Searching for Community.indb

Searching for Community

Searching for Community melbourne to delhi

Edited by

Supriya Singh, Yaso Nadarajah, Martin Mulligan and Chris Chamberlain

MANOHAR 2015

First published 2015 © Editors, 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the editors and the publisher ISBN 978-93-5098-095-8 Published by Ajay Kumar Jain for Manohar Publishers & Distributors 4753/23 Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi 110 002 Typeset by Ravi Shanker Delhi 110 095 Printed at Salasar Imaging Systems Delhi 110 035

Contents Foreword

7

Acknowledgments

9

Contributors

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1. Introduction 17 2. Ways of Thinking about Community Formation in the Flux of Urban Life martin mulligan

33

3. Transnational Community and Money in the Indian Diaspora in Melbourne supriya singh 59 4. Bangladeshis in Delhi: Making Sense of the Small Voices Against the Big Narrative partha s. ghosh

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5. Kuala Lumpur City: At the Confluence of History, Identity and Nation-making yasa nadarajah

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6. Urbanization, Modernity and Community in the Global South: The Case of Colombo siri hettige 119 7. Port Moresby: Contesting Tradition, Identity and Urbanization peter phipps 149

6 Contents 8. Nation, Nationalism and the Multicultural Community: Reflections on Race in Singapore catherine gomes 165 9. Privileged and Detached? Mobility and Community in (Sub)urban Melbourne val colic-peisker 187 10. Melbourne: The Stigma of Homelessness and the Search for Community chris chamberlain and guy johnson 223 Index

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Foreword When I hear about a ground-breaking study that deals with cities and the search for belonging, in a world of global flows, I am at once reminded of that wonderful line in Moliere’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme about the Frenchman who discovered at the age of 70 that he had been speaking prose all his life. Born and raised in Chicago, on the south side of Mayor Richard M. Daley’s Cook County, I am the son of second generation Americans whose own parents had emigrated from the poverty-stricken villages of Sicily to the promise of New York City in the late nineteenth century. I learned from them the two lessons of global migration. The first is the desperate desire to belong to a like-minded community, the knowledge of which, over time, is vital to our understanding of how cities can sustain themselves. The second is managing the almost unbearable tension inherent in the task of being part of the constant, continual reframing of the concept of community in their adopted cities. At the end, the stories of these and other global travellers share a common thread: peoples on the move are forever perennial sojourners in their own land. I too repeated my grandparents’ story of migration. Forty years ago, I moved from the United States via Austria to Australia, I left home at seventeen to study a thousand miles away in Denver, after two years of which I travelled 10,000 miles to study in Vienna. Austria was a prosperous, neutral buffer state between the West and the Iron Curtain, at the height of the Cold War. I returned home a couple of years later to complete my doctorate and then found work on the East Coast, commuting between Boston and New York to earn my living as a stockbroker at Merrill Lynch.

8 Foreword After a year of a comfortable existence, I was invited by a famous professor at Columbia University to publish my PhD thesis on the New Left in his personal series. He also invited me to Columbia to give a seminar, where I met the very urbane vice-chancellor of the University of Queensland, Zelman Cowen. He offered me a position in Brisbane, which I had never heard of, and, with more enthusiasm than thought, I accepted. That was the beginning of my forty years in Australian higher education, teaching and writing about human security and international politics. In my desire to belong to a like-minded community, I located myself in the local and virtual academic community, eschewing the American community, which obsessively brooded over a sense of “loss”, in favour of the company of high-powered Australian and foreign-born scholars whose cosmopolitan outlook shaped my own professional trajectory. Managing the tension of being part of the constant reframing of community proved harder, as I fought against the stereotyping of the American abroad, on the one hand, and the deadening Australian propensity to categorize strangers in the land. Not much has changed in this regard in four decades, as Australians continue to pigeonhole newcomers to their cities and environs. What has changed is the relationship to my original homeland. In my visits to the United States, over many years, I have become less and connected, feeling more like a visitor than a native son. The essays that follow provide similar, personal insights that make sense of the impact of increasing globalization on the concept of communities in the Asia-Pacific region, with all their peculiarities and particularities. I commend them without hesitation or reservation. Joseph M. Siracusa

Deputy Dean Global and Language Studies, RMIT University, Melbourne

Acknowledgments This book has come together as a result of a Melbourne Roundtable on City, Community and Globalization held on the 9th and 10th of June, 2011 at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. It was hosted by the Community Sustainability (CS) Program within the Global Cities Research Institute, RMIT University,Melbourne, Australia. The CS program brought together RMIT researchers as well as international researchers who might otherwise have remained largely unknown to each other and this created a fertile intellectual space for linking Melbourne experiences to those of other cities in the AsiaPacific region. The Roundtable 2011 was based on the belief that the study of communities is vital to understanding how cities can sustain themselves, given their unprecedented global growth. This, in turn, would reinvigorate the study of community formation and adaptation within changing urbanenvironments.The focus on communitycan contribute tothe study of urbanisation which traditionally has drawnon demography, urban planning, infrastructure and development, transportation and affordable housing. As well as focusing on the lived experience of city-dwellers,this group of researchers aimed to establish a new theoretical and methodological agenda for addressing the big social challenges of city life from the perspective of the ‘global south’ as well as the ‘global north’. This approach was in tune with the mission of the Global Cities Research Institute to use an interdisciplinary approach for the study of cities. The 2011 Roundtable brought together researchers with varied disciplinary backgrounds from Australia, India and Sri Lanka. Cities as diverse as New Delhi, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Port

10 Acknowledgments Moresby and Melbourne face different kinds of challenges. Yet the desire to create inclusive communities is ubiquitous and perennial. The 2011 Melbourne Roundtable emphasised the global dimensions of urbanization. This focus became possible when RMIT set up the Global Cities Research Institute (GCRI). Under the leadership of its founding Director, Professor Paul James (2007-13), the GCRI provided the impetus, encouragement and resources for the CS program to embark on such a project. The Global Cities administration team consisting of Frank Yardley, Michele Farley and Melissa Postma also provided invaluable support, without whichthis project would not have achieved its aspirations and output. We would also like to acknowledge the support of RMIT’s Graduate School of Business & Law, the Globalism Research Centre and the Centre for Applied Social Research (School of Global, Urban and Social Studies). We would also like to thank Social Policy Analysis and Research Centre (University of Colombo) and South Asian Studies at the School of International Studies (Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi). Their support enabled the researchers to commit their time and efforts towards this publication. Our special thanks to Roundtable participant Professor Partha Ghosh for facilitating the publication with Manohar Publishers, New Delhi. Manohar Publishers were a great pleasure to work with. We would like to thank Ramesh Jain, Ajay Jain, Siddharth Chowdhury and their team for their collaboration and expertise in getting the manuscript to publication. Supriya Singh, Yaso Nadarajah, Martin Mulligan and Chris Chamberlain

Contributors Chris Chamberlain was Director, Centre for Applied Social Research, RMIT University, 2005-2013, where he is now Emeritus Professor. He is the joint author/editor of Youth Homelessness (1998), Counting the Homeless 2001 (2003), Counting the Homeless 2006 (2008), and Homelessness in Australia (2014). Chris’s research influenced the Australian Government’s white paper on homelessness (The Road Home, 2008) which set the target to halve homelessness by 2020. Val Colic-Peisker is an Associate Professor (Sociology) in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University. She holds degrees in political science, women’s studies, education and a PhD in sociology. She has worked as a journalist, author, translator and radio-producer before becoming an academic. She has published extensively and taught sociology at several Australian universities. Val’s central research interest is in the area of migration, mobility and globalisation in association with issues of class, ethnicity, identity, community, multiculturalism, transnationalism and cosmopolitanism. She has conducted considerable research into residential integration and employment success of immigrants in Australia. Val has published in Journal of Sociology, International Migration, Journal of Intercultural Studies, Global Networks, Discourse and Society, International Migration Review and other refereed journals. Her most recent book is Migration, class and transnational identities: Croatians in Australia and America, Urbana and Chicago: Illinois University Press, 2008. Val (with Supriya Singh) is a convenor of the inter-university Migration and Mobility Research Network http://www.rmit.edu.au/socialhumanities/mmrn.

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List of Contributors

Partha S. Ghosh is Senior Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi and Editor, India Quarterly, the flagship journal of the Indian Council of World Affairs, New Delhi. Partha Ghosh was formerly a professor of South Asian Studies at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His areas of interest are South Asian politics, ethnicity and domestic politics-foreign policy interface. Ghosh was earlier a Visiting Professor at the OKD Institute of Social Change and Development, Guwahati, a Humboldt Fellow at the Heidelberg University, a Ford Visiting Scholar at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. For many years he served as a Research Director at the Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi. His most recent books include Politics of Personal Law in South Asia, Unwanted and Uprooted: A Political Study of Refugees, Migrants, Stateless and Displaced in South Asia and Ethnicity versus Nationalism: The Devolution Discourse in Sri Lanka. His forthcoming book is an edited volume entitled India’s North-East and Beyond: Cross-National Perspectives. Catherine Gomes is an Australian Research Council DECRA Research Fellow at RMIT. Her current work uncovers the evolving cultural and social identities of transient migrants (international students and professional guest workers) in Australia and Singapore through their consumption and engagement with the media (screen and digital). Catherine has also written extensively on gender and ethnicity in Asian cinema as well as on memory, ethnicity, transnationalism and identity in Singapore. Siri Hettige is Professor of Sociology and the former Director of Social Policy Analysis and Research Centre, University of Colombo. He is also the Chair, National Committee on Social Sciences at the National Science foundation, Sri Lanka and an Adjunct Professor, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia. He has also held the position of Dean, Faculty of Arts (1999-2002) and Head, Department of Sociology at the University of Colombo for a number of years, in addition to numerous visiting faculty appointments in Switzerland, Germany, Finland, Australia and the United States. His most recent


