posed a significant barrier in forming local ties and connections.
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Unfortunately, feelings of exclusion felt by Romina and Mattia arise more so from not having children and being selectively excluded from their closer circle of friends. Whilst admitting that moving to the edge of Metropolitan Melbourne has certainly not helped the cause, as they all used to “travel regularly together on the weekends”, many of their long-term friends from their previous workplaces have now started families.
Despite ‘retiring’ last year due to his injuries and to focus on completing his MBA studies, Nino decided to return to Spikers this year, but in a coaching function - “I formed such valuable relationship there for such a long time, and I want to keep the relationships I formed through Spikers healthy. Even though it’s a one-hour drive there each direction, I’m motivated to give back to the community, to contribute back to Australian society because when I first arrived, I had no-one, I didn’t know anyone and gained so much support and friendships from Spikers”.
the context of racial identities) and in the maintenance of white privilege through acts of NIMBYism (an acronym for ‘not in my backyard’, a practice of objecting to something that impacts upon and takes place in one’s locality).
What began as a ‘safe space’ to play volleyball and to meet new people, thus transformed into a wide support network that Nino has also drawn upon in times of need – “say Emmerson for example, he’s a doctor, when I have an issue with something that my personal GP has raised, or I don’t fully understand something, I just go to him and ask him if he can help me”. For Nino and Cory, whilst their social network is fairly limited to the workplace and the volleyball network, the diversity found within Spikers shows how an ‘ethos of inclusion’ can enable ‘bottom up’ forms of bonding social capital (by strengthening intra-group relationships beyond only volleyball as a support network), bridging social capital (by forming relationships with other volleyball clubs through competitive events) and linking social capital (through participation with local council initiatives and ‘sausage sizzles fundraisers’ at the local hardware store), a network of people otherwise inaccessible to them simply through the workplace.
For Mattia and Romina, their Italian identity is a salient feature of Melbourne and makes them like other newcomers unremarkable in the eyes of the long-term residents (Wessendorf 2013) – “everyone’s been to Italy and knows about Italy, so they’re not curious about it here in Sorrento. I’m sure everyone here already knows an Italian”. Their interaction with other locals, namely in the local activity centre, are convivial and they feel welcome “until they realise that you’re not a tourist, and then it changes. You can see that they are annoyed when they find out that we paid too much for this house which means now those other properties will be too expensive for their family and kids to buy”. Ethnic diversity is attractive for the locals (as an economical source) but it repelling when it becomes a threat, something Hubbard (2005) describes as ‘unmarked whiteness’ (though it is more in
The implications of family and specifically children were a common thread through each of the interviews, despite it not being explicitly questioned. For interlocutors with children, it was usually raised in the first half of the interview (biographical information and social networks, activities, and routines), whereas it arose more so in the second half (perceptions of diversity and neighbourhood) for those without.
as important as the creation of more traditional spaces (for example, public parks or squares) to develop encounter; ii) not all micro-public spaces – and indeed other spaces – lead to the same shared (positive) experience and outcomes due to variation in individuals’ dispositions, resources and associated legal status; and iii) more fundamentally, it cannot be assumed that encounter and conviviality will take place in shared spaces” (Pemberton 2020, 182).
If we return quickly to Julie’s experience of a citizenship process, where she recalled being biasedly assessed in her interview due to her European background, reveals how individuals from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (CALD) are more likely to be perceived as ‘immigrants’, whilst white migrants originating
from the UK, Ireland and Europe are often (self-) described as ‘expats’ (Maginn 2020, 42) and receive preferential treatment as they are deemed to have greater social status. She elaborated in detail by describing the moment – “I recall just sitting in the waiting area for 10-15 minutes or so, waiting to be called up, and noticing everyone in the room were Asian, Chinese and Indians, I don’t know. But that’s not the point, the point is that when it was my turn to come up, I remember the assessor saying, ‘I see that you’re Belgian, this shouldn’t take too long’, where he proceeded to tell me about how he went to Bruges and had the best beer and chocolate. The interview was literally over in 2 minutes, and when I left, the others were still sitting there”.
Fozdar argues that the Australian nation is incapable of moving ‘beyond race’, as it has been “very reticent to do so due to its race-based history of colonisation, immigration, and Indigenous child removals” (Fozdar 2022, 1). She asserts that despite a nation where multiculturalism has provided a socio-political environment that is somewhat supportive of diversity, actual measurement of it is limited; only by acknowledging race as a ‘countable’ measure, can the nation fully embrace diversity beyond race and progress.
