"HOPEFUL PLACES: Migration and belonging in an unpredictable era"edited by Chris McConvilleBook Launch at Museo Italiano
- Date
- 7 May
06:30pm to 08:00pm
The book will be launched by Professor David McCallum, College of Arts, Victoria University.
About the book:
Since 1947 Australia has led the world in an unprecedented historic change: that of global migration. New arrivals have now reached the levels last seen when post-war “New Australians ”from Italy, Greece or in Displaced Persons programs left Europe for Australia. Multiculturalism has now replaced assimilation as an official state policy.
What happens after these migrants reach their new home? How have they changed Australian places? The essays in this volume come from a major conference held by the Community, Identity Displacement Network at Victoria University, Melbourne. The authors explore issues of migration policy in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. They take up questions about belonging and the meaning of place, for both the immigrant and Australian-born. Visual arts, museum displays and literature are analysed for their roles in shaping new identities for immigrants and their children. The collection goes beyond the statistics of arrivals. It asks how might we create successful places of settlement in the 21st century?
From the Introduction:
“Low income, poor education and related difficulties” diminish the lives of native-born and immigrant, and remain largely unaltered by an emphasis on cultural retention and national migration policy. Perhaps in the end, Gans’s criterion remains the only useful measure of migration policy, and a sense of belonging; that regardless of official statements about multiculturalism or embrace of difference, and in the face of continued marginality, a successful settlement is one that survives as “by and large a good place to live”.
Chapters include:
Paula Fernandez Arias, “Resettlement as an identity-building process”
Dvir Abramovich, “Exiled Citizens: Holocaust remembrance in the first decade of Israeli statehood and the gradual shift in attitudes in the 1980s”
Irene Bouzo, “Adaptation after displacement: A case study of the Temple Society Australia”
Gemma Tulud Cruz, “Living in the Interstice: An Asian case of Contestations against marginalisation”
Mike Dee, “Urban public space and the marginalisation of children and young people”
Johannes Pieters, “Recovering from bushfire related housing loss; lessons from Susan’s journey to home”
Vivian Gerrand and Yusuf Sheikh Omar, “The Arts as cultural and identity resources for Somali youth in Australia: Nadia Faragaab’s ‘Kronologies’”
Christopher Sommer, “A place apart? The representation of place, identity and displacement in the special exhibition ‘The Mixing Room’ at the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa”
Marsha Berry and Catherine Gomes, “Pinning poetry to place: making sense of place in the Pilbara”
Brigitte Lewis, “If I’m not using rationality to know, then who am I?”
Robert Pascoe and Michael Deery, “Representations of culture: research structures for textual, graphic, aural and moving image sources”
Karen Berger, “Finding belonging in an uncountry”
About Dr Chris McConville:
Chris McConville is Senior Research Fellow, CRIC, Federation University Australia. He has previously worked at the University of the Sunshine Coast and Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia.
Free event
Date: 7 May, 6.30pm
Venue: Museo Italiano, Co.As.It. 199 Faraday Street, Carlton 3053
RSVP: [email protected]; (03) 9349 9021