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research has been on the sociology of youth, migration of labour, sociology of education and governance and development. He has published a number of books, edited volumes and over hundred research papers on the above and related themes. The most recent of his publications include: Globalization, Education and Employment, co-authored with Angela Little (2013), Governance, Conflict and Development in South Asia, co-edited with Eva Gerharz (2014). Guy Johnson is a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Applied Social Research at RMIT University. He has been involved in work on homelessness for almost two decades, initially as a housing facilitator and more recently as a researcher. Guy has published extensively on homelessness, and he is the co-author of On the Outside: Pathways in and out of homelessness. In 2009, Guy and Chris Chamberlain were awarded the Norman Smith Publication Award for the best research article in Australian Social Work, ‘Homelessness and substance abuse: Which comes first?’ Guy is currently working on three major longitudinal studies. He was recently a Visiting Research Scholar, School of Social Policy and Practice, University of Pennsylvania (August 2014 – August 2015). Martin Mulligan is an Associate Professor and program manager in the Sustainability and Urban Planning program of RMIT’s School of Global, Urban and Social Studies. A former Director of RMIT’s Globalism Research Centre, he has conducted research in Australia on the wellbeing of local communities in the face of global change. Together with Dr Yaso Nadarajah he conducted a major study for AusAID on the rebuilding of local communities in the wake of the 2004 tsunami disaster in Sri Lanka and southern India. This study led to the publication of a book by Routledge, India (Rebuilding Communities in the Wake of Disaster, 2012) and papers published in the international Community Development Journal, Global Policy, India Quarterly, and Environmental Hazards. Martin has had papers on community formation published in the British Sociological Association journal Sociology and in the international Journal of Arts and Society.

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Yaso Nadarajah is a senior lecturer in the International Development (Masters) Program and a Senior Research Fellow in the Globalism Research Centre, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University. Yaso’s key research activities are in the areas of human ingenuity, partnership engagement, sacred investment and international development. A dedicated focus on establishing crosscomparative and cross-cultural research fieldwork has meant that she has spent more than 60 per cent of her time in the field, working through several challenges and refining the methodology, – placing community experiences and narratives at the forefront of cultural analysis. Her recent publications include Rebuilding Communities in the Wake of Disaster: Social Recovery in Sri Lanka and India, 2012 (with Martin Mulligan) and Sustainable Communities, Sustainable Development: Other Paths for Papua New Guinea, 2012 (with Paul James et al). Peter Phipps works in Global Studies at RMIT, Melbourne, and is a founding member of the Globalism Research Centre. He undertook post-graduate training in cultural anthropology at the University of California Berkeley, and a Ph.D. on the cultural politics of postcolonial theory in the School of Anthropology, Philosophy and Social Enquiry at the University of Melbourne. He has published work on Indigenous festivals, tourism, ethnic cultural precincts and cultural politics. He has worked with organisations including the Papua New Guinea Department for Community Development, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, ATSIAB (Australia Council), Telstra Foundation, UNDP (Sarajevo), the Yothu Yindi Foundation (Australia), DaNang Children’s Hospital (Vietnam), City of More-land, Scanlon Foundation, City of Melbourne, Victorian Multi-cultural Commission, and Warlayirti Art Centre in Balgo, Western Australia. Supriya Singh is Professor, Sociology of Communications at RMIT University, Melbourne. Supriya brings together expertise in the sociology of money and banking; globalization, migration and remittances; and the use of new communications technologies within the social and cultural context. She was awarded the Jean Martin


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Prize in 1995 for the best Sociology PhD thesis in Australia, 1993-5. Her books include Globalization and Money: A Global South Perspective (2013); The Girls Ate Last (2013); Marriage Money: The Social Shaping of Money in Marriage and Banking (1997); The Bankers (1991); Bank Negara Malaysia: The First 25 Years, 19591984 (1984); and On the Sulu Sea (1984).

Chapter 1

Introduction Yaso Nadarajah, Martin Mulligan, Supriya Singh and Chris Chamberlain

The terms city and community both signify complex conceptual fields. While each has figured in a vast body of literature on particular cities or communities, the underlying meaning of each concept has been explored in a wide array of academic disciplines, each having its own approach. Both terms have been used in diverse, and even conflicting ways. This book offers a community-centred study of cities of the region stretching from India to Australia; engaging the city as a locus, producer and subject of the various ways in which communities seek a sense of belonging. It proposes that the study of communities in cities is vital to understanding how cities can sustain themselves; given their unprecedented global growth. How has globalization and cosmopolitanism led to the reframing of the concept of community in cities particularly in the Asia-Pacific region? How can we build adaptive capacity to meet new global challenges? Can a focus on community help address questions of ecological sustainability and social justice within urban environments, especially when the global ‘war on terror’ is creating a new fear of strangers and ‘others’? How can the notion of sustainable communities become central to approaches to city planning and urban spatial arrangements and settlements?

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Yaso Nadarajah, Mulligan, Singh and Chamberlain

Is an inclusive ‘sense of community’ under siege in many cities of the Asia-Pacific region and what are some alternative models and practices that could help to create more inclusive and resilient urban communities? In what ways can a re-assertion of the notion of community in the study of urban life help address rising rates of crime, social tension and new forms of marginalization within ‘globalizing’ cities? The book explores the thought that a focus on communities might provide a critical link between work focusing on particular lived urban experiences and the traditional study of urbanization, which draws more abstractly on demography, urban planning, infrastructure and development, transportation and affordable housing. Discussion about community often slides between the descriptive idea of families or households living within particular territories and normative accounts of identity-based groups which adopt the honorific status of ‘community’ as a kind of immunity against the anomie of modern society (or city life). Ever since the concepts of Gemeinschaft (community based on trust and aid) and Gesellschaft (society, based on individual self-interest) was introduced by Ferdinand Tonnies in 1877,1 the discussion about community has been dominated by a narrative of loss. Such narratives tend to include nostalgia about the perceived ‘loss of community’, on the one hand, and stories about the ‘recovery of community’, on the other. In this treatment, the concept of community has either aligned itself with a resistance to the ‘alienation’ of ‘technocratic’ urban planning or to grassroots struggles to retain a sense of community against the odds. However, such narratives are becoming increasingly naïve in relation to the ongoing processes of urbanization and globalization, which are remapping social relations and giving rise to more complex assemblages and forms of belonging. Conflicting ideas about what community means are not new because ever since Europe’s two-phased Industrial Revolution forced a mass migration of people from the countryside into burgeoning cities, a wide range of scholars and commentators have suggested that the very idea of community would become redundant; first in industrialized western nations but eventually in all parts of the world. Urbanization—starting in Europe but spreading across the globe--

Introduction

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was initially seen as being the death knell of community. Then when the desire for community proved to be more resilient than these harbingers of death had imagined, another cluster of commentators in the latter stages of the 20th century predicted that globalization— understood as the unfettered flow of people, money, goods, information and ideas—would ensure that the coffin was finally buried. Western sociologists interested in the world of increasing global flows—including Anthony Giddens, Manual Castells, Saskia Sassen and John Urry—felt that old forms of community had lost their social meaning and many were attracted to Castells’ notion of the ‘network society’.2 However, any suggestion that the very idea of community would become increasingly irrelevant in an urbanized and globalized world have been confounded by the fact that the word ‘community’— or its equivalent in languages other than English—is probably being used more widely today than ever before. We talk about belonging to different scales of spatially defined communities— from neighbourhood to nation—and we also use the word to refer to a wide array of interest and/or identity groups that can be placed-based or spatially extended. We might talk, for example, of the Turkish community living in Melbourne, the Tamil community living in Colombo, or global communities that share an interest in something like Buddhist philosophy or jazz music. People born in India who now live elsewhere in the world, for example, may have a sense of belonging to a local Indian community where they now live, a community focused on a particular temple or set of religious or cultural practices, or even a spatially dispersed diasporic community which traces its origins to a particular part of India. At the same time, there continue to be territorial communities that define themselves in exclusionary terms, invoking ‘traditions’ related to race, religion or class (Sandercock 1997).3 The suggestion that community can have ‘racist’ or ‘classist’ overtones may have been made first by US sociologist Richard Sennett4 when he argued that American society tends to perpetuate a ‘myth of community” which can ‘produce and implicitly legitimize racist and classist behaviour and policy’. In many cities and neighbourhoods, Sennett argued, people have—or long for—an image of their

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locality as one in which people all know each other and have the same lifestyle and values and relate with feelings of ‘mutuality, trust and love.5 Similarly, Bourgois’s ethnographic study of social marginalization in inner-city America (2003) examines the dialectic between ’belonging’ for some and ‘marginalization’ for others, with particular reference to the plight of Mexican immigrants brought in to fill labour shortages within the US economy. Bourgois notes that a ‘war on drugs’ in New York’s East Harlem produced paradoxical outcomes. On the one hand, it did reduce the consumption of hard drugs by the Harlem youth, but, on the other hand, it increased the marginalization of the children of immigrants. As Bourgois puts it, the children of immigrants are commonly ‘chewed up and spat out by the American Dream, only to find themselves recycled a dozen or so years later at extraordinary financial and human cost into the prison industrial complex’.6 However, while the experience of community can be negative for many vulnerable people, many influential scholars—including Nikolas Rose, Zygmunt Bauman and Gerard Delanty7—have argued that global flows have actually increased the desire for community precisely because people are obliged to make a more conscious effort to find community in the midst of such complexity. If we understand community as being a search for a sense of belonging in a world of global flows it makes little difference if we live inside or outside cities. Delanty, in particular, has argued that very few people are now born into communities that have a fixed and well defined identity. This means that a sense of belonging to community needs to be ‘wilfully constructed’8 and new communication technologies make it easier to participate in the communicative construction of community. It is important to stress that this way of thinking about the creation of community does not oblige us to counterpose the existence of real and virtual communities. It does, however, suggest that we can find ourselves living in neighbourhoods where there is little or no sense of community and we are likely to find ourselves living in neighbourhoods where multiple communities are evident. People who are searching for a sense of belonging to particular communities create a discourse about what it means to belong to that community and that discourse results in periodic projections of the community’s

Introduction

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identity and purpose; projections that may be contested, amended or refined over time. The effort to create and communicate the identity of any particular community in a world of global flows can never be completed and a prevailing sense of community can be challenged by social, cultural, or political changes that are gathering force either internally or even outside the community. The urban experiences of new immigrants, their struggles to redefine the conditions of belonging to a new ‘community’, are all inevitably reshaping cities, and particularly those world cities9 of the advanced capitalist economies. This entire phenomena means that the search for community is endless but this, in turn, leaves open the question of who belongs and who does not.