Institutional barriers in the process of obtaining Australian citizenship in this example, act as an obstacle for an individual to establish their sense of home, potentially resulting in a ‘gradation of belonging’ (Khoo, 2014, 798). She goes on to highlight how not all foreigners are treated equally and may be selectively discriminated against due to longstanding derogatory stereotypes of class background based on their ethnicity or origin, suggesting that racial politics may play a decisive role in limiting forms of solidarity with members of new ethnoscapes. Whilst it is not the intent of this paper to interrogate further whether Australian immigration policies favour specific ethnicities or nationalities, let alone the inherent challenge to statistically prove, what could be said arising from Julie’s experience, is that it could be perceived that the nation state is more inclined to support immigration policies that maintain an Anglo-Celtic, Western-European hegemony (Saggar 2020).
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Anotherthem.
In the end, she was only able to obtain a rental property in Truganina after asking her husband to apply on their behalf (though he does not live the family) as he held full time employment. “They should be more flexible to us, we are deprived of so many things, went through so many things – definitely struggling as a single mother, by myself with two dependent children, and coming from a more undeveloped country”. The situation points not only to the precarity of vulnerable individuals at the mercy of a private rental market in Australia [insert some reference on housing], but also her perceived lack of compassion from the real estate agents and landlords. There is also increased recognition that ethnic minorities are often blamed for living ‘parallel lives and that the “prevalence of racism and ethnic prejudice in neighbourhoods and discriminatory practices of housing agencies” (Wang and Ramsden 2018, 14) affect their ability to integrate.
Sense of Security
Housing tenure and home ownership was unsurprisingly raised by all interlocutors as a sign of security, though housing affordability and distance to work often determined the extent of their housing mobility. Farana’s housing situation is the exception to the group, in that she is still renting her home. She recalls the recent experience of searching for a new home after the previous landlord evicted her to renovate the house in preparation for selling it, though it is unclear whether this eviction was lawful or not. She expressed the desire to remain in Werribee, however, could not successfully obtain any rental properties in the area, alluding to the potential fact that she was being rejected multiple times for applying as a single mother and relying on government assistance for income.
A perceived lack on compassion impacts on the way Farana’s belonging is felt in respect to a ‘community of value’ that are based on discourses of deservingness and hierarchies of desirability (Blachnicka-Ciacek et al. 2020). Starkly contrasting Farana’s story is Julie’s experience of receiving unrequested compassion from her employer at the time when her mother was diagnosed with a serious illness back in Belgium. Also feeling the effects of a pressure intensive job and self-aware of the danger of a looming burnout, she decided to take a break from work and return to Belgium to be with her mother. Rather than accepting Julie’s resignation, her employer offered her unlimited leave from work, even continuing to pay out her certain employee entitlements in her absence, with the hope of her returning to
aspect to Julie’s story was her decision to apply for Australian citizenship prior to temporarily moving back to Belgium to be with her mum as a way of strategically safeguarding her ability to continue residing in Australia without complications, rather than directly attributing it to security for social advancement. For Mattia and Romina, the reason for applying for citizenship was also to “stop having to do all this annoying resident return visa paperwork every few years”, but mainly to recognise Australia as being their home for the future and their desire to politically participate through voting and having a say in civic matters, a privilege which was not bestowed upon them in Switzerland. For Romina, “it’s not about having a piece of paper, it’s really about being proud of being here in Australia, to call myself and Australia. I want to be part of pushing for a better country that has a good plan for environmental issues, for healthcare and so forth”. Conversely for Mai, she felt no real pressure of desire to apply for Australian citizenship, as she expresses the desire to return to New Zealand one day anyway. For Cory, simply having the opportunity to live permanently in Australia means he is entitled to “much better, affordable healthcare here than back in America”.
Farana concedes that whilst she knows that she has a greater sense of security opportunity for personal social advancement back home - “If I’m thinking of just myself and my own life, not considering my children, I should go back to Bangladesh, I shouldn’t be here – because I came to build a life, be a doctor, but still now have not done that”, rather, she remains in Australia despite “struggling every day and fighting inside my mind”, sacrificing her needs to offer her children a “chance for betterment”.
Belonging also remains a precarious situation for Ha and Quoc, not only because of their experiences of racism in New Zealand, but because of their ‘temporary’ legal status as New Zealand passport holders. Reforms to the visa arrangements between Australia and New Zealand, has meant that any New Zealand citizens moving to Australia after 2001 are now no longer eligible for social security payments, national disability insurance, unemployment training or re-skilling support. Their current ineligibility for neither an Australian nor New Zealand early pensions, unemployment at a senior age contributes to their financial insecurity, but also the way that these circumstances converge and show that “those who experienced the collapse of their life-world at a (somewhat) older age lost their trust in the stability of their social reality and an accompanying sense of belonging” (Mijic 2022, 16).
