School of Geography - Theses
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ItemWhat is happening to care work and why? Perspectives of female Long Day Care educators in Greater Melbourne( 2023)This thesis examines the delineation of care work and responsibility for care to women and migrants in the Melbourne Long Day Care sector. While existing studies on the childcare workforce address concerns around retention and low pay, this thesis investigates how widespread staff shortages are related to the childcare workforce’s demographic composition. Employing mixed methods, it combines analysis of secondary data from the Australian Census of Population and Housing with in-depth insights from thirteen semi-structured interviews with Early Childhood Teachers and educators. This approach allowed personal work and life course trajectories to be situated against large-scale workforce trends. The Early Childhood workforce in Melbourne is 97.2% females and 51.3% migrants, and more likely to have children and be highly educated than the total female workforce. The quality and professionalisation agendas to which this sector has been subjected are often framed as having led to increased workloads and qualification requirements without increases to pay, resulting in challenges in attracting and retaining staff. Insights from in-depth interviews further suggest that participants’ work decisions involved many other considerations situated in their wider lives. Qualification requirements increased the appeal of this sector, particularly for migrants, given Australia’s predominantly skilled immigration system. Participants’ descriptions of their work mirrored accepted approaches to early education and care, centring the importance of relationships with families and children. However, these relationships were uneven, due to the way childcare is positioned as a user-pays service, often resulting in un-care for participants, who were therefore responsible for caring for themselves. The aspirational and relational approaches to pedagogy outlined in official policy were found to be at odds with the market-based circumstances under which childcare is delivered in Australia. Profit-making practices compromised the quality and professionalisation agenda, conditioned and enabled by regulatory frameworks. Thus, although significant efforts have been made to increase the attractiveness and societal esteem of work in Long Day Care, these policy endeavours conflict with the rationalisation of childcare provision in a predominantly market-based care landscape. This thesis makes a significant contribution to the “care diamonds” framework, which models care responsibility as being shared between four actors: market, state, not-for-profit and community. A fifth actor was identified: the individual educator or teacher, who bore ultimate responsibility for the limitations of current Australian approaches to childcare. This extends existing understandings of the role of women’s unrecognised labour in the provision of unpaid care, finding that informal divisions of labour continued to play a vital role in sustaining the provision of education and care within a highly regulated, professionalised context. Current policy settings played a large role in shaping this process.
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ItemChanging Vibes, Precarious Lives: The Experiences & Hardships of Melbourne 'Hospo-Workers' During the Covid-19 Pandemic( 2023)In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic engendered a series of economic and social crises along intersecting fault lines and through multiple spatialities. These crises impacted local and global economic flows, reshaped urban spaces, produced new (im)mobilities, and intensified the vulnerability and exploitation of precarious individuals and communities. This thesis seeks to explore how workers in Melbourne’s hospitality sector were impacted by the pandemic; how their work changed, the hardships they experienced as a result, and the tactics they developed to respond to these hardships. The thesis builds on pre-existing research on labour and precarity to affirm the affective nature of work, and the extent to which precarity has become a predominant condition of economic and cultural life. By conducting a series of in-depth qualitative interviews with individuals who worked in Melbourne’s hospitality sector during the pandemic, it expands geographic understandings of the cultural and economic geographies of hospitality and its labour-market. It also conceptualises how individuals identify and express affective attachment to hospitality work by developing a typology around respondents’ colloquial invocation of ‘hospo’ and ‘vibe’. This thesis also elucidates how respondents enacted a range of tactics which resisted oppressive and exploitive management strategies across embodied and digital spatialities. It concludes that, despite economic, emotional, social and embodied hardships experienced during the pandemic, ‘hospo-workers’ demonstrated individual and collective capacities for agency, enacting them in the hopes of destabilising the entrenched exploitation and flexibilisation of labour in the hospitality sector, and strengthening the networks of care and social connections that emerge amongst workers in Melbourne venues.
