The concepts of memory, identity, and place form key debates in geographical literature because they link people to place. Memory incorporates narratives of the past that are articulated in the present day and can inform the way identities are constructed. The intersections of memory and identity can prompt us to think about how we experience and/or have experienced place(s). In this review, I trace discussions that position memory and identity as meta‐concepts that coalesce with the home and home‐building practices. I situate this discussion in and around the home because the home is commonly our most frequented place. It is a place where our person‐place bonds develop through everyday encounters and practices. I explore how memory, identity, and place have been broached in the home by using more‐than‐representational approaches. I have turned to more‐than‐representational theory to flesh out how enactments and encounters with objects and other materialities in the home demonstrate agency and connections to the home, which are indicative of memory and identity in action. Sensory and material encounters provoke remembrances and identifications with home(lands) through objects, people, food, and places that hold particular resonance among migrants.
Australia publicly espouses its multiculturalism as a key component of its national identity. In this paper, I argue that despite the importance of multiculturalism to Australia's identity, political decisions and discourse has muddied its remit with respect to humanitarian migrant intake programs and outcomes. Australia's history of selective migrant intake and restrictive refugee policy continues the Othering of past policies into contemporary settings. Refugee policy has become a political football. During the most recent national election campaign (May 2019), the plight of sick and ill refugees, currently housed offshore in detention centers, was used as a political pawn. Lost amid this political rhetoric were the traumatic narratives of forced migrants resettling in Australia's cities. Without possibility for a loud voice in public discourse, there is little opportunity for more Australians to understand how refugees experience detention centers, struggle to attain residency visas, and make "home" in multicultural Australia. I draw on research with Sri Lankan refugees in Sydney to give voice to these micro-level, place-based experiences of vulnerable arrivals. These stories, I think, can (re)shape and enrich Australia's multicultural identity because they challenge us to not only accept difference but recognize the circumstances through which Australia's diversity seeds its narrative.
This research, conducted in the Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia, explores attachment to the home in the context of bushfire risk. The paper builds on existing research that has focused both on the home and on emplaced and mobile methods therein and seeks to understand the range of human and non‐human attachments. We situate our examination of attachment in the context of a bushfire‐prone suburban area to consider whether attachments to home may be influenced by an external risk. We use a mix of verbal, visual, and sensory methods (walking and image‐led interviews) to examine both verbal and sensorial articulations in place and in the home. We report on a stepwise analysis of place attachments, home, and bushfire risk. First and while interviewing, we moved with the participants inside and outside of their homes to understand how attachment to those sites was constructed and maintained. Second, we considered those encounters as assemblages of attachments to place. Finally, we studied those assemblages of home‐bound attachments in the context of the risk of bushfire in proximate suburbs.
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