Abstract
This chapter examines the interlocking notions of migration, space, and identity through a study of a suburban district, Box Hill, in Melbourne, Australia. It argues that the evolving spatiality of Box Hill, perceived as an emerging Chinatown in public narratives, is an outcome of international migration and domestic immigration policies. The case of Box Hill is illustrative of global formations of multiethnic neighborhoods, particularly revolving around public politics about space and identity. This study sheds light on the discursive production of Box Hill, as a place, through its discursive relation with Chinatown, as a space; by applying the notion of place-making, this study reveals tension with public politics of space and identity as well as agencies and impetuses under which multifaceted ethnic spaces were produced in a translocal terrain.
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Notes
- 1.
Gao-Miles, “Beyond the Ethnic Enclave.”
- 2.
See, for instance, Hall and du Gay, Questions of Cultural Identity.
- 3.
Watson, City Publics, 7.
- 4.
ABS, 2016 Census.
- 5.
ABS, 2001 Census; 2016 Census.
- 6.
Gupta and Ferguson, “Culture, Power, Place,” 6.
- 7.
ABS, 2006 Census.
- 8.
Wells and Watson, “A Politics of Resentment,” 261.
- 9.
Wise, “Sensuous Multiculturalism.”
- 10.
Wise, “‘You Wouldn’t Know What’s in There Would You?’ Homeliness and ‘Foreign’ Signs in Ashfield, Sydney,” 96.
- 11.
Wells and Watson, “A Politics of Resentment.”
- 12.
Gupta and Ferguson, “Beyond ‘Culture’,” 38.
- 13.
By the end of World War II, 5135 persons in the country had a birthplace in China, approximately one-fourth of its population at the beginning of the century. ABS, 1911 Census of the Commonwealth of Australia; 1947 Census of the Commonwealth of Australia. It must be clarified that a small percentage of China-born persons was ethnically not Chinese. The data do not include Hong Kong-born persons.
- 14.
ABS, 2016 Census of Population and Housing.
- 15.
For a critical examination of Australia and Asia, see Ang and Stratton, “Asianing Australia.”
- 16.
Melbourne City Council, “Chinatown Action Plan.”
- 17.
Anderson, “‘Chinatown Re-oriented’,” 2.
- 18.
For example, Ang, “At Home in Asia? Sydney’s Chinatown and Australia’s ‘Asian Century’;” Hage, “At Home in the Entrails of the West;” Wise, “‘You wouldn’t know what’s in there would you?’ Homeliness and ‘Foreign’ Signs in Ashfield, Sydney.”
- 19.
Gao-Miles, “Beyond the Ethnic Enclave.”
- 20.
Brickell and Datta, “Introduction: Translocal Geographies,” 3.
- 21.
Online Chinatown, http://www.chinatown.com.au/news_49073.html. Retrieved May 5, 2013.
- 22.
Ibid.
- 23.
Logan and Zhang, “Identifying Ethnic Neighborhoods by Census Data;” Logan et al., “Immigrant Enclaves and Ethnic Communities in New York and Los Angeles.”
- 24.
Massey, “Ethnic Residential Segregation,” 317.
- 25.
Martin and Miller, “Space and Contentious Politics,” 147.
- 26.
Stoler, “Sexual Affronts and Racial Frontiers.”
- 27.
Watson, City Publics.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to express my gratitude to Jennifer Moore at Washington University in St. Louis for her generous help in making the GIS map (Fig. 13.2).
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Gao-Miles, L. (2019). The Politics of Space and Identity: Making Place in a Suburban District. In: Linhard, T., Parsons, T.H. (eds) Mapping Migration, Identity, and Space. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77956-0_13
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