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Even though they moved to Melbourne to belong to a community of co-ethnic Vietnamese, they also feel excluded from the security that that community affords
Farana obtained her medical qualification in Bangladesh in 2013, the year prior to moving to Australia. However, since arriving to Australia, she is yet unable to practice medicine as a general practitioner, as the Australian Medical Council does not formally recognise her medical qualification from Bangladesh. Whilst recognition of qualifications is not summarily based on the ‘country’ in which the qualification was obtained (there are numerous pathways of assessment based on accreditation protocols), she does not receive a partial exemption as she lacks overseas training or recognition as a ‘specialist’. In this case, we see how her age, despite being young, works against her interests and prevents her from participating in the labour market. Unlike Mattia and Nino who arrived on strict skilled-migrant visas, or Julie and Cory on an aged biased (18-31) working holiday visa, Farana’s permanent resident status on a family reunification visa provides her with less restrictions than the others.
Sense of Opportunity for Social Advancement
Farana expressed the desire and ambition to move to Australia for personal growth - “my plan was to grow properly through a family, creating and maintaining a family, build my career. But I couldn’t make it. I took a large gap because I did my graduation in 2013, but still now, it’s 2022, I didn’t complete it yet because of many issues”. Her access to employment and economic participation is thus not only constrained by the obligation to successfully complete a registration examination, where she needs to undertake a (minimum) 2 year ‘training’ programme prior to the examination, but it is her emotional attachment and self-identification (YuvalDavis 2006) as a doctor, arising from the complexifying and multilayered nature of identities that Berg and Sigona (2013) speak of. “It would be better that if I go back to my parent’s home, and I’ll be like of a princess there, I can study, focus, I can make my career more easily… but I’m just struggling here for my kids. They deserve the proper rights, proper education, proper everything as they are born here you know”.
Migrationothers.
trajectories and temporalities thus can influence the meaning of home at different points in an individual life course; for younger interlocutors (particularly for labour migrants with more security), home is much more relational than for elderly individuals or those who have remained in place for longer; their meaning is more place-based associated (Boccagni and Duyevndak 2021). The preference for ‘skilled’ labour migrants in Australia means not all arrive with disadvantaged life circumstances that mandate the need to re-establish a sense of home and belonging in mobility, nor is there an ‘need’ to establish a sense of social advancement as they have already been ‘socially sorted’.
However, when age or family obligations are considered together with the (lack of) mobility, the need for a sense of security is enhanced – not a place or live or housing tenure, but rather citizenship becomes a defining aspect of security. Nonetheless, examining degrees of mobility and how they shape meanings of home, even for those who are in more ‘privileged’ migration positions, can shift our theoretical understanding on integration and the way difference is understood in society.
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CROSSINGHOPPERS(3029) (3030)COOK Detailed interview mapping in Farana's residential area between Werribee and
X XX X XX X X X X X X HomeTruganinaEsplanadePark MallShoppingWerribee TrainWerribeeRentalPreviousHomeWerribeeHalalShopsStation CrossingHoppers Train Station TrainTarneitStation Open SuburbanTrainFarana’sFarana’sTruganinaCommercialIndustrialSpaceZonesCentreWalkingRoutesBusRoutesLineBoundary500m1km WilliamsTrainLandingStation EastTruganinaPrimarySchoolMainviewOval Al-TaqwaMosquePrimaryQuantinMelbourneMosqueBinnahCommunityCentreWestgroveSchool X GroceryLocal X Supermarket 6 CC Figure 5.7.
In Figure 5.7, we can see a visual comparison of the distances to public services and facilities between her previous home in Werribee and the new one in Truganina. In Figure 5.8, we also see that her new home is located 2 suburbs away from Werribee Centre where she and her family established themselves. They both fall within the City of Wyndham Council, though within different localities/suburbs, and are both serviced within walking distances to open space and schools. Whilst small commercial centres are dispersed within the suburban fabric, we can also see that Farana’s new home in Truganina falls within what appears to be new housing on brownfield developments, thus the concentration of other services such as supermarkets, library, and recreational facilities are more so co-located in the Werribee activity centre. Her reliance on the private rental market has made it difficult for her to secure housing nearby her previous home means not only relocating her children to new schools and surrounds, as well as new routines, but she is now located much further away from the speciality shops within Werribee that supply halal products to meet her religious needs.