Contesting Community in Urban Arenas The urban is becoming an increasingly significant formative arena. It is the context within which over half the world’s population now live, even if city forms remain rather heterogeneous. As Amin puts it, ‘Urbanism highlights the challenges of negotiating class, gender and ethnic or racial differences placed in close proximity’.10 Cities are the hub of increasing global flows of people, goods, money and ideas and people living in cities find themselves increasingly in the company of ‘strangers’ and seemingly at the mercy of changes that arrive from afar. Global flows can disrupt a sense of belonging to community but they also create new forms of connectivity and can allow for new kinds of spatial configurations. The study of cities has often focused on urban structuring and restructuring, deindustrialization and reindustrialization, post Fordism, and flexible production. It has rarely focused on the lived experience of people dealing with flux and change. Urban growth is now taking place more rapidly in the cities of the developing world, where 85 per cent of the people live. Predominantly, these large and growing metropolitan areas link with their surrounding hinterlands over vast expanses of territory.11 Such metropolitan areas act as magnets for population and resources; concentrating wealth, information and power. However, poverty also becomes more entrenched with the growing need for cheap labour,

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creating an expansion of ‘informal settlements’. The growth of cities is putting pressure on existing infrastructure, with bad consequences in relation to environmental pollution and public hygiene. At the same time, the mobilization of urban communities can put considerable pressure on politicians and policy makers, introducing new forms of volatility into politics and political representation. Urban studies have often focused on the possibilities for increased economic integration and participation but this fails to take into account of the complex and sometimes contradictory socio-cultural forces that are shaping and reshaping the nature and form of cities; moreso in the twenty-first century than ever before. Cities across the world are being reshaped by migration;12 the new politics of multicultural citizenship,13 the ethics of care,14 the politics of place15 and the ongoing quest for reclaiming urban (and regional places) by indigenous or formerly colonized people.16 New social movements are arising within cities with an increased chance of extending beyond national borders. Some urban theorists—such as Edward Soja (2010)17—have suggested that urbanization is intensifying public debates about human rights and the equitable distribution of resources, and services. Global cities are certainly being reshaped by the large corporations that dominate the globalizing economy, with physical spaces being increasingly made over in a style dictated by such corporations. Yet Sandercock predicted that the struggle for space also involves a struggle between ‘life space against economic or financial space’18 and a struggle about who belongs and who does not. These are struggles that are not easily resolved in anyone’s favour and they deserve more scholarly attention. Some communities—both local and spatially extended—are bounded by a need to accept particular beliefs or practices while others are much more open-ended. Clearly, different types of communities—serving very different purposes—coexist and this should not present problems for tolerant, multicultural, societies. Cities exist at the confluence of many global flows and hence there is bound to be a great diversity of community formations within cities and within city neighbourhoods. Whenever governments or social planners conflate the idea of neighbourhood and community they risk losing sight of this underlying complexity of community

Introduction

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formations. Any attempt to engineer homogenous neighbourhood communities is likely to cause division and conflict or otherwise undermine the multilayered experience of community.

The City and Community Project The City and Community Project emerged in the winter of 2011 within the Community Sustainability research program of the Global Cities Research Institute at RMIT University in Melbourne. This program brought together people working on a host of rather disparate research projects in countries ranging from Australia to India. Diverse research agendas partly reflected our scattered origins in the countries of the region and our diverse academic training. Many of these researchers had a personal experience of being an immigrant or an outsider and we had a shared interest in ethnography. We were drawn together by a desire to understand the processes of urbanization and globalization within our region of the world and we had separately grappled with the complexities embedded within the term community, especially in urban settings. In order to learn from each other’s experience we held a ‘City and Community roundtable’, which provided the impetus for this book. What we had in common was the commitment to go beyond the intellectual or academic debates of recent years on urbanization and sustainability in order to capture the urban condition through the struggles and knowledge of the people living in our region; in their search for belonging in the flows of migration and capital investments and in the everyday turmoil of the struggle to belong. In the midst of all the talk about the emergence of the ‘Asian century’, this book aims to examine the experiences of urbanization and globalization from below within a part of the world that is close to the epicentre of the new world economy. The struggle to find a sense of belonging within a world of global flows means that some local communities will be defined by exclusions as much as inclusions. However, we start with the assumption that there needs to be an overriding sense of a neighbourhood community that includes everyone in order to avoid inter-communal tensions and/or the marginalization of those who feel excluded. While

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communication technologies have increased the array of communities to which people can now belong there are many people who are not welcomed by any of those communities. If the desire to find a sense of belonging to community has increased in a world of global flows then a failure to find a fulfilling sense of belonging to community can be devastating. This book includes chapters that focus on the lives of homeless people living in Melbourne; Bangladeshi migrants living in New Delhi, and rather neglected story of people coming from rural, subsistence-based communities in Papua New Guinea to living within the growing metropolis of Port Moresby

A Community-centred Approach to the City Avoiding the tendencies to either dismiss the enduring relevance of community, on the one hand, or to employ shallow or divisive understandings of community, on the other, this book explores the experience of city life through the lens of community and the search for belonging. While not ignoring the technological reshaping of global cities resulting from economic globalization, we share Castells’ interest in ‘the outcome of what we, the communities — the diverse, multi-layered urban communities—do about it, through our projects and through our conflicts’.19 People working within the field of Urban Studies are focusing on the potential for conflict; for example, between those living in ‘gated communities’ and those living in ‘informal settlements’ However, as Lily Kong and Lisa Law argue in their introduction to the Special Issue of Urban Studies on ‘Contested Landscapes, Asian Cities’,20 the everyday life of the urban is not only ‘enframed, constrained and colonized by the disciplinary technologies of power’, but it is also a primary site of resistance to such dominating power. Chapters in this book suggest that the resistance can take many forms, ranging from street protests to the holding of important cultural festivals. The focus on community emphasizes the ‘soft’ side of the concept of ‘urbanization’ within the framework of globalization. Urbanization has been traditionally understood by using the frameworks of demography, urban planning, urban infrastructure, transportation, affordable housing, and urban development. The sociological and

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anthropological study of communities in cities complements this by focusing on the lived experiences of diverse communities. Of course, it is important to avoid any suggestion that local communities can match the power of global corporations in reshaping city life. As Castells has noted, local communities continue to be a source of identity, but not a source of economic or political power.21 A chapter in this book by Yaso Nadarajah shows that squatter settlement communities of Desa Mentari low-cost housing, a considerable per cent of the population in Kuala Lumpur Klang Valley intersection, were able to have a significant impact in the national elections of 2008. Yet they can have no influence at all in the ways in which Kuala Lumpur operates as an international business centre. However, the future of Kuala Lumpur is not solely determined by its role in international business. As King has put it, the city is being shaped within ‘the collision points between the utopian dreams of imagined futures and the reality of purposely forgotten pasts’.22 Focusing on the experiences of particular local communities can never tell the full story of any city. However, this book suggests that putting community at the centre of our study of a city can give us a new perspective on the city’s history and its fractured future. We focus here on cities in the Asia-Pacific region, with our choice of case studies determined largely by the research of those participating in the 2011 ‘City and Community roundtable’ in Melbourne. However, we are able to include an interesting spectrum of experiences, ranging from Melbourne to Port Moresby, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Colombo and New Delhi. When we start with lived experience we often end up with a different appreciation of community to that found within academic discourses or policy documents. We get a different perspective on the formation, re-formation and dissolution of this sense of community as people in cities deal with migration, the erosion of ties to place, family, religion and or language, and the emergence of new national and global identities and formations. Migration is a theme that emerges in many of the chapters of this book and yet the experiences of migration and mobility vary greatly. Migrations have always been part of the human experience, but there has been a growth in the volume and significance of migration since 1945 and particularly since the mid-1980s. Economic global-

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ization has increased the mobility of the international ‘labour force’ while political tensions and instabilities in many parts of the world are creating increasing flows of refugees or ‘informal migrants’. Increased migration means that many people now have families spread across a number of nations. These have resulted in new kinds of global cities and regions with an extraordinary diversity and complexity of cultures and practices. Over time, migrations change the character of a city in fundamental ways and they create new possibilities for the formation of transnational communities. Indeed, it has been the increased movement of people—as much as the deployment of new communication technologies—that has increased the array of nonlocal communities that individual people can now belong to and many of those non-local communities are multi-layered. For this reason, the word community has acquired new layers of complexity and this is disconcerting for those who distrust ambiguity. When residents with different histories, cultures and needs appear, they throw into disarray the taken-for-granted systems and patterns of social life and urban space.

