Cultural and place identity : a study in Melbourne's western suburbs

This research explored the effect of cultural identity on the character of neighbourhoods in Melbourne's western suburbs. The study revealed that migrant cultural identity is expressed in neighbourhoods with diverse cultural groups although it was found to be shaped by the dominant perception of suburban character.

Early critics of White Australia - 1870-1914

This thesis explores criticism of racial exclusion and prejudice in Australia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It argues that resistance to White Australia was more sustained and significant than previously understood and examines the complexities of racial thinking in relation to contemporary understandings of racism and anti-racism.

Compatriots and other strangers : Italians in Geelong

Compares and contrasts Southern and Northern Italian post-World War II emigration from Italy and settlement in Geelong. The emigration process has determined the social structure of each Italian regional group. All Italians in Geelong acknowledge and nourish their ethnic and cultural identities through frequent interaction with those from the same sending-area region, but they remain virtual strangers to Italians from other areas.

Migrant housing in the city and the village : from Melbourne to Zavoj

This paper will discuss the kinds of communities that evolve through historical practices of migration. The migrant house is associated with a new architecture that hod appeared in the cities of immigration of the new worlds (Melbourne, Toronto, Chicago). It is perceived as a stereotypical symbolisation of immigrants from Southern European origins that had arrived in the decades following the Second World War. The appearance of houses built by returning migrants in sites of origin suggests other traiectories, other modes of travel, and other forms of community. Central to the thesis of this paper is the testimony of two types of migrant houses. The study draws on theories of migration that address the site of departure, the site of arrival, and the question and conflict of return which is at the centre of the migrant's imaginary. This study will examine the migrant houses in the village of emigration (Zavoj in Macedonia), migrant houses built by returning emigrants. A study of the two houses of migration implicates a set of networks, forces, relations, circumscribing a large global geopolitical and cultural field that questions our understandings of diaspora, the binary structure of dwelling/travelling, and the fabric and fabrication of community. In addition, the paper will explore the notion of house as an imaginary landscape, a psychic geography narrated through migratory travels.

Estimating survival and movements using both live and dead recoveries : a case study of oystercatchers confronted with habitat change

1. Animals facing partial habitat loss can try to survive in the remaining habitat or emigrate. Effects on survival and movements should be studied simultaneously since survival rates may be underestimated if emigrants are not considered, and since emigrants may experience reduced survival.

2. We analysed movements and survival of adult wintering oystercatcher Haematopus ostralegus in response to the 1986–1987 partial closure of the Oosterschelde in the Dutch Delta. This reduced by one-third the tidal area of this major European wintering area for waders.

3. We developed a novel variant of a multistate capture–recapture model allowing simultaneous estimation of survival and movement between sites using a mixture of data (live recaptures and dead recoveries). We used a two-step process, first estimating movements between sites followed by site-specific survival rates.

4. Most birds were faithful to their ringing site. Winter survival was negatively affected by winter severity and was lowest among birds changing wintering site (i.e. moving outside of the Oosterschelde).

5. During mild winters, survival rates were very high, and similar to before the closure in both changed and unchanged sectors of the Oosterschelde. However, the combined effect of habitat loss with severe winters decreased the survival of birds from changed sectors and induced emigration.

6. The coastal engineering project coincided with three severe winters and high food stock, making assessment of its effects difficult. However, the habitat loss seems to have had less impact on adult survival and movements than did winter severity.

7. Synthesis and applications. Human-induced habitat change may result in population decline through costly emigration or reduced survival or reproduction of individuals that stay. Long-term monitoring of marked individuals helps to understand how populations respond to environmental change, but site-specific survival and movement rates should be integrated in the same model in order to maximize the information yield. Our modelling approach facilitates this because it allows the inclusion of recoveries from outside the study area.

Wandering Rocks : truth and purity in the Australian Irish diaspora

This thesis comprises a novel, Wandering Rocks, and a discursive component concerning the Australian Irish diaspora. Diaspora theory, loss of culture, rememory and silence (especially around accounts of Irish women), sentimental and creative forces perpetuating identity, and the importance of written works as artefacts imbued with ;milieu effects' are explored.