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The need to look beyond the 'neighbourhood' scale In contrast to previous migration literature which primarily focuses on the uneven distribution of migrant groups between neighbourhoods in cities, there is now a growing body of academic research which calls for the study of migrant settlement across multiple scales and levels of geography (Berg et al. 2019). If differences are traditionally studied by examining people in the context of their ‘diverse neighbourhoods’, it does not take into account increased urban mobility or the changing urban structure of the city in which neighbourhoods are embedded, suggesting somehow that people only live their lives contained to postcodes.
CROSSINGHOPPERS(3029) WERRIBEE(3030) WERRIBEESOUTH(3030) POINT(3030)COOK X XX X XX X X X X X X HomeTruganinaEsplanadePark MallShoppingWerribee TrainWerribeeRentalPreviousHomeWerribeeHalalShopsStation CrossingHoppers Train Station TrainTarneitStation Open SuburbanTrainFarana’sFarana’sTruganinaCommercialIndustrialSpaceZonesCentreWalkingRoutesBusRoutesLineBoundary500m1km WilliamsTrainLandingStation EastTruganinaPrimarySchoolMainviewOval Al-TaqwaMosquePrimaryQuantinMelbourneMosqueBinnahCommunityCentreWestgroveSchool X GroceryLocal X Supermarket 6 CCCITY WYNDHAMOF ΔΔ Δ Ha’s WorkplaceFomer SupermarketHome TrainLynbrookStation Narre Warren Train Station Hallam Train Station Δ Quoc’s WorkplaceFomer 8 HH Ha & Quoc’s Walking TrainRoutes& Light Rail Suburban Boundary Line 500m 1km Local Government Boundary Open LynbrookCommercialIndustrialSpaceZonesCentreSuburb Figure 5.8. Suburb/locality boundaries in Farana's residential area between Werribee and Truganina (2022)NguyenKen©(2022)NguyenKen© Figure 5.9. Detailed interview mapping in Ha and Quoc's residential area of Lynbrook
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patterns across various spatial scales in four European cities by Andersson et al. (2018) revealed that whilst small-scale segregation patterns of non-European migrants were similar across the four case studies, factors which contributed to large-scale segregation were not always correlated to small-scale factors. The pronounced residential segregation patterns observed in these cities not only contributed to forms of spatial inequality, but also provided “fewer opportunities for diversity and mixing in neighbourhoods, which in the long run might hinder understanding between groups and social cohesion in society” (Andersson et al. 2018, 272). Whilst negative accounts of urban diversity are more often portrayed, such as in the cases of Lichter et al. (2015) and Andersson et al. (2018), Oosterlynck et al. (2019) offer up a more positive tone of lived experiences of migrant communities in mixed neighbourhoods in their book ‘Divercities’, and how residents actively and creatively devise ways to deal with difference and diversity through microscale interactions. The edited collection of case studies takes into consideration geographical influences and provides a comparative analysis across the UK and Europe, giving particular attention social inequality and exclusion.
However, they also play a crucial role in “channelling, moulding, and shaping differences in particular spaces” (Berg et al. 2019, 2737) as well as playing “a crucial role in opening up or closing down possibilities of sharing space in the micro-publics” (Berg et al. 2019, 2737). In concrete terms, how local policy makers perceive difference in the ground actively shape the experience of difference and inequality – actively mediating between multiple social, cultural, and institutional
Another issues that arises by confining diversity research to ‘neighbourhoods’ or by postcodes, is that we risk perpetuating urban segregation through what could be summarily described as ‘methodological neighbourhoodism’, or as Paasi (2020) puts it, the manifestation of ‘socio-spatial fetishism’ that “often conceal power relations and the alternatives for challenging and transcending these processes [of bordering, ordering and othering]” (Paasi 2020, 18). Whilst all tiers of government are responsibility for the management of social sustainability, local city councils are generally best placed to understand the complexities and diverse needs of their communities, given that community support services are managed on the local level (Berg et al. 2019).
Lichter et al. (2015) examines how racial residential segregation is being increasingly shaped by the city and the suburban communities in which neighbourhoods are embedded. Similarly, a comparative study of segregation
The situation for Ha and Quoc is similar. Their home, whilst close their previous workplaces in Dandenong South [Figure 5.9], a highly industrialised area serving the working class population who settled in and around Dandenong Centre, is also located outside of the area where they access Vietnamese facilities and services in Springvale. Whilst they reside a short walk from the train line directly to Springvale, the issue is that their home suburb of Lynbrook, falls not only outside of the Springvale catchment, but in an entirely separate local government authority. Whilst Springvale falls within the City of Dandenong, Lynbrook falls within the City of Casey, making it problematic when it comes to planning for service provisions for targeted groups.