Community as a Search for a Sense of Belonging Although the concept of community is contested, there is a persistent desire for community in urban and non-urban settings. In chapter 2, Martin Mulligan takes us through the literature on community, society and urbanization, focusing on community in a globalized world. Communities differ, but all of them ‘search for a more secure sense of belonging in an increasingly insecure world’. Mulligan notes communities are consciously created, producing rather than just reproducing meaning. This point is important to keep in mind when ideologies are contested and meanings change in a global world. There is nothing inherently wholesome about community, Mulligan concludes; it can be inclusive and it can be toxic. Nevertheless, he also concludes that ‘Rather than obviating the need for community—as many people predicted—globalization has made the wilful construction of inclusive communities even more important.’ The suggestion that communities only exist to the extent that they are ‘wilfully constructed’ provides a common thread for

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the case study chapters that follow. What links these communities is their shared search for a sense of belonging and their refusal to let other people determine their identity. In chapter 3, Supriya Singh takes us through a qualitative study of the Indian diaspora in Melbourne; illustrating how the different migration experiences of the first generation, second generation and Indian student migrants shape the way the Indian community lives and participates in city life. This involves a complex process of meaning-making involving global, transnational and local dynamics which can be multi-layered without necessarily being multi-sited. Partha Ghosh’s chapter that follows builds on the place of migrants in cities. He tackles the complex issue of Bangladeshi migrants and refugees in the city of New Delhi, caught within the larger HinduMuslim political debate of the country. This is compounded by allegations that the rise in the crime graph of New Delhi is attributable to the massive presence of these Bangladeshi migrants and refugees. Ghosh contends that the marginalization of this community in the city serves an even reminder of the growing divide between the poor, the working class, the middle class and the privileged. The construction of inclusive communities is particularly important when communities are divided by race, language and religion. In her chapter on Kuala Lumpur, Yaso Nadarajah describes how the process of city expansion and showcasing the distinctively Malay aspects of the national identity through major architectural projects in the city rubs against the history and intersections of traditional community spaces of Malays, Chinese and Indians. She tells the story of the city through the particular lens of a study she conducted on an Indian squatter settlement that has faced a progressive loss of home and neighbourhood through eviction and resettlement. Caught within local municipality and state development agendas that have dismantled their sense of place and belonging, this community has tried to create some form of community and belonging through setting up a small Hindu temple within the space of their new high-rise low-cost housing. In their struggle to retain a sense of belonging this community has managed to carve out some physical and cultural space for themselves but their story also reveals the deepening of ethnic fracture lines across the city as a whole.

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In chapter 6, Siri Hettige describes how recent developments in Sri Lanka have changed the character and functioning of the dominating capital city of Colombo. The country’s devastating 30-year-long ethnic conflict—which was mostly concentrated in the north-eastern region—manifested itself in Colombo in various ways, making the city an important theatre of the conflict. The ethnocentric nation-building agenda of the Sri Lankan government has partly reinforced ethno-religious divisions across Colombo—thus undermining the city’s broader sense of community. However, Hettige shows that the city’s political economy also dissolves some of the divisions caused by war and conflict. In examining her own experience of growing up in Singapore, Catherine Gomes (chapter 8) shows that race has always been a defining and divisive factor in shaping the overriding identity of a multiracial urban society. As a Eurasian, Gomes is able to view the interactions between Chinese, Malay, and Indian communities as an outsider and yet there is no escaping the pervasive influences of race on questions of identity, public values and language. The dominant Chinese community is determined to emphasise its differences from communities living within China itself and this creates difficulties for those who are determined to speak Cantonese at home while being obliged to use Mandarin within business and public life. Singaporeans who may be divided by ethnic origin and language may share a determination to exclude unskilled or low-skilled foreign workers from any sense of belonging to the city community. Yet questions of identity can never be fully settled in a multiracial society even in a society like Singapore with a rather authoritarian form of government. This situation is even more unsettled in a country with a relatively weak central government, such as Papua New Guinea, and the chapter by Peter Phipps in chapter 7 shows that Port Moresby is emerging as a rather extraordinary experience of contrasts and confluences. In one sense, the opportunities to assert separate identities is greater in Port Moresby than in Singapore and yet weak government also leads to low levels of public safety in this post-modern city with tribal ethnic origins. Not belonging to a community can lead to painful experiences of exclusion and isolation, even in the midst of wealthy global cities.

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As Chamberlain and Johnson say in chapter 10, ‘To be homeless in Melbourne is to be an outsider with a stigmatised identity’. Homeless people are denied full social acceptance and have low self-esteem. They manage this stigma by trying to participate in various forms of community and Chamberlain and Johnson argue that the choices open to them largely depend on their ‘pathways’ into homelessness. People on what the authors call the ‘youth-to-adult’ and ‘substance abuse’ pathways often find a sense of community with other homeless people by either engaging in drug abuse or being with persons who accept illicit drug abuse. Yet in such communities there is an undercurrent of mistrust and violence. Belonging to the community of the homeless also confirms them as ‘outsiders’ within the wider city community. People on ‘family breakdown’ and ‘housing crisis’ pathways to homelessness continue to see the mainstream community as their reference point. They actively disassociate themselves from the homeless, while trying to hide their homelessness from their friends and family and if they receive appropriate support they have the best prospects of returning to the mainstream. By contrast, those who become homeless as a result of mental illnesses are not likely to find a sense of community with the homeless or the mainstream. They are commonly rejected by both and are entrenched in their social isolation. For the homeless of Melbourne, participation in the ‘mainstream’ often reflects a desire to participate in the Australian Dream of individual home ownership. However by Val Colic-Peisker in chapter 9 suggests that prevailing notions about the ‘Australian way of life’ no longer match the realities of a ‘hyper-mobile’ society. Detachment has become more prevalent than attachment, Colic-Peisker argues, and this suggests that the desire to belong to ‘elusive community’ is shared by those who might otherwise be distinguished as outsiders and insiders. This supports the suggestion that community only exists in the contemporary world to the extent that it is consciously constructed and persistently recreated. The case studies presented in this book are so heterogeneous that it seems almost impossible to find a common thread. However, the unifying themes are the desire to belong to community and the complexities involved in creating and nurturing inclusive communities in a world of global flows. In the context of increasing globalization,

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people living in Melbourne and New Delhi have more in common than they did in the past and they can belong simultaneously to communities ranging from the local to the transnational. Increasing migration connects people across broad regions of the world. We get a different understanding of urbanization in the Asia-Pacific region by using the lens of community formation and this book offers a way of cutting through old debates about the relevance of community in the context of urban life. While the achievement of community may be rare and largely elusive, the search for belonging, for a sense of community is persistent and ubiquitous.

Notes 1. F. Tonnies (1957), Community and Society: Gemeinschaftunt Gesellschaft, translated and edited by Charles Loomis, Michigan State University Press (first published in 1887). 2. M. Castells, (second edition, 2000). The Rise of the Network Society, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, vol. I, Cambridge, MA; Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1996. 3. L. Sandercock (1997), Towards Cosmopolis: Planning for Multicultural Cities, London: John Wiley. 4. R. Sennett (1970), The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life, Alfred A. Knopf. 5. R. Sennett, as cited by Sandercock, L., Towards Cosmopolis: planning for multicultural cities, London: John Wiley, 1998, p. 191. 6. P. Bourgois, In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. xxii. 7. See N. Rose (1999), Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, Z. Bauman (2001), Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World, Cambridge: Polity, and G. Delanty (2003), Community London: Routledge. 8. G. Delanty (2003), Community London: Routledge, p. 130. 9. S. Sassen (1994), Cities in a World Economy, Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Forge Press, 2011, updated 4th ed., original. 10. A. Amin (2006), The Good City, Urban Studies, vol. 43, nos. 5/6, p. 1009. 11. P. Evans (2002), ‘Introduction: Looking for Agents of Urban Livability in a Globalized Political Economy’, in Evans P. (ed.), Livable Cities?

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Urban Struggles for Livelihood and Sustainability, Berkeley: University of California Press. 12. S. Castells and M. Miller (1993), The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World, London: Macmillan. 13. W. Kymlicka (1996), Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press. 14. A. Amin (2006), The Good City, Urban Studies, vol. 43, nos. 5/6, pp. 1009–23. 15. D.B. Massey (2010), World City, published with new Preface: “After the Crash”, July 2010. Cambridge: Polity Press. 16. L. Sandercock (1997), Towards Cosmopolis: Planning for Multicultural Cities, London: John Wiley. 17. E. Soja (2010), Seeking Spatial Justice, University of Minnesota Press. 18. L. Sandercock, Towards Cosmopolis: Planning for Multicultural Cities, London: John Wiley, 1997, p. 3. 19. M . Castells (2nd edn., 2000), The Rise of the Network Society, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, vol. I, Cambridge, MA; Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1996 (1st pub. 1887). 20. L. Kong and L. Law (2002), Introduction: Contested Landscapes, Asian Cities. Urban Studies 39(9), p. 1506. 21. Castell as cited by Evans, 2002, pp. 11-12. 22. R. King (2008), Rewriting the City: Putrajaya as Representation, Journal of Urban Design, 12 (1), pp. 117-38.

References Amin, Ash (2006), The Good City, Urban Studies, vol. 43, nos. 5/6, pp. 1009-23 . Bauman, Zygmunt (2001), Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World, Cambridge: Polity. Bourgois, Phillip (2003), In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio, Cambridge University Press. Castells, Manuel (1983), The City and the Grassroots, Berkeley: University of California Press. ——— (1989), The Informational City, Oxford: Blackwell. ——— (1996) (2nd edn., 2000), The Rise of the Network Society, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, vol. I, Cambridge, MA; Oxford, UK: Blackwell. ——— (1994), ‘European Cities, the Informational Society, and the Global Economy’, New Left Review, vol. 204, pp. 18-32.