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ItemThird Culture Kids: Making Homes in Transient Lives( 2023)This thesis explores how third culture kids feel, experience and (re)create home throughout their transient and mobile lives. Geographic mobility, experiences of transition and relocation is at the core of third culture kids’ lives. Third culture kids are individuals who have spent a significant part of their developmental years outside their parents’ passport country due to their parents’ occupation and are often described as children of expatriate parents from relatively high socioeconomic groups. For many third culture kids, their sense of home is one marked by a certain collective disorientation—home is everywhere yet nowhere at once. Drawing on narratives collected from participant-driven photo-elicitation interviews, this thesis adopts a non-representational style of research to uncover the situated and embodied affective experiences of home for third culture kids. The relationship between mobility and home is explored through three empirical chapters of gaps, bubbles and lines. Gaps reveals how detachment—the process of withdrawing from previous sustained relations and attachment—characterises their affective relations to place. Bubbles shows how third culture kids actively create and maintain enclosed expatriate spaces that generates and nurtures affective atmospheres of safety, comfort and familiarity—one that resembles a sense of home. Lines suggest how habitual routines is central to the homemaking processes for third culture kids.
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ItemFuel loads and fire: A palaeoecological analysis of long-term fire and fuel dynamics in Bundjalung National Park( 2022)Catastrophic bushfires have increased in size, frequency, and intensity in eastern and south-eastern Australia over recent decades. Due to the extensive environmental, social, and economic implications of these wildfires, management and mitigation attempts for catastrophic fire has been made topical by media, academics, and authoritative bodies. Central to these discussions, and the dominant paradigm explaining wildfire abundance, is climate change and increasing ignition sources. A very recent focus on landscape management provides a counterpoint to this climate change narrative, and highlights changing fuel loads as a potential driver of fire. If Australia is to effectively combat catastrophic fires, it must first understand the drivers at play. The amount, type, and condition of vegetation (i.e. fuel) present in landscapes is influenced by both climate change and land management practices. To better understand their individual roles in driving fuel loads and fire, there is an urgent need for long term data which can distinguish between the influences of changing climate and changing land management practices. This study analysed long-term fire and fuel dynamics in Bundjalung National Park, an area stretching from the eastern seaboard inland in northern New South Wales (NNSW), that was impacted by the large-scale 2019/2020 Black Summer Bushfires. The project focused on how fuel loads and fire respond to important local and regional drivers, such as changes in climate, sea level, and anthropogenic land management through the Holocene (and Anthropocene). A sediment core from Wangar Swamp in Bundjalung National Park was analysed using a set of palaeoecological approaches selected to assess changes in fuel loads and fire activity. This analysis allowed a reconstruction of the changes in fuel loads and fire activity through the Holocene to the present in this part of NNSW. The research disproves the classification of Bundjalung National Park as a wilderness area, by revealing the region as a cultural landscape that has been carefully and meticulously managed by Bundjalung people through the Holocene. Manipulation of ecological processes allowed Bundjalung to reduce wildfire and maintain an Allocasuarina spp. dominated (fire disliking) vegetation through the application of cultural burning. The removal and suppression of cultural practices after British Invasion incurred significant changes on fire and fuel load dynamics at Bundjalung National Park. A six-fold increase in flammable Eucalyptoid vegetation, and the ultimate removal of pyrophobic taxa has turned a once balanced landscape, into a region awaiting, and promoting its next catastrophic fire.
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ItemHotter in the city: Experiences of spinal cord injury during heat waves in Melbourne.( 2022)As a direct result of anthropogenic climate change, Melbourne will likely experience heat events of greater duration, intensity and regularity (Steffen et al., 2014). The impacts of these heat waves will not be evenly felt, however, and people living with a disability will likely experience disproportionate vulnerabilities and be exposed to particularly profound challenges. The bodies of literature that aim to map and understand the context-specific impacts of climate change have thus omitted primary accounts from the disabled community, leaving a void in existing knowledge and understanding that it is vital to address. This research aims to address this knowledge gap by listening to and learning from the experiences of people living with a spinal cord injury (SCI) as they live and move through Melbourne during periods of extreme heat. Additionally, this project contrasts the researched lived experience of people living with SCI with local, State and Federal government policy that seeks to govern these experiences, to explore the nuances of policy thinking and framings and their misalignment with the interests of people living with SCI in Melbourne. This research also takes the step of considering strategies that might better support the health and agency of this particular social group. This thesis uses a novel duet of qualitative methods – semi-structured interviews and a virtual go-along interview – to examine structural and systemic barriers to equal access to space, resources and services and thus to equitable participation in a warming world.