Eritrean refugees experience in Melbourne

This dataset provides information concerning the patterns of labour market access and the employment outcomes of African refugees in Australia. It focuses on recently-arrived migrants and refugees from Eritrea who came to Australia predominantly on humanitarian grounds. It explores the correlation between academic qualifications and previous employment experiences on the one hand and employment outcomes in Australia on the other. In doing so, a number of related factors including language skills, links to community organisations and level and nature of job assistance services are analysed as variables that potentially impact upon access to and ultimately integration into the labour market.

Migrant Houses in the village Zavoj, Republic of Macedonia, 1988-2010

The focus of this data is on the transformation of the village Zavoj in the Republic of Macedonia, due to emigration from the village, recorded through the architectural changes to the houses in the village. The village had become by default a place for the accommodation of elderly people who did not want to join their offspring abroad in the cities of immigration, or in the fringe suburbs of nearby towns.

The data documents the ‘material history’ of the houses, and constitutes a longitudinal research project tracing the transformation of the architectural fabric of the village since 1988. It includes visual documentation such as photographs and drawings, and includes the houses as HOUSE-STATES as follows:

House-Traditional: Vernacular architecture still in use and maintained as a dwelling.
House-Construction: Buildings that are still being constructed, the house as ongoing construction site.
House-Fragment: An eMigrant house-fragment is juxtaposed with the vernacular dwelling. Typical and affordable techniques of single brick cavity and reinforced concrete structure are evident in the new fragment.
House-Closed: Many new houses have only one door and one window, height, size and volume are minimal; and are closed a lot of the time.
House-Ruin: Vernacular traditional dwellings that are deteriorating. Traditional vernacular dwellings are rarely renovated, reconstructed or repaired.

The data is complemented by several field-work methods including participant observation, interviews, documentation of the village as a totality, recording of oral histories and myths, festivities, and archival statistical research about the vicinity.

This dataset comprises photographic documentation, sketch/drawing documentation, digital interview recordings, and interview notes.

Holy days after migration

In Zavoj, a mountainous village in the Republic of Macedonia, the Day of the Holy Mother is the most significant day in the village's ritual calendar. Over the last two decades the festival has been transformed due to emigration, but importantly, many Zavoj emigrants return to the village for the festival. Added to this are several other celebrations related to holy days that take place in the village. The focus of this paper will be the Mala Sveta Bogorodica (minor Holy Mother) festivity, and the sacred sites on the Old Zavoj Road. A very active church committee draws together the emigrants and produces a new type of village community and new types of social practices. Parallel to this, is the dramatic transformation of the architecture of the village. From data of recent field work, this paper will explore the emigrant gathering in Zavoj, and why the village becomes a place for the celebration of holy days after migration.

Perpetual revolution : people and state in socialist Cuba

This thesis examines the definition of “Revolution” in Cuba, exploring the political and social system that is associated with what people in Cuba call “the Revolution”, and placing special emphasis on people’s daily experiences of such systems. Through an analysis of organic movements of urban agriculture, alternative therapies emerging within the framework of a state-centred biomedical health system, and emigration this thesis aims to understand the lived experience of the Cuban Revolution

The central-place territorial model does not apply to space-use by juvenile brook charr Salvelinus fontinalis in lakes

1. Territoriality is widely accepted as the mechanism responsible for density-dependent mortality, emigration, and 'self-thinning' of populations of juvenile salmonine fishes in streams. Numerous studies have focused on territoriality exclusively in stream (lotic) environments and thus have fostered a stereotyped view of juvenile salmonines as sedentary and territorial. We term this behavioural paradigm the central-place territorial model (CPTM).

2. We tested predictions characterizing the CPTM for young-of-the-year (YOY) brook charr (Salvelinus fontinalis) in two Canadian lakes to determine if territoriality may also potentially limit space and population size of brook charr in lakes.

3. Our findings were not consistent with the CPTM. Fish in both lakes were not central-place forages. Maximum displacement distance did not increase with body length as predicted by the general salmonine model of Grant and Kramer (1990). Net displacement distanced increased with the proportion of time spent moving. Aggressive frequency was greatest for fish which spent large proportions of time moving and did not defend from a central-place.

4. Fish in both lakes were rarely aggressive, highly active, and often moved back over the same areas. However, lake fish which migrated to a tributary stream had no net displacement (central-place foraging) illustrating the immediate effects of current on foraging tactics and space-use.

5. The effect of hydrodynamic environment (flowing vs. still water) on fish behaviour needs to be explicitly considered in future models of salmonine behaviour.