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Castells, S. and M. Miller (1993), The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World, London: Macmillan. Delanty, Gerard (2003), Community, London: Routledge. Evans, Graeme, ‘Creative Cities, Creative Spaces and Urban Policy’, Urban Studies, vol. 46, nos. 5-6, May 2009, pp. 1003-40, King, R. (2007), ‘Rewriting the City: Putrajaya as Representation. Ross King’, Journal of Urban Design, 12 (1), pp. 117-38. Kong, Lily and Lisa Law (2002), ‘Introduction: Contested Landscapes, Asian Cities’, Urban Studies 39(9), pp. 1503-12. Kymlicka, Will (1996), Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights, Clarendon Press. Massey, Doreen B. (2010), World City, published with new Preface: “After the Crash”, July, Cambridge: Polity Press. Rose, Nikolas (1999), Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sandercock, L. (1997), Towards Cosmopolis: Planning for Multicultural Cities, London: John Wiley. Sassen, Sashia (2011), Cities in a World Economy, Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Pine Forge Press (updated 4th edn., original 1994). Sennett, Richard (1970), The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life, Alfred A. Knopf. Sennett, Richard (1986), The Fall of Public Man, London: Faber and Faber. ——— (1998), The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, New York: W.W. Norton. Soja, Edward (2010), Seeking Spatial Justice, University of Minnesota Press. Tonnies, Ferdinand (1957), Community and Society: Gemeinschaftunt Gesellschaft, translated and edited by Charles Loomis, Michigan State University Press (1st pub. 1887).

Chapter 2

Ways of Thinking about Community Formation in the Flux of Urban Life Martin Mulligan

Introduction Ever since sociology emerged as a separate field of study in the last part of the nineteenth century ‘community’ has been a hotly contested subject. Indeed, as we will see in this chapter, a wide range of Western sociologists and cultural studies scholars have argued that the word ‘community’—and its equivalents in a range of European languages—is either too vague and ambiguous or otherwise too loaded with particular connotations to be of any real use to students of society. However, other scholars have argued that the persistent desire for community is something that students of society cannot ignore and some have suggested that we are witnessing a global turn to community in the context of accelerating globalization. This chapter reviews key debates about community within Western sociology and cultural studies in order to retrieve an understanding of the term that might serve us well in examining social experience in the contemporary world, within a wide range of cultural settings. The chapter argues that there is something eternal

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about the quest of community—in both urban and non-urban settings—and yet narrow projections of community identity can be divisive and dangerous, especially in the context of globalization. At the same time, it argues that local urban communities need to be understood in terms of their ‘particularness’ because a wide range of local factors will influence the ways in which particular local communities respond to changes and challenges.

Community, Society and Urbanization When Ferdinand Tönnies published his now famous book Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft in 1887, it was widely assumed that he was bemoaning the loss of ‘community’ in the face of the rapid urbanization that accompanied the ‘second’ Industrial Revolution in Europe in the second half of the nineteenth century. Certainly his book critiqued the social impacts of industrial capitalism because he argued that it had become much harder for people living in the burgeoning cities to find the kinds of supportive associations that had been commonplace in rural villages. He coined the term gemeinschaft to describe forms of association that are based on long-held, shared traditions and beliefs, which can be constantly renewed or reinforced through face-to-face contact with people living within the same community.1 For Tönnies, rural communities were more ‘organic’ than the gesellschaft associations that would govern social behaviour in the cities because much larger congregations of people would require instrumental or mechanical rules in order to coordinate their behaviour (ibid). This did not mean, however, that Tönnies was a backward-looking social conservative, as many have assumed. Indeed, he was an ardent socialist who lost his professorial position at the University of Kiel in the 1890s for supporting strike action in Hamburg.2 Like Karl Marx he believed that the formation of the urbanized working class would ultimately lead to stronger forms of social association (i.e. socialism); however, he argued that a more conscious effort would be needed to infuse city life with gemeinschaft characteristics. It is interesting to note that Emile Durkheim—who along with Max Weber is widely considered to have been a co-parent

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of sociology as a field of study—had little sympathy for Tönnies’ book. There is nothing ‘natural’ or even ‘organic’ about traditional rural communities, Durkheim argued, because traditional forms of association involved little conscious effort and could, therefore, be seen as being more mechanical than organic.3 According to Aldous,4 Durkheim specifically disagreed with Tönnies’ assertion that the state had an important role to play in reversing the destruction of community in modern urban settings. Durkheim was convinced that new forms of solidarity would emerge, organically, within urban societies and that new forms of community would be formed on the basis of co-operation and pluralism although he preferred to use the term ‘civil society’ rather than ‘community’. Durkheim was much less inclined than Tönnies to see individualism as a problem and, according to Delanty,5 he was keen to find a notion of community that was specific to modernity; one driven by a ‘form of ‘moral individualism’6 with ‘citizenship’ being characterized as civic solidarity. Although he was born a Jew, Durkheim welcomed the declining influence of religion in the formation of ‘collective representation’. At the same time, he noted that it would take more conscious and persistent effort to create a post-traditional spirit of community in urban settings. It is not difficult to see why Durkheim’s influence on modern sociology has overshadowed that of his contemporary Tönnies. If Tönnies’ distinction between gemeinschaft and gesellschaft— or ‘community’ and ‘society’ as the two terms have been rather loosely translated into English—was seen by Durkeim and his supporters as being outdated by the end of the nineteenth century how could it have any relevance more than a century later? Even Gerard Delanty, who, as we shall see, has made an effort to rescue an understanding of ‘community’ from its latter-day critics, has argued that ‘globalization’ has ensured that the concept of gemeinschaft has ‘become discredited both politically and intellectually’.7 It did not help that some of Tönnies’ followers turned to anthropological studies of traditional peasant communities in order to identify the characteristics of community that might still be nurtured within modern urban settings.8 Yet there is something about the concept of gemeinschaft which refuses to die and it is not uncommon today

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to read sociological papers in which the authors are continuing to look for gemeinschaft ‘characteristics’ within contemporary urban communities. Furthermore, a number of contemporary sociologists and social theorists have argued that globalization has resulted in something of a turn to community, rather than its demise.9

Returning to Communitas At this point it is useful to refer to the book on the ‘origin and destiny of community’ by Italian philosopher Robert Esposito.10 While this book is primarily interested in piecing together a more robust theory of ‘political community’—based on the separate contributions of Thomas Hobbes, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant, Martin Heidegger, and Georges Bataille—it begins with a very useful exploration of the etymology of the word ‘community’ within European languages. Esposito suggests that we can start this exploration with the Latin word communitas because all neoLatin languages have some variation of the word commun to refer to that which ‘begins where what is proper ends’11 and some version of the word munus which is, in turn, linked to notions of gift and obligation.12 It is interesting to note that the word commun appears in Greek as koinos and in German as gemein13 and that the opposite of munus is immunus which translates loosely as immunity to exchange relationships that trigger obligations.14 It is easy to see in this both the origins of Tönnies notion of gemeineschaft and also Durkheim’s interest in forms of immunity from obligations that can moderate individual choice and freedom of association. According to Esposito’s analysis, the munus that comes to be shared publicly is not ‘a property’ or ‘possession’ but rather ‘a debt, a pledge, a gift that is to be given’.15 This raises the idea that the sense of obligation that is embedded within the word communitas refers to a debt or a ‘lack’ rather than something that already exists. This innovative interpretation of the sense of obligation embedded within the word community leads Esposito to make the following incisive observation:


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Seen from this point of view, therefore, community isn’t only to be identified with the rea publica, with the common ‘thing’, but rather it is the hole into which the common thing continually risks falling, a sort of landslide produced laterally and within. This fault-line that surrounds and penetrates the ‘social’ is always perceived as the constitute danger of our co-living, more than in it. We need to watch out for this without forgetting that it is communitas itself that causes the landslide; the threshold that we can’t leave behind because it always outruns us … as the unreachable Object into which our subjectivity risks falling and being lost. Here then is the blinding truth that is kept within the etymological folds of communitas; the public thing [rea publica] is inseparable from the no-thing [niente].16

On the one hand, this identifies a ‘dark side’ of community and Esposito later credits Hobbes with understanding that ‘communitas carries within it a gift of death’,17 against which we need to be immunized by the rule of law. On the other hand, Esposito also concludes that ‘communitas is the most suitable, indeed the sole dimension’ of what it means to be human because it is ‘constitutive of ’ our ‘co-living’.18 In trying to develop a balanced conception of political community, Esposito argues that we need to draw from Hobbes in relation to fear, Rousseau in relation to guilt, Kant in relation to the rule of law, Heidegger in relation to the ‘ecstasy’ associated with being in place, and Bataille in relation to his insight that experience leads us in the direction of ‘non-knowledge’ or ‘unfulfillment’ rather than an increasing acquisition of knowledge. Perhaps Heidegger’s work is most relevant in relation to an exploration of ‘place-based’ or ‘local’ communities and Esposito cites him as saying that community needs to be understood as a ‘caring-in-common’ in which the ‘task’ of community ‘isn’t that of freeing us from care but of looking after care as that alone makes community possible’.19 According to Esposito, Heidegger argues that community is ‘part of our destiny’ yet it is also something to be ‘redesigned and reconstructed according to its originary essence’.20 What Bataille adds to this, Esposito argues, is that the experience of community will always be just beyond reach; an aspiration that can never be completely fulfilled.