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ItemDigital Encounters with War Imagery: Making Sense of the 2022 Russia-Ukraine War( 2022)On 24th February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, triggering a war that is unfolding to be the largest in Europe since 1945 by its scale of destruction (BBC, 2022). This war continues to be broadcasted on a digitised stage that has allowed for intimate exposure of the conflict and its disastrous consequences to different publics worldwide (Coleman & Sardarizadeh, 2022). As this phenomenon of digitisation persists, there is a pressing need to explore the transformative power of digital media, as we increasingly encounter it as a window into the war throughout our everyday lives. Positioned within the sub-discipline of Cultural Geography, this thesis aims to explore how we make sense of war through digital media encounters, using the case study context of the 2022 Russia-Ukraine conflict. It will do so by addressing two research questions: (1) How is the Russia-Ukraine war represented through digital imagery? and (2) How do everyday encounters with digital media affect our capacity to make sense of the Russia-Ukraine war? Underpinned by Non-Representational Theory, this thesis utilises three methods of autoethnography, qualitative content analysis and semi-structured interviews. Though a ‘non-representational style’ of engagement, this thesis places a heightened attention on affect, embodiment and process in its analysis and presents its findings through various composite narratives. This thesis aims to challenge knowledge rooted in representational thought about how digital media affects us, and instead offer a non-representational understanding of digital media that acknowledges the affective, embodied and processual forces within these encounters that transform our capacity to make sense of the war it depicts.
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ItemHaving a child in a pandemic: exploring the experience of pregnancy, birth and postpartum during 2021( 2022)Having a child marks a major transition in the life of a woman, creating a new identity for her to take on as she becomes a mother. Social support, cultural normality and respectful maternal health care have the potential to support the woman in positively experience her transition to motherhood. The COVID-19 pandemic effected these mitigated factors, public health measures to slow or stop the spread of the virus have limited social contact and changing the provision of healthcare. Whilst demographers predicted that the social and economic effects of the pandemic would see a decrease in the number of babies being born, early data suggests during 2021 we also saw an increase in births in NSW public hospitals. This increase represents an interesting and unexpected shift in fertility trends that had otherwise been in decline for many years and presents an interesting backdrop for the challenges the COVID-19 pandemic presents to the experience of having a child. This thesis combines quantitative and qualitative methods through a social constructionist framing to explore the experience of having a child during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here individuals’ perceptions of their experience are examined, from the decision to conceive through to postpartum. Previous research in this space has been conducted from the nursing, midwifery or health sciences perspectives, which focuses on medical care rather than the social implications of the changed experience. Through the use of a geographic and temporally bound case study, those who have birth in Greater Sydney and the surrounding areas during 2021, this thesis provides a novel geographic perspective. During 2021, New South Wales experienced 106 days of mobility restrictions commonly referred to as lockdown, which dramatically changed the experience of having a child. The geographic perspective employed here provides insight into how experiences of transition to motherhood are shaped by space and place, using this not only to ground perceptions of experience, but also to contextualise the increase seen in birth rates in New South Wales and Australia during 2021. Insights from the in-depth interviews suggest that the rise in birth-rates during the COVID-19 pandemic was likely to be attributed to decisions around the timing of births, rather than to the increase in the total number of children that a woman would have in the longer run.
