Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses
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ItemMigrants' houses: the importance of housing form in migrants' settlement( 2010)Literature on the built form of the house and its meaning for migrants’ home-building has been inadequate and scarce. In order to address the insufficiency in the literature, this thesis constructs a theoretical framework based on various fields of study, in addition to existing critical studies concerning the immigrants’ experience in the city in various scales. These fields are the notion of home-building practices and the concepts embedded within it of home and house. The theoretical framework provides a tool for the examination of different migrant groups and their ways of home-building, through which each migrant group can be examined and discussed. The research examines four migrant groups in two metropolitan cities (Melbourne and Tel Aviv) in two countries of destination (Australia and Israel) and two periods of time of migration (the 1950s-1960s and the 1990s-2000s). The four groups are Italians and Chinese in Melbourne, and Moroccans and Russians (from the FSU) in Tel Aviv. Qualitative data from forty-six in-depth interviews with migrants in their home-environments, and a short survey of real-estate agents in the two cities have been gathered to answer the research question: what is the role of housing form in the process of migrants’ home-building? This thesis argues that the built form of the house is meaningful in a range of diverse ways during the process of home-building, and that each migrant group fosters one key feeling over other feelings in their home-building (Hage, 1997: 102). Italians in Melbourne enhance the feeling of familiarity by bridging their Italian past and the Australian environment through their home-building, while Chinese in Melbourne maximise the feeling of sense of possibility in their home-building to improve their situation in Australian society. Moroccans in Tel Aviv foster the feeling of community in their home-building to assist them with educating the next generation and Israeli society about the rich past of Moroccan Jews, and Russians in Tel Aviv, who appeared to be more diverse than other groups, develop the feeling of security in their home-building to either integrate in the Israeli environment or replicate past life through the reproduction of past home-environments. The way groups differ in their specific home-building depends on their specific circumstances of migration, namely the origin country, country of destination and period of migration, as well as the historical, economic and social contexts around migration. Yet, it is argued that the importance of the house is influenced not only by the ethnic origin of its dwellers, but also by other identity lines of the migrants, such as their age at the time of migration or their origin and class in the homeland. The thesis argues that houses of migrants do not always represent the ethnic origin of their dwellers, as has often been suggested in the literature. But they do represent the relationship their owners have with the dominant society, which influences the level of visibility of the migrant’s presence and the extent to which it is conveyed through the house. It is also argued that migrants’ houses are imagined in a gendered view, though this appears diverse and complicated. Another finding is that migrants’ houses are understood as dynamic, although in a different way for different groups. They are transnational homes in many senses, although the way migrants regard their house depends on their age and their ability to adjust to recent technological and global changes that also affect housing. Another finding is that houses of migrants are forms of cultural capital through which power relations between migrant groups and members of the dominant society are being constructed and contested. Houses of migrants are also sites of the everyday, where some resist these capital forces through the creation of an everyday environment. Finally, materiality appears to be significant in the migrants’ house with the abundant presence of objects denoting nostalgia such as souvenirs and collections inside the house, but this also differs among different ethnic groups and different age groups among participants.