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Shifting the Focus to Urban Communities Esposito’s exploration of the etymology of communitas helps us understand why the English word ‘community’ has so many layers of meaning embedded within it. Perhaps the complexities of meaning are even better preserved in the relevant German lexicon because Tönnies’ terms gemeinschaft and geselleschaft defy easy translation into English and this, in turn, leads to a misreading of his work by scholars working in English. It is fair to say that Tönnies was attracted by the layers of meaning embedded within the language of community while the more empirically minded Durkheim was suspicious of a term that could be understood in radically different ways. Furthermore, as already noted, Durkheim began the tradition of dismissing Tönnies’ ideas about community as being outdated in relation to the relentless march of modernity and the increasing urbanization of European society. Durkheim concluded that community would become much harder to identify within the context of urban living. It was a little ironic, then, that a group of sociologists working within the busy metropolis of Chicago in the 1920s would be responsible for a post-Tönnies revival of sociological interest in community, especially when they took their lead from the work of Durkheim.21 The early leader of the ‘Chicago School’ of urban sociology was Robert Park, who studied under the leading advocate of ‘pragmatic democracy’ John Dewey before turning his attention to experiences of social life within an array of localized communities in Chicago. Park came to see the city as a ‘mosaic of separate worlds’22 and promoted the idea that the city ‘might be able to achieve a certain unity based on the accommodation of diversity in what was becoming a multicultural society due to major flows of immigration’.23 While the Chicago School researchers adopted a rather mechanical approach to the study of local urban communities,24 their early optimism about what might emerge within the flux of urban life probably reflected a New World optimism that was harder to detect in postWorld War I Europe. However, New World optimism was sorely tested by the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 and the Chicago School researchers began to focus on local communities for whom the American Dream was turning into a nightmare. While some of


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them—notably Park, Ernest Burgess and Louis Wirth—continued to believe that resourceful immigrants might be at the forefront of social and economic revival, others became concerned about the emergence of pockets of poverty within urbanized societies. Perhaps the most significant study was carried out by Helen and Robert Lynd, who initiated the tradition of carrying out a longitudinal study of a particular town, disguised by the use of a fake town name. Their first study—published under the title Middle Town in 1929—looked at the evolution of the town from 1890 to 1924. The follow-up study—published as Middle Town in Transition in 1937—focused on the impact of the Depression and the subsequent growth in industrial production. The latter study painted a rather gloomy picture of the social consequences of the economic changes, suggesting that they had increased social fragmentation and blocked social mobility for many. Louis Wirth (1938) countered this with the suggestion that increases in population size and density within cities inevitably increases social heterogeneity (p. 9), while a later study by William Foote Whyte (1943) focused in the interplay between ‘social cohesion and urban alienation’.25 The Chicago School of urban sociology continues to exert its influence within the US, in particular, where there continues to be a proliferation of studies on diverse social worlds within cities. In keeping with the work of the Lynds, such studies are rarely offered as positive experiences of heterogeneity but rather as studies in social disadvantage. However, such micro-studies shed little light on the causes of the social disadvantage that they depict. The influence of descriptive urban sociology has largely been supplanted by work that focuses on an analysis of major social transformations taking place at a global level and leading the way in the development of this kind of urban sociology have been David Harvey, Frederic Jameson and Saskia Sassen. Also influential has been Mike Davis with his two whole-of-city studies of Los Angeles (1990 and 1999), which present a rather bleak prognosis for what the future holds. By contrast, Manuel Castells used his studies of European integration (1983, 1989, 1994) to promote a more nuanced understanding of both the challenges and opportunities for social integration that are inherent in processes of global integration. According to Castells, cities have

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replaced nations as the essential ‘driving force’ in the ‘making of a new … society’26 and he presented an optimistic view of the role to be played by urban social movements that can take advantage of new communication technologies (1996). While Castells highlighted the growing importance of communication in the creation of community—an interest that was subsequently picked up by Delanty (2003), as we shall see—his focus on ‘virtual’ communities does little to help us understand the experience of local communities. While the Chicago School probably placed too much importance on the local it can be argued that the urban sociology which took its lead from David Harvey and others pushed the pendulum too far in the other direction.

Critics of Community in the Conditions of ‘Liquid Modernity’ As the influence of the Chicago School faded within the field of urban sociology, a range of scholars within the new and emerging field of cultural studies also began to take aim at narrow and shallow understandings of community. The leading influence here was probably the pioneering cultural theorist Raymond Williams who wrote, rather famously, in 1983 that community is a word which ‘never seems to be used unfavourably [because it can be either] the warmly persuasive word to describe an existing set of relationships or the warmly persuasive word to describe an alternate set of relationships’.27 This much-cited observation by Williams can be interpreted in a range of ways. However, his erstwhile colleague, the cultural historian Eric Hobsbawm, subsequently sharpened the criticism by suggesting that the word community has never ‘been used more indiscriminately and emptily than in the decades when community in the sociological sense became hard to find’.28 Sharper still has been the critique of community articulated by the leading feminist scholar Iris Marion Young who argued that the ‘desire for community rests on the same desire for social wholeness and identification that underlies racism and chauvinism on the one hand and political sectarianism on the other’.29


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In 1993, the Polish sociologist-cum-cultural theorist Zygmunt Bauman joined the fray by writing that community can sometimes reflect a ‘group’s power to limit individual freedom’.30 He described the prospect of community ‘without freedom’ as ‘horrifying’.31 It needs to be noted that Bauman added that the prospect of ‘freedom without community’ is equally ‘horrifying’32 and in 2001 he articulated the argument that the desire for community in the conditions of what he called ‘liquid modernity’ represents an entirely understandable search for ‘safety in an insecure world’.33 In part, writers such as Young and Bauman are drawing attention to the ‘dark side’ of community which Esposito argued is inherent within the deep meaning of the word. Bauman was particularly keen to expose dangers which he saw within shallow and narrow forms of communitarianism, and his experiences of working as a Marxist ideologue within the armed forces of communist Poland probably drove his desire to expose the dangers of shallow rhetoric about belonging to community. However, one-sided criticisms of ways in which the word community is used can also lead to the conclusion reached by Hobsbawm, that community, in the contemporary world, has ceased to have any sociological meaning. This is far from the case. In 1996 the US sociologist Richard Sennett joined the emerging chorus of criticism of community by writing that it only exists through ‘a continual hyping up of emotions’.34 At the same time, he suggested that the desire for community could be seen as a rather naïve reaction to the ‘evils of modern capitalism’, but ‘the emotional logic of community . . . winds up as a bizarre kind of depoliticized withdrawal, the system remains intact, but maybe we can get it to leave our piece of turf untouched’. However, in a later work he moderated this critique by writing: One of the unintended consequences of the new capitalism is that it has strengthened the value of place, arousing a longing for community. All the emotional conditions . . . in the workplace animate that desire; the uncertainties of flexibility; the absence of deeply rooted trust and commitment; the superficiality of teamwork; most of all, the spectre of failing to make something of oneself in the world, to ‘get a life’ through

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one’s own work. All these conditions impel people to look for some other sense of attachment and depth.36

Like Bauman, Sennett became more sanguine about the desire for community in the conditions of great uncertainty. From this perspective, emotional attachment is seen as being less problematic. Bauman put it rather well when he said (2001) that in conditions of flux and uncertainty we need to remember that community is a word that has a ‘feel’ as well as a meaning because it feels good to ‘have a community’ or ‘be in a community’.37 According to Bauman, the search for emotional security drives the search for ‘elusive community’. While Sennett also recognized this ‘longing for community’ he went on to suggest38 that the defensive nature of community in a world of uncertainty makes it susceptible to forms of authoritarianism. For this reason he reverted to his earlier emphasis on the dangers of community. By contrast, the English political and cultural theorist Nikolas Rose has argued for a more positive and active engagement with the growing desire for community.39 He highlighted the fact that particular people or groups can try to put their own stamp on the way any particular community is imagined and projected to the world. This may be resisted by those who feel excluded by such projections and Rose suggests that we need to see community as ‘a constructed form for the collective working and unworking of identities and moralities’.41 Credit can be given to Bauman and Rose for promoting the need to engage more actively with the desire for community in the contemporary world. However, a similar point was made as early as 1985 by the urban anthropologist Anthony Cohen when he argued that ‘people’s attachment to community’ is an ‘empirical phenomenon’ which deserves to be studied rather than dismissed. Cohen, in turn, was heavily influenced by the work of the British cultural anthropologist Victor Turner. In 1969, Turner contributed a book that has become famous for its discussion of liminality, which can be understood as moments evoked by ritualistic practices when normality is suspended.42 Like Esposito, Turner returned to early notions of communitas in order to argue that some conception of community is present in all societies.43 He suggested that community


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exists ‘in resistance to structure, at the edges of structure, and from beneath structure’.44 For this reason, he suggested that community has both a cognitive and a symbolic role to play. Cohen built further on the idea that community has symbolic importance by suggesting that shared symbols play a more important role than boundaries in creating a shared sense of belonging.45 The ‘boundary’ of a community, he suggested, should be ‘constituted by people in interaction’.46 As the ‘public face’ of the community, the boundary is ‘symbolically simple, but, as an object of internal discourse it is symbolically complex’.47 In one sense, this echoes sentiments expressed by the French philosopher and art critic JeanLuc Nancy in his famous essay titled The Inoperative Community which was first published as an essay in 1983 before being republished in book form in 1991. In this work, Nancy was also interested in the symbolic significance of community but he saw community solely as something experienced as loss or as an absence in people’s lives.48 He suggested that ‘incompletion’ is the necessary ‘principle’ of community, provided we understand ‘incompletion in an active sense . . . as designating not an insufficiency or lack, but the activity of sharing’.49 The problem with Nancy’s conception is that he sees the experience of community as always being beyond reach; a concept that will always be ‘inoperable’. This is similar to the conclusions reached earlier by George Bataille, as discussed by Roberto Esposito. However, while Bataille talked of how we can lose ‘part of [our] own being, which goes to the benefit of the communal being’.50 Nancy wrote of community as being little more than an illusion. Indeed, Gerard Delanty51 presents Nancy and his compatriot Maurice Blanchot as the pioneers of a ‘post-modern theory’ of community which turns the promise of community into a cruel illusion. While it seems useful to think of community as something that is always incomplete it does not seem useful to think of it as something that will always be inoperable. It is worth noting that the work on the symbolic importance of community in the contemporary world was pioneered by the anthropologists Turner (1969) and Cohen (1985) rather than sociologists following in the footsteps of either Tönnies or Durkheim.