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ItemFeeling climate change in Barwon South West: Emotions, place and adaptation governance( 2022)Climate change is experienced in the everyday through relationships with humans, non-humans, and the places that hold them. Despite this, the practice of climate adaptation tends to be understood through the technocratic disembodied lens of global climate science. Climate adaptation professionals working at the local-scale engage with both ways of knowing. This thesis analyses the climate emotions of 10 climate adaptation professionals working in Barwon South West, a region of Victoria, Australia. This region is vulnerable to many climate-change impacts including bushfires, sea-level-rise and heatwaves. Through walking interviews in valued places, associative mapping, narrative-thematic analysis, and poetic methods, I drew out the powerful emotional forces shaping and shaped by these adaptation professionals’ relationships with place, people, climate imaginaries and work. Climate change impacted participants relationships with place, infusing them with a sense of grief, but participants also engaged with place to find solace and relief. Climate emotions were triggered by past, present and future climate imaginaries; dystopian future imaginaries produced anxiety, while local-scale imaginaries were associated with hope and agency. These emotions were consciously and unconsciously managed by participants. Overall, emotions about climate were fundamental features of participants’ lives in and outside the workplace. This thesis illustrates the emotional, peopled practice of adaptation governance, highlights the power of emotions to responses to climate change and reveals how participants find agency and wellbeing in the face of climate change.
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ItemGoverning Rock Fishing Risk on Australian Coasts: A qualitative study of framing, social power, and collaboration( 2022)Rock fishing is a form of recreational fishing where anglers cast lines off coastal rock forms. It is frequently described as Australia’s ‘deadliest sport’. Although 7% of Australia’s population participate in rock fishing, most rock fishing deaths are concentrated in a relatively small number of locations. Around half of these deaths involve Australian residents born overseas and from non-English speaking backgrounds. Increased efforts over recent decades by governments and community organisations to reduce rock fishing death and injury have had limited success. The qualitative study reported here aims to contribute to ongoing efforts to effectively govern risks associated with rock fishing. It does so by exploring how stakeholders in diverse government and non-government organisations frame people, define problems, allocate responsibilities, and perceive other stakeholders involved in rock fishing. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with thirty-five participants drawn from the main rock fishing states of New South Wales, Western Australia, and Victoria. Thematic and frame analysis identified: (1) how participants distinguished between people who fitted within a cultural identity of ‘rock fishers’ and other groups who rock fished; (2) clarified the ways in which different understandings of problems related to different understandings of responsibility; and (3) investigated potential for disagreement amongst different sub-groups of stakeholders, particularly between those with certified expertise and those with experiential expertise. Findings suggest that the effectiveness of current rock fishing risk governance is impaired by formal governance structures that fail to account for the contradictions between how rock fishing risks are experienced by diverse costal users and how it is governed. Insights from this study help to identify policy-relevant opportunities for improved collaboration between stakeholders who seek to govern rock fishing risk in Australia.
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ItemNot/ at Risk: A Case Study of Young Adult Perspectives on COVID-19 and Vaccination in Melbourne( 2021-12-07)Given the importance of vaccination in halting the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic across the globe, research on vaccine intention and hesitancy in specific place-based contexts is vital (Butter et al. 2021; Craddock 2000; Dubé & MacDonald 2020; Piltch-Loeb et al. 2021). Within Australia, studies exploring COVID-19 vaccine intentions both before and after the development of vaccines demonstrated varying results, meriting further analysis at a cohort level (Alley et al. 2021; To et al. 2021; Davis et al. 2021; Edwards et al. 2021). However, little research has explored young adult perspectives despite their increasing importance in the vaccine rollout, increased susceptibility to the delta variant, and higher risk of adverse effects from vaccination. To address this research gap, this thesis presents a case study of young adult experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic in Melbourne – the epicentre of the pandemic in Australia - and examines primary drivers and barriers towards vaccine intention as informed by broader socio-spatial and temporal contexts. A vaccine hesitancy-specific risk culture and healthism framework informs this study, predicated on vaccine decision-making reflecting an individual’s commitment to minimising personal risk and maximising health benefits (Peretti-Watel et al. 2015). Through semi-structured interviews conducted in July of 2021, this thesis explores the attitudes and beliefs of young adults during a critical period, as the delta variant presented an emerging threat, but vaccine access was still largely age-restricted. Two major themes emerged: COVID-19 risk perception among young adults was experienced at multiple scales, from the global to individual; and perceived marginalisation of young adults by a conservative government in the vaccine rollout was experienced through the lens of past vulnerability and potential future insecurity.