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To boldly stay: refugees, enterprise, industry and spatial inscription
Citation
Beynon, D, To boldly stay: refugees, enterprise, industry and spatial inscription, Society of Architectural Historian (SAH) 2021 virtual Conference, 13-17 April 20201, Montreal, Canada (Online) (2021) [Conference Extract]
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Abstract
This paper explores the impact of refugees who resided at the Enterprise Migrant Hostel, in
Springvale, an outer suburb of Melbourne in mid-1970s to early 1980s. The Enterprise Hostel’s
residents during this time were mostly of Asian backgrounds, in particular from Vietnam, Cambodia
and Laos, and represented a distinct change to Australia’s demography and self-image. This
exploration traces refugee arrival, settlement and the establishment of businesses or industries that
have profoundly changed the built, demographic and cultural environment around the Hostel since
the 1970s. This exploration focuses on a couple of business enterprises and their proprietors as
examples of a great number of new enterprises developed in the Springvale area by these refugees,
introducing new forms of retailing, manufacturing, wholesaling, importing, and other industries. As
well as being sometimes heroic stories of migration and individual or family business development,
these accounts also illustrate the re-imagining and re-centring of an Australian city’s suburban
environment. Their described micro-practices of labour occupied and spatially transformed existing
spaces and buildings and added new layers of spatial inscription to the land, eventually leading to
formal changes to their surrounding urban environments. Such identifications also complicate
Australia’s sometimes reluctant shift in identity from an outpost of British culture to a nation
gradually accepting its geographical position south east of Asia. However their stories also
complicate straightforward notions of transcultural identity and spatiality. While all are externally
identified as Vietnamese refugees, some self-identify as Vietnamese and some as
Chinese/Cantonese, whereas their businesses have adopted pan-Asian identities.
Item Details
Item Type: | Conference Extract |
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Keywords: | architecture, urban development, refugee settlement, suburbs |
Research Division: | Built Environment and Design |
Research Group: | Architecture |
Research Field: | Architectural history, theory and criticism |
Objective Division: | Expanding Knowledge |
Objective Group: | Expanding knowledge |
Objective Field: | Expanding knowledge in built environment and design |
UTAS Author: | Beynon, D (Associate Professor David Beynon) |
ID Code: | 146602 |
Year Published: | 2021 |
Funding Support: | Australian Research Council (DP190101531) |
Deposited By: | Architecture and Design |
Deposited On: | 2021-09-15 |
Last Modified: | 2021-09-15 |
Downloads: | 0 |
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