Table Of ContentJock Collins · Branka Krivokapic-Skoko ·
Kirrily Jordan · Hurriyet Babacan ·
Narayan Gopalkrishnan
Cosmopolitan Place
Making in Australia
Immigrant Minorities
and the Built
Environment in Cities,
Regional and
Rural Areas
Cosmopolitan Place Making in Australia
· ·
Jock Collins Branka Krivokapic-Skoko
· ·
Kirrily Jordan Hurriyet Babacan
Narayan Gopalkrishnan
Cosmopolitan Place
Making in Australia
Immigrant Minorities and the Built Environment
in Cities, Regional and Rural Areas
Jock Collins Branka Krivokapic-Skoko
University of Technology Sydney Charles Sturt University
Broadway, NSW, Australia Bathurst, NSW, Australia
Kirrily Jordan Hurriyet Babacan
Australian National University James Cook University
Galston, NSW, Australia Townsville, QLD, Australia
Narayan Gopalkrishnan
Social Work and Human Services
James Cook University
Cairns, QLD, Australia
ISBN 978-981-15-8040-6 ISBN 978-981-15-8041-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-8041-3
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Preface
This book investigates cosmopolitan place making, the historical and
contemporary impact of minority ethnic communities on the built and
social environment in Australian cities, rural and regional areas. Australia
is one of the great countries of settler immigration, with more immi-
grants than most other nations: indeed, only Switzerland and Luxem-
bourg have a higher immigrant share of the population among Western
nations. Most research about immigration looks at the impact of immi-
grants on the economy (jobs, growth, productivity) and society (crime,
conflict, social cohesion). This book presents another take on immigra-
tionbylookingathowimmigrantsfromminoritybackgroundshavetrans-
formedthebuiltenvironmentofthesuburbs,townsandneighbourhoods
where they settle, changing the way that Australian cities, suburbs and
towns look and feel while at the same time changing the social landscape
of Australian society. Immigrants are transformed by the experience of
settling in a new society and, in turn, transform the places that become
their new homes, particularly evident in the places and spaces created by
immigrantcommunities for private or community use. The overall objec-
tive of this book is to record the impact of ethnic minorities on the built
environmentinAustraliancitiesandruralandregionalareas,andtoinves-
tigatethe(changing)socialusesofthisethnicheritage.Here,thefocusis
on minority immigrant communities. By this, we mean those immigrants
who do not come from English-speaking Western societies, particularly
v
vi PREFACE
the British and Irish colonial immigrants—Anglo-Celtic immigrants—
whohavedominatedAustralianimmigrationintakes,untilrecentdecades,
forovertwocenturies,andstillarriveinAustraliainlargenumbers.While
the concept of minority immigrant communities is not without prob-
lems—many immigrants born in the United Kingdom, for example, may
have Asian or West Indian or other ethnic and cultural heritage, and be
Muslim, Hindu or from other non-Christian religious backgrounds—this
approachpermitsthegazeofourstudytofocusonarelativelyoverlooked
and increasingly important domain of immigrant place making. But at
the same time the society into which new immigrants settle is a post-
colonial society, with a long history of Indigenous settlement prior to
subsequent waves of immigration.The cosmopolitan perspective adopted
for this book means that we situate the minority migrant presence within
theIndigenousandAnglo-CelticimmigrantcommunitiesofallAustralian
places and spaces.
In the cities, we investigate what we call ethnic precincts such as
Chinatown as a clustered suburban form of Australia’s minority immi-
grant community heritage. While most immigrants settle in Australia’s
large cities, we also wanted to look at the places and spaces they create in
Australia’s rural and regional areas. However, place making is more than
constructingorconvertingbuildingsforprivateorcommunityusebynew
immigrant communities. It is much more than architecture or heritage.
It is also about the social interactions that occur within these places. In
both the Australian cities and the ‘bush’ (an Australian colloquial term
for non-metropolitan dwellers), we wanted to investigate how the places
built or developed by minority ethnic communities become an integral
partofthelivesofpeoplesofdiverseIndigenousandethnicbackgrounds
of Australian cities, and rural and regional areas.
BecauseAustralianimmigrationisperhapsAustralia’smostcontentious
area of public policy, the immigrant presence in Australian metropolitan
and regional cities and rural towns is also often contentious. This
is probably most evident in the protests to proposals by Australia’s
Islamic communities—many of them new immigrants from a minority
background—to build new Mosques in suburbs and regional towns.