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CRANBOURNEWARRENNARRESOUTH(3805)NORTH(3977)NARREWARREN(3805)SANDHURSTLYNDHURST(3975)(3977) CRANBOURNEWEST(3977)LYNBROOK(3975) ΔΔ Δ Ha’s WorkplaceFomer SupermarketHome TrainLynbrookStation Narre Warren Train Station Hallam Train Station Δ Quoc’s WorkplaceFomer 8 HH Ha & Quoc’s Walking TrainRoutes& Light Rail Suburban Boundary Line 500m 1km Local Government Boundary Open LynbrookCommercialIndustrialSpaceZonesCentreSuburb (2022)NguyenKen© Figure 5.10. Suburb/locality boundaries in Ha and Quoc's residential area of Lynbrook
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Inspheres.theUS,
(2022)NguyenKen©
The traditional use of administrative or statistical boundaries for the study of migrant groups in specific neighbourhoods can also be problematic for urban studies, as they “are hampered by the differences in the size and delineation of the spatial units that are used for its measurement” (Sleutjes et al. 2018, 195). If we examine Julie’s mapping [Figure 5.12], based around the inner-city suburb of Flemington, we can see very little indicated within the boundaries of her ‘neighbourhood’. Whilst this may be problematic for an individual who arrives as a ‘pioneer migrant’ with no co-ethnic group to attach to, a superdiversity lens also informs us of her profile as a young, high-skilled worker with a diverse group of co-worker friends across all parts of the city. This means she is highly mobile and not spatially dependent on a particular area for services or social support, and her needs are not so specific or spatially bound, as indicated by her mappings of ‘yoga class’ or the ‘Sunday Farmer’s Market’ at the nearby school.
We see that her spatial scale extends well beyond the suburb [Figure 5.13]; she enjoys running at Royal Park in the suburb of Parkville, her doctor is in neighbouring Kensington and dentist is in the CBD (central business district), even eating at the Ethiopian restaurant every week where she is now “good friends with Jonathon the owner” who is in fact a Swedish-born Eritrean who moved to Australia at a younger age. In Figure [5.14], we also see that her movements to and from work and to MSAC where she swims weekly in the Olympic size pool, takes her through multiple suburbs and neighbourhoods along the way, but also traverses several different local government areas to access work and facilities in those areas.
5.11.
Figure Local Government Area (LGA) boundaries in Ha and Quoc's residential area of Lynbrook
80 81 ΔΔ Δ CITY FRANKSTONCITYDANDENONGOFOF CITYCASEYOF Ha’s WorkplaceFomer SupermarketHome TrainLynbrookStation Narre Warren Train Station Hallam Train Station Δ Quoc’s WorkplaceFomer 8 HH Ha & Quoc’s Walking TrainRoutes& Light Rail Suburban Boundary Line 500m 1km Local Government Boundary Open LynbrookCommercialIndustrialSpaceZonesCentreSuburb
FOOTSCRAY(3011)ASCOT
MARIBYRNONG(3032)
MOONEEPONDS(3032) BRUNSWICKWEST(3055)
82 83 CentreFootscray MelbourneCBD X X X X X X X X ClassYoga Doctor X Dentist Sunday SupermarketFarmer’sMarketEthiopianRestaurantHome RoyalWorkplacePreviousPark 5 5EE Open CommercialSpace Centres Flemington Suburb Walking Routes Julie’s Cycle Routes Train & Light Rail Suburban Boundary Line 500m 1km Local Government Boundary
MELBOURNENORTHPARKVILLEBRUNSWICK(3056)(3052)(3051)CARLTON(3053)MELBOURNEWESTKENSINGTON(3031)(3003)CentreFootscray MelbourneCBD X X X X X X X X ClassYoga Doctor X Dentist Sunday SupermarketFarmer’sMarketEthiopianRestaurantHome RoyalWorkplacePreviousPark 5 5EE Open CommercialSpace Centres Flemington Suburb Walking Routes Julie’s Cycle Routes Train & Light Rail Suburban Boundary Line 500m 1km Local Government Boundary(2022)NguyenKen© Figure 5.12. Detailed interview mapping in Julie's residential area of Flemington (2022)NguyenKen© Figure 5.13. Suburb/locality boundaries in Julie's residential area of Flemington
FLEMINGTON(3031) (3032)VALE