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Obviously anthropologists are more attuned to the importance of symbolic representation than sociologists who had been finding it increasingly difficult to identify community as a form of social structure. It is likely that Cohen’s book helped writers such as Rose and Bauman to think of community as a search for a more secure sense of belonging in an increasingly insecure world. Michel Maffesoli has added an interesting perspective to this by arguing that we have seen the emergence of ‘emotional communities’ which tend to be ‘unstable’ and ‘open’ and a kind of challenge to the ‘established moral order’.52 Such an emphasis on emotion helps to explain why community sometimes emerges as emotionally-charged reaction to a perceived threat. Heightened emotion can bring attachment to community to the fore but it can also flip over to the ‘dark side’ of community that has been discussed by writers such as Iris Marion Young, Richard Sennett, Zygmunt Bauman and Robert Esposito. There is nothing inherently wholesome about community.

Toxic, Token and Inclusive Manifestations of Community It might be useful to think of manifestations of community as sitting on a spectrum that runs from inclusive at one end to toxic at the other extreme; with tokenism sitting in the middle. Let us start our exploration of this spectrum by starting in the token middle before dipping into the virulent forms that have helped to trigger intercommunal violence and warfare. The point of this exercise is to suggest that community should never be taken for granted and that shallow or divisive projections of community identities need to be constantly contested. Many sociological critics of community have highlighted the dangers of tokenism. For example, an early advocate of community development in Australia, Martin Mowbray later teamed up with social researcher Lois Bryson to argue that co-option of the language of community by a wide range of government agencies in Australia and internationally had effectively blunted its capacity to deliver social justice.53 The feel-good character of the word community, Bryson and Mowbray argued, gave government agencies an opportunity to


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give an impression that they could deliver social justice outcomes and yet they lacked the political will and the detailed policies to deliver on such a promise. For Bryson and Mowbray, the word community had become little more than a ‘spray-on solution’ that only disguises underlying problems and Mowbray reiterated this view in a later paper.54 This point was later reinforced by the Australian sociologist Jim Walmsley when he suggested that the word has come to be used so widely and loosely that it now has a ‘high level of use but a low level of meaning’.55 It is not hard to find examples of tokenistic uses of the word community in political and policy discourses right across the world. What is even more worrying, of course, is that the word community can easily be used to justify parochialism, intolerance of ‘outsiders’, and racism directed against ‘foreigners’, as Iris Marion Young warned.56 In countries like Australia and the UK, narrow-minded parochialism often manifests as intolerance of immigrants who have come from different cultural backgrounds and this sometimes erupts into violence, as it did in the Cronulla beach riots of Sydney in 2005 and across a range of cities in the UK in August 2011. In countries ranging from Rwanda to Sri Lanka, inter-communal violence is often associated with messy processes of decolonization. So, for example, post-independence nation formation in Sri Lanka has led to an escalation of violent conflict between the island’s Sinhalese majority and the Tamil minority partly because the Sinhalese claim that the Tamils were given privileges during the long years of British rule. The author had a vicarious experience of the infamous 1983 anti-Tamil pogrom that swept across Sri Lanka with alarming speed when his Sri Lankan-born wife reeled in horror at 1983 news reports of mob attacks on isolated and defenceless Tamils in the Colombo suburb of Borella, which she had passed through regularly on her way to school. Borella, she recalled, had been a hub for several Tamil businesses that had been popular with Sinhalese and Tamil people alike and she struggled to understand how such a place had suddenly become a killing field. Historical ‘memory’ fuelled a communal emotion which took a particularly virulent form and yet the sudden eruption of violence took everyone in Sri Lanka by surprise.

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In many parts of the world, inter-communal—or inter-ethnic— violence has stretched across many generations and in such cases the stories of past conflicts may have become mythologized. This phenomenon was described well by Indian sociologist Manoj Jha57 in a paper that focused on the brutal violence directed at Muslims living in the Indian state of Gujarat over a period of four months in 2002. Those responsible for the violence tried to characterize it as justifiable revenge for past injustices. In other words, they tried to portray themselves as victims as much as the aggressors and Jha drew from earlier work by Volkan and Itzkowitz in saying that communities sometimes draw on stories of past humiliation which become the ‘chosen traumas’ to justify revenge. Things that may have happened in the distant past can be ‘psychologized’ and ‘mythologized’ to become ‘markers of their identity’.58 ‘Once a trauma becomes a chosen trauma,’ Jha writes, ‘the historical truth about it does not really matter’ (ibid) and this makes it difficult to subject the conflict to ‘rational’ analysis.59 While community development became a field of professional practice in countries such as Australia and the UK in the 1970s there is an older tradition of community organization in India and community organizers played a significant role in the struggle for independence and in the implementation of Mahatma Gandhi’s communitarian vision for the new nation. Jha’s principal concern, then, was to consider how community organizers might work in a society that had become so badly divided as became evident in Gujarat in 2002; noting the irony that Gujarat was the birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi. Of course, the starting point must be a deep knowledge of past conflicts and the competing claims as to the causes and sources of conflict. The task then, Jha suggests, is to design activities that are ‘aimed at the demystification of the adversarial identities, prejudices and stereotypes’.60 On the one hand, this might involve the ‘strengthening of shared spaces, shared interests and shared destiny’ while, on the other hand, it might be a search for ‘points of encounter’ between ‘open expression of a painful past’ and the ‘articulation of a long-term interdependent future’.61 Ultimately, Jha concluded, the aim is to build trust among communities ‘who have either forgotten the beauty of plural living or have fallen prey to


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… manufactured amnesia’.62 It cannot be assumed, Jha implied, that community will simply reassert itself in a wholesome form and this supports the point made by Rose when he suggested that inclusive forms of community will only exist if they are consciously ‘imagined and enacted’ (Rose, 1999: 196).63

The ‘Wilful Construction’ of Community As already noted, several writers have highlighted the need to contest narrow and divisive conceptions of community and to consciously construct more inclusive and complex community formations. However, the best presentation of this argument is included in a masterful ‘key ideas’ book written by Gerard Delanty and published in 2003. Delanty started his exploration of community by noting that the ancient Greeks had a conception of community which combined ‘nostalgic narratives of loss’ with ‘utopian dreams’ of the future. Furthermore, the Greeks used their conception of community to refer to both ‘locality and particularness’ and also to the sense of a ‘universal community in which all human beings participate’64 and this was conceived as a relationship between the polis and the cosmos. Of course, this echoes Robert Esposito’s exploration of the notion of communitas which was discussed earlier. However, this starting point enables Delanty to conclude that community has ‘exerted itself as a powerful idea of belonging in every age’ and, we might add, across all cultures. Delanty sees the work of Turner (1969) and Cohen (1985) as important turning points in shifting the emphasis towards a cultural, rather than political, understanding of community and he reviewed trends in urban sociology running from the Chicago School through to the work of writers such as Manuel Castells and Mike Davis. We probably have Castells to thank, Delanty suggested, for returning the emphasis to the ‘communicative construction’ of community in the wake of major advances in communication technologies. This makes the construction of virtual, rather than face-to-face, communities much easier and Castells heralded the shift to a globalized ‘network society’. However, Delanty argues that the ‘post-modern’ conception

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of community failed to understand the ongoing importance of place-based, embodied experiences of community. ‘Community is communicative in the sense of being formed in collective action based on place’ and this is important to the ‘building of personal identities’, Delanty wrote.65 Delanty argues that there is no need whatsoever to counterpose the importance of place-based and virtual communities. New communication technologies have made it easier to belong to different forms and layers of community—extending from the local to the global—and the increasing mobility of people globally means that place-based communities are likely to include more sub-communities and social networks than ever before. At the same time, increasing global flux means that community may not exist without conscious effort and for that reason it is useful to think of communities as being ‘wilfully constructed’ and ‘defined by practices rather than by structures or cultural values’.66 In his concluding chapter Delanty wrote that the ‘central argument’ of his book was that: Community is relevant today because, on the one side, the fragmentation of society has provoked a worldwide search for community, and on the other . . . cultural developments and global forms of communication have facilitated the construction of community.67

Whereas many have predicted the demise of community, firstly under the tramping feet of modernity and then drowning in the swirling complexities of globalization, Delanty suggests that ‘the persistence of community consists in its ability to communicate ways of belonging, especially in the context of an increasingly insecure world’.68 However, this can only be understood if we think of community as being essentially ‘an open-ended system of communication about belonging’.69 Meaning is no longer given or passed on within stable social institutions but ‘is more and more constructed by a vast variety of social actors’ who must act individually and collectively to make sense of their experiences.70 In Delanty’s view, communities that are consciously created do not simply reproduce meaning, they also produce it. Globalization continues to dissolve old certainties and thus intensifies the search for the security of belonging and, at the same time, new forms of


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communication facilitate the creation of new forms of belonging. New forms of community that extend way beyond the constraints of locality rely on the use of imagination71 and this, in turn, can change the ways in which people think about the dynamic nature of local communities. Ironically, an increased capacity to imagine community and the growing desire of individuals to find a sense of belonging within discursively constituted communities makes the ‘finality’ of community impossible because it ‘ends up [being] destroyed by the individualism that created the desire for it’.72 Yet community survives as a normative concept because it ‘offers people what neither society nor the state can offer, namely a sense of belonging in an insecure world’.73 In a chapter on the dangers of communitarianism as a political ideology, Delanty noted that narrow projections of community identity can create tensions, divisions and forms of exclusion within heterogeneous contemporary communities. For this reason the emphasis needs to be put on the ‘wilful construction’ of inclusive communities. At the same time, some forms of exclusion may be needed to retain a meaningful sense of community; for example supporting the ‘right’ of particular cultural groupings to sustain separate cultural practices, or the ‘right’ of a community to restrict access to significant events or meetings. Within multicultural societies, an inclusive sense of community at local, regional or national levels requires overt recognition of cultural diversity and rather than seeing inclusion and exclusion as being mutually exclusive, researchers within the Globalism Research Centre at RMIT University in Melbourne have argued that we need to see them as being in a dialectical relationship with each other.74 Indeed, as Scerri and James have argued, there are a number of tensions posed by the search for social cohesion within the conditions global flux and uncertainty— such as the balance between mobility and belonging, identity and difference, equality and autonomy, needs and limits—and such tensions need to be constantly negotiated among the participants in community. However, this realization only adds weight to Delanty’s dynamic and normative conception of community formation within the contemporary world.