Indeed, most opposition to the place making of immigrant minorities
PREFACE vii
relatestobuildingsusedforreligiouspurposes.Thefocusontheimpactof
minority ethnic communities on the built environment is partly because
it is contested but also because non-Anglo-Celtic immigration is more
visibly different to that of British and Irish immigration. Australia has a
long history of formal and informal racism that shapes both immigra-
tion policy and the reception of immigrant minority communities. This
racism is similar but different to ways that the initial waves of British
and Irish immigrants reacted to the Indigenous communities who were
living here. Often the community and private buildings constructed by
new immigrants provide a safe place where immigrant communities can
live and socialise, but over time often become places and spaces for social
interaction of people in the neighbourhood from very diverse cultural
backgrounds.
In order to study the impact of minority ethnic communities on the
builtenvironment,wefocusourattentiononthreeAustraliastates—New
SouthWales,WesternAustraliaandQueensland—andtakeascasestudies
suburban, regional and rural sites in each state. We then investigate how
the (changing) immigrant presence led to changes in the built environ-
ment in the form of new buildings or the repurposing of existing build-
ings. There are a number of questions to investigate here: How and why
were each of the sites developed? What changes have there been in the
social uses of these buildings, spaces and places over time? What was the
resulting interaction with local and national regulatory regimes and the
responses by other communities in the neighbourhood? The case studies
offer numerous examples in which places built and used by non-Anglo-
Celticimmigrantsandtheirdescendantshavebecomesitesofinformalised
inter-ethnic exchange and interaction. In reflecting on each site’s history,
socialuseandroleininterculturalexchange,weshowtheextenttowhich
non-Anglo-Celtic immigrant minorities have literally changed the face
of Australian neighbourhoods—both physically and socially. As such, the
places and spaces built by or transformed by these immigrants challenge
narratives of ‘Australianness’ that represent multicultural place making as
a foreign incursion into an otherwise Anglo-Celtic landscape. They are
physical embodiments of the complex, embedded and sometimes long-
standing and contradictory relationships of immigrant minorities within
viii PREFACE
their local communities, in neighbourhoods that were also transformed
by the immigrant arrivals that displaced Indigenous peoples living there
centuriesearlier.Wehopetobetterunderstandthehistoricalandcontem-
poraryaspectsofcosmopolitanplacemakinginAustralia’sruralandurban
social landscape.
Broadway, Australia Jock Collins
Bathurst, Australia Branka Krivokapic-Skoko
Galston, Australia Kirrily Jordan
Townsville, Australia Hurriyet Babacan
Smithfield, Australia Narayan Gopalkrishnan
Acknowledgements
Theresearchforthisbookwasfinancedbyafour-yearAustralianResearch
Council Linkage Grant. We also had funding and support from the
NationalTrustofAustralia(WA),theCommunityRelationsCommission
for Multicultural Australia, the National Trust of Australia (NSW) and
the Department of the Premier and Cabinet, Qld. There are numerous
individuals who gave their time, energy and knowledge to assist with the
research over the years; we are very grateful for their support. In partic-
ular,wewouldliketoacknowledgethesupportof:Mr.EnzoSirna,ofthe
National Trust of Australia (WA), whose enthusiasm and tireless support
fortheprojectwerecriticaltoitssuccessfulcompletion;Mr.TomPerrigo,
also of the National Trust of Australia (WA), who was the first person
to recognise the importance of this research and to pledge funding and
support for it; and Mr. Warren MacMillan—formerly of the Department
of the Premier and Cabinet, Queensland, for invaluable support with the
Queensland fieldwork. Katherine Watson provided her excellent editing
skillstothismanuscript,thoughwetakeresponsibilityforwhateverfaults
and errors remain. Jan Rath provided invaluable networking opportu-
nities for discussion of theoretical and policy insights into the relation-
ships between immigrant communities and public and private space in
the metropolises of the world.
ix
Contents
1 Place Making, Migration and the Built Environment:
An Introduction 1
1.1 Australia’s Changing Patterns of Immigrant
Settlement 8
1.2 Racialisation of Australian Immigration Policy
and Australian Immigrants 10
1.3 Immigrant Entrepreneurship in Australia 14
1.4 Multiculturalism vs Cosmopolitanism 17
1.5 Methodology 19
References 23
2 Immigrant Minorities and the Built Environment
in New South Wales 33
2.1 Minority Immigrants and the Built Environment
in Sydney’s Chinatown 35
2.1.1 Immigration and Sydney’s Chinatown 35
2.1.2 Chinatown as an Ethnic Precinct 46
2.1.3 Visitors’ Voices 56
2.1.4 Regulating Chinatown 63
2.1.5 Cosmopolitan Monuments in Chinatown 75
2.2 Minority Immigrants and the Built Environment
in Port Kembla 88
2.2.1 Port Kembla’s Immigration History 89
xi