These new bodies of work recognise that migrant spatial patterns are a multi-scalar phenomenon, highlighting the need for researchers to cast a broader spatial lens beyond the neighbourhood level by adopting new forms of measure. To better comprehend the multiple factors that shape urban diversity, migrant integration and demographic distribution, researchers and policy makers must also measure and observe spatial scales simultaneously, rather than limiting it to a static spatial setting. We need to recognise that the city is highly interconnected, and that spaces and places that constitute the city are connected by social networks, both reciprocally shaping how they are experienced. Local Government Area (LGA) boundaries in Ha and Quoc's residential area of Lynbrook
The mappings of Farana, Ha, Quoc and Julie show the need to reconsider the spatial scale in which we assess the population and plan for housing and services. Both Malmberg et al. (2011) and Sleutjes et al. (2018) propose an alternative unit for the measure of segregation based on a ‘scalable individualised neighbourhood’, which unravel how group-specific patterns and concentrations can vary not only across different spatial scales, but the within-district variation associated with it. Scott (2021) extends on the work of Houtum and Naerssen suggesting that “perspectives on bordering, ordering and othering can be advanced through exploration of cognitive and psychological processes” (Scott 2021, 26) and that we can draw upon the cognitive nature of bordering framed within urban space and places to gain a wider understanding of space-society relations. He argues that bordering seen in this perspective, is a not a “retrograde process of exclusion, indentitary thinking nor a deeply conservative impulse” (Scott 2021, 32) but rather an approach that can help us understand how and why it takes place, in order to identify certain factors that promote positive identification and fosters multicultural conviviality.
84 85 CITY MOONEEOFVALLEY CITY MARIBYRNONGOF CITY MORELANDOF CITYYARRAOF CITY MELBOURNEOF CentreFootscray MelbourneCBD X X X X X X X X ClassYoga Doctor X Dentist Sunday SupermarketFarmer’sMarketEthiopianRestaurantHome RoyalWorkplacePreviousPark 5 5EE Open CommercialSpace Centres Flemington Suburb Walking Routes Julie’s Cycle Routes Train & Light Rail Suburban Boundary Line 500m 1km Local Government Boundary
(2022)NguyenKen© Figure 5.14.
Reframing the migrant, mobility, and integration
For most of its young history, owing to its remoteness, Australia was seen to be a destination in the consciousness of past groups of migrants – ranging from those seeking a ‘new life’, escaping conflict or re-uniting with existing family members. However, with the ‘diversity turn’ (Berg and Sigona 2013) we are witnessing from a globalising world and advent of mobile workers, individual migrant intentions have diversified along with it. Whilst some of my interlocutors migrated to Australia from the onset to reunite with existing family members, others revealed that even though they arrived in Australia as ‘accidental or opportunistic’ migrants on working holiday visas, changing trajectories and life choices meant that they moved to establish a new home in Australia through obtaining permanent residency (and subsequently citizenship), pointing strongly to the idea of home as an ongoing and dynamic process. Even for those who have established strong roots and ties to Australia, some admit that home could be somewhere else in the future. ‘Re-establishing’ their life in Australia is thus a future-orientated process, one of many steps along their ongoing migrant journey, rather than an experience that is permanent nor fixed on reproducing the past home.
[06] Discussion Conclusion&
context of globalisation and hyper-mobility, academic enquiry into how migrants perceive ‘home’ and thus how this relates to new practices of homemaking, particular in (super)-diverse contexts, can be instrumental to developing a more comprehensive understanding of what implications they have on (self) belonging, (national) membership and social cohesion. This thesis not only supports the importance of examining practices of homemaking in understanding migration patterns and behaviours, but also enables us to understand the individual practices of migrants, as opposed to how it has been normatively understood as a group practice, showing how superdiversity is transforming social relations and the way social cohesion is interpreted on the policy level.