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The work of Delanty, Rose, Bauman and others suggest that Durkheim made a significant error in dismissing the ongoing relevance of community in ‘modern’ society. There is no reason to think that the consolidation of ‘civil society’ would make community irrelevant; indeed community and civil society refer to very different processes of social integration. In his landmark work on civil society, Jeffrey Alexander75 has reworked the concept to suggest that civility, like community, is something that can never be fully attained. Instead, he suggests, we might better see civility as something to be striven for by paying attention to the need for constant ‘civil repair’ and by contesting narrow conceptions of civility within the ‘civil sphere’. This creates a dynamic conception of civil society which nicely complements the dynamic conception of community in that the ‘civil sphere’ can be understood as a ‘space’ which allows for constructive contestation about the character and identity of community. Furthermore conceptions of both community and the civil sphere can operate at all levels from the local to the national and the global.

Reflections of an Experienced Urban Community Development Worker A review of recent literature on community—as found, for example, in the pages of the international Community Development Journal—suggests that Delanty’s 2003 book has not had the influence it deserves. Similarly, a recent book by English community development practitioner Jeremy Brent76 is not likely to have the influence it deserves, largely because it was the only scholarly book that he wrote and it was published posthumously. After studying at Oxford University in the 1970s, Brent—a committed anarchist— went to work in a particular housing estate in northern Bristol and he continued to work there as a ‘youth worker’ for 25 years until he returned to study and completed his Ph.D. at the University of West England in 2000. Sadly, he died after a brief illness in 2006. Fortunately, his family, friends and associates pursued the publication of the book based largely on his Ph.D. thesis and it helps to confirm


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Delanty’s key conclusions, even though it was written before the appearance of Delanty’s book. Brent’s book is significant for three main reasons. Firstly, it includes a very impressive review of relevant literature. Second, it demonstrates that much can be learnt from the practice of ‘community development’ as it has evolved in the UK—and, it can be added, in Australia and North America—since the early 1970s. Third, it focuses on the creation of community in urban settings, even if the primary focus is on an easily identified ‘estate’ community which has experienced less ‘turnover’ than many urban communities. While Brent drew heavily on his 25 years of experience as a youth worker in the Southmead estate in Bristol, he also drew on the work of researchers from the famous Department of Cultural Studies and Sociology at the University of Birmingham, where he undertook postgraduate study in the early 1990s. This enabled him to argue that his dynamic conception of community formation within the Southmead estate had clear relevance for people interested in community development in England’s ‘second city’, Birmingham, and, by inference, for other urban communities in the UK. Despite his interest in improving the material conditions for people living in a public housing estate in Bristol, Brent drew on the work of Michel Maffesoli77 to make the point that dreams are as important as material circumstances in enabling people to create a sense of community. Noting that Maffesoli was interested in an overlap between functionality and symbolism, Brent suggested that ‘while I have been very aware of the aesthetic and non-utilitarian aspects of community, these are always also related to the material context’.78 According to Brent, the ‘processes of community consist of both dreams and desires, and a certain pragmatism’ and he uses the term ‘material-psychic coupling’ to refer to this dialectic. Brent ended his thoughtful reflections on the ‘search for community’ in the contemporary world with seven key ‘thoughts’ about what his experiences and subsequent research had taught him.79 These include the observation that ‘Community is not a simple concept and it can become dangerous if it is simplified’. They also include the counter-intuitive conclusion that community inevitably ‘involves conflict’ rather than presenting itself as ‘an answer to conflict’. In

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expanding this point Brent suggests that community should not be seen as an ‘answer to oppression’ but rather as a ‘form of resistance, within asymmetrical relations of power’. This is not a conception of community that is easily embraced by governmental discourses and Brent notes that ‘the complexity and aesthetic content of community eludes current social policy approaches’ in the UK. Nevertheless, the search for community cannot be ignored, Brent concludes, because ‘Community formations and aspirations will not go away’. Brent’s book implies that people interested in promoting social cohesion could learn much from people who have been deeply involved in community development work. In reflecting on his own experience, his final key thought is that ‘Engaging with community is a practice full of ambivalence, but always one full of hope’.

Conclusion Community development is an established field of practice in countries such as Australia, the UK, and USA. Of course, it is not always done well and shallow or narrow conceptions of community identity are likely to do more harm than good; exacerbating divisions and making many people feel marginalized. Furthermore, as Bryson and Mowbray noted,80 the rhetoric of community can sometimes be used by the state to disguise a lack of action on underlying social inequities. Nevertheless, the need to constantly nurture communitybuilding activities is well established in practice and there are many community development practitioners who are addressing the underlying causes for tension and division within communities. It is harder to distinguish lines of demarcation between place-based communities in the city than outside the city and people have even more opportunities to participate in a range of non-local communities. Yet the need for community is no less and the need to contest narrow and divisive projections of community may be even greater because tensions and divisions can easily ‘spill over’ into other local and non-local communities within the city and beyond. Community development practice is much less likely to be seen as a function of the state in countries of the global South, partly


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because of a lingering belief that traditional, pre-modern forms of community remain strong and operational, and partly because the role of the state is more narrowly prescribed. It can be hard to translate the word ‘community’ into non-western languages yet there are community organization practices at play in countries such as India and the Philippines. While this chapter has focused heavily on debates about community within Western societies, it also noted that there is something deeply human—and not culture-specific— about the desire for community, even if that desire is tinged with an ambivalence related to feelings of loss and obligation. It also needs to be noted that globalization and new forms of global uncertainty—ranging from financial instabilities to the onset of global climate change—touch all local communities, in all parts of the world. Increasing global integration is resulting in shared existential uncertainty and this brings the age-old search for community into sharper relief. Increasing global integration also means that divisions and conflicts can more easily spread and multiply beyond the local and this highlights the need to contest narrow and divisive projections of community identity, at all levels from the local to the national. National borders are becoming more porous and transnational communities—such as diasporas—can either help or hinder the search for social cohesion and/or peaceful coexistence within nations. Rather than obviating the need for community—as many people predicted—globalization has made the wilful construction of inclusive communities even more important. Likewise, accelerating urbanization has not made community irrelevant. As Gerard Delanty has argued, contemporary urban sociology needs to embrace a much stronger understanding of the importance of place-based, or grounded, communities alongside its interest in extended and virtual forms of community. It can do this, in part, by reconciling the legacies of Tönnies and Durkheim because they were, in a sense, both right. On the one hand, there is a constant need to create stronger and more inclusive forms of community and, on the other hand, as Jeffrey Alexander has argued, there is a parallel need to constantly build more inclusive forms of civility.

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Notes 1. F. Tönnies, Community and Society, 1957, Michigan: Michigan State University Press. 2. G. Delanty, Community, 2003, London: Routledge, p. 33. 3. E. Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society, New York: Free Press, 1984. 4. J. Aldous, ‘An Exchange Between Durkheim and Tönnies on the Nature of Social Relations’, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 7, no. 6, pp. 1191-1200. 5. Delanty, Community, p. 3 7. 6. Ibid. 7. Delanty, Community, p. 152. 8. Ibid., p. 34. 9. For example, N. Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought, Cambridge: Polity, 1999; Z. Bauman, Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World, Cambridge: Polity, 2001; Delanty, Community, 2003. 10. R. Esposito, Communitas: The Origin and Destiny of Community, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010. 11. Esposito, Communitas, p. 3. 12. Ibid., p. 4. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., pp. 4-6. 15. Ibid., p. 6. 16. Ibid., p. 8. 17. Ibid., p. 13. 18. Ibid., p. 8. 19. Ibid., p. 96. 20. Ibid., p. 99. 21. A. Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community, London: Tavistock, 1985, p. 25. 22. Delanty, Community, p. 53. 23. Ibid. 24. Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community, pp. 25-7. 25. Delanty, Community, p. 54. 26. Ibid., p. 63. 27. R. Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, London: Flamingo, p. 76. 28. E. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: The Short History of the Twentieth Century, 1914-1991, London: Michael Joseph, 1994, p. 428.


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29. I.M. Young, ‘The ideal of community and the politics of difference’, in Feminism/postmodernism, ed. L.J. Nicholson, New York: Routledge, 1990, p. 302. 30. Z. Bauman, Postmodern Ethics, Oxford: Blackwell, 1993, p. 44. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. Z. Bauman, Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World. 34. R. Sennett, The Fall of Public Man, London: Faber, 1986, p. 309. 35. Ibid., p. 296. 36. R. Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, New York: W.W. Norton, 1998, p. 137. 37. Z. Bauman, Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World. 38. Sennett, The Fall of Public Man. 39. N. Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. 40. Ibid., p. 196. 41. Ibid. 42. Delanty, Community, p. 44. 43. V. Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, London: Routledge, 1969. 44. V. Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, p. 128. 45. Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community, p. 74. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid. 48. See Delanty, Community, p. 136. 49. J.L. Nancy, The inoperative community, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991, p. 35. 50. G. Bataiile, Visions of Excess, Minneapolis: Univesity of Minnesota Press, 1985, p. 251. 