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In illustrating this temporal aspect of migration, I show that we can address the ‘diversity tension’ or Putnam’s hypothesis by deconstructing the static face of the nation and society, to allow the more dynamic nature of contemporary migrant lives to permeate into the public consciousness. By reframing ‘migration’ in the
My interlocutors accounts also show that new social bonds do not necessarily have to be between other co-ethnics, however the spatial configuration of Melbourne’s outer residential suburbs pose the largest barriers to street encounters. Low-threshold social infrastructures can become fertile meeting ground between majority and other minorities groups and form a source of support to fulfill individual needs and enable access to opportunities or resources, allowing migrants to establish their sense of belonging in their everyday lives across a variety of ways - marked by familiarity, security, and routine. If “the acceptance of diversity in a community is central for the level of social cohesion in a given entity” (Arant et al. 2021, 4), then the Spikers LBGTIQA+ Volleyball Club is a clear example of the need to foster
Using super-diversity as an analytical tool and applying it to a methodological framework on belonging and homemaking allowed me reveal how place attachment could vary greatly between sedentary and more ‘mobile’ populations. The ethnographic accounts reflect the fluid and mobile nature of the meaning of home, and the boundaries that migrants draw continuously shift in response to not only everyday practices and interpersonal encounters, but also strongly affected by housing and socio-economic processes. I have explored both concrete and symbolic meanings of belonging, bounded by post-colonial imaginaries that remain deeply embedded in urban practice and migrant integration, that limit “(transcultural) appropriations” (Beeckmans et al. 2022, 28). This is captured most through my ethnographic accounts, reflecting the loss of the spatial and social meanings of the ‘neighbourhood’ in a the sprawling urban structure of Metropolitan Melbourne.
Socio-Spatial Dependence
bottom-up processes, that enable building and bridging social capital, but also reshape the understanding of complex social processes and connections between different groups of people who converge through inequality or invisibility. Nino’s description of the non-exclusive nature of his club shows the need to create more “communities where people meet each other and interact on neutral or positive ground is the best precondition for a future in which diversity with all its facets is accepted, which in turn helps to ensure or build strong and cohesive societies” (Arant et al. 2021, 10).
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Urban planners therefore must recognise the need to examine the mix (rather than the distribution) of advantage and disadvantage arising from new differentiations such as legal status, using quantitative socio-economic or spatial information to find new ways to engage with individuals or minorities groups who are less visible. Equitable access to localised public institutions that constitute social infrastructure (Klinenberg, 2018) are becoming increasingly challenging because
Understanding Which Differences Really Matter
lens, it becomes more apparent that the attractiveness of Melbourne’s diversity, however, is also contributing to the growing inequality across social, cultural, and symbolic capital and increased antagonistic behaviours in society. In this light, it may be prudent to adopt a both superdiversity and intersectionality (Crenshaw 1991) together to “empirically expose the mechanisms through which race-, gender-, and class-based inequalities are reproduced” (Khazaei 2018, 7).
Whilst belonging is shown to be differentiated between my interlocutors, I reveal how my interlocutors develop multistranded connections across both spatial and social dimensions, supporting the notion that a “spatial span extend[ing] from macro to micro scale and indicates belonging based on spaces, social relations, and materiality” (Lahdesmaki et al. 2021, 99). Home in that sense, is encapsulated by the plurality of both socio- and spatial settings and show the need to understand for which individuals depend on the proximity of a ‘neighbourhood’, for access to services and local activities, and why it differs from those who see the entire, or larger areas of the city as a place where their daily activities take place. This highlights the importance of space and place in superdiversity research, that these new configurations of diversity are impacted by other factors such as a migrant’s length of stay, legal status and cultural capital that sort, reshape and stratify our changing society.
Ultimately, it also shows that if communities and society are constructed, then they can also be reconstructed. By moving away from the notion that ‘they’ should be more like us, planning practitioners and service providers can draw upon groups such as the Spikers to collectively construct new definitions of ‘us’ - community groups are far better placed at navigating difference by generating new bonds based on other commonalities. This supports Meissner’s calls for a closer examination of personal social networks as an additional dimension of super-diversity (Meissner 2016). Mapping people’s routines, activities, and social practices beyond the neighbourhood, situated in places doesn’t just account for difference, but provides a new vantage point from which contestations and conflict arising from multiple, but also intersecting differences can be observed, showing “that not all migrant/ minority communities enjoy the same level of respect, equality, freedom and opportunity as the wider white Australian population” (Maginn 2020, 41).
of legal and immigration statuses (Phillimore 2013), showing the need to shift from the ethno-focal lens and focus on superdiversity dimension that give rise to class-based difference and socio-economic inequality. The changing nature of, speed and population churn (Berg and Sigona 2013), also reflected in the way that both new arrivals and long-term residents are left to fight it out in a private dominated housing market. Whilst the concentration of advantage is diffusing the concentration of disadvantage across the city, I have shown that by casting the analytical scale beyond the neighbourhood has revealed many individuals are residing outside the ‘neighbourhood’, or areas with a concentration of support services, organisations, and businesses that they rely on, effectively rendering them invisible to other forms of social and housing support. As Ratnam (2018) points out, the drawing of dividing lines and the complacency of multiculturalism has led to the invisibleness of vulnerable people (such as refugees), because they are increasingly being dispersed across the city.
Examining lived diversity with a backdrop of the Australian suburb and the neighbourhood as an entry point, I find that the compositional and diversity effects are less consequential for my interlocutors compared to their more established residents, supporting the findings of Wickes et al. (2014). Rather, the attachment to social and spatial imaginaries of the normative Australian suburb, such as preserving ‘neighbourhood character’ continue to stigmatise ethnic and racial difference that emerge from European constructs. The account of NIMBYism as experienced by Romina and Mattia shows that rather than increased diversity being the cause for eroding social cohesion, it is the widening of social classes and socio-economic differentiation within both minority and majority populations –the ‘squeezed middle-class’ that is facing increased costs of living (Urban Reform Institute 2022).
Whilst Kilnenberg (2018) is correct that there is a need to invest in social infrastructure that is commensurate with the provision of physical infrastructure that facilitates civic engagement, inclusion, and neighbourhood attachment, I have shown that supporting grassroot organisations that can utilise existing social infrastructures (such as schools), can be a more effective and flexible approach to changing needs of service provision. Whilst I only provide one example of the Spikers Volleyball Club, local councils can minimise the risk of excluding a broader audience by developing programmes that target “specific domains of local life such as youth engagement, reducing social isolation, women’s participation and migrant settlement programmes are more likely to be well received and successful without the perceived overreach of a government-driven social cohesion policy formula” (Sharples and Colic-Peisker 2020, 229).
As a well-established multicultural society, where ethnic and cultural diversity is a valued aspect of Australian nationhood and community life, “there seems to be a substantial difference between societies that pursue a sustained and active policy of multicultural integration and those that favour mono-cultural assimilation of minority and migrant groups. The first seem to attain higher levels of trust and social integration, whereas the second seem to have more conflict and distrust” (Newton and Stolle 2007, 17). However, when viewed through a superdiversity
I explore the lived experiences of diversity through individuals in both their neighbourhood and across the city, discussing positive and negative aspects of their living environment, routines, and activities. The accounts of my interlocutors point towards the salience of ethno-cultural difference in their everyday lives, with many expressing it as an attractive feature of Australian society. Most reflect the desire to develop inter-cultural connections, giving weight to the importance of conviviality and solidarity that can lead to sources of support for more vulnerable individuals. The urban structure of the typical Melbourne suburbs, with its detached houses and car dependency, is found to be one of the pertinent barriers to forging new bonds between urban dwellers through ‘chance encounters’, highlighting the need to not only consider the importance of new social relations, but also the way that new housing is provided for who and where. The interpretive mapping here shows how my interlocutor’s lives are unequally dispersed across the city; and whilst some are more mobile than others in accessing the services they require; planners will need to pay closer attention to the implications of sprawl and how they impact on equitable access to services.
Conclusion
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A core conceptualisation of superdiversity is not to ‘make things more complex’ or introduce new categories of difference, but rather examine how they come into play under certain contexts, and create invisible structural and institutional barriers for identification, network formation, and social and economic participation. By looking beyond an ethno-cultural focus, a core interrogation in this thesis has been to reflect on the way that the multicultural narrative in Australia conceals some of the hidden macro forces at play –population churn bought about by neoliberal economies and global capital, and urban development catalysed by selective migration policies that keep people sorted and segregated by class and social capital. Uncreative housing solutions and sprawling urban environments, compounded by new forms of wealth that displace and antagonise the existing disadvantaged, is reshaping intercultural encounters and societal formations on the ground.
Whilst negotiating new differences and untangling the complexity that superdiversity research is revealing may very well be an insurmountable feat, given that the new multilayered reality brings about irreconcilable and often competing differences in such close urban proximity (Berg and Sigona 2013), perhaps we should start by striving for a ‘Good City’ (Amin 2006) and at the very least to achieve “an urban ethnic imagined as an ever-widening habit of solidarity built around different dimensions of the urban common weal” (Amin 2006, 1009). Urban planners are best placed in diffusing politically charged discourses on difference, situated at the centre of facilitating change and transformation across the city, “negotiating fears and anxieties, mediating memories and [new] hopes” (Sandercock 2000, 29) to ensure the basic right for all to presence and expression in everyday urban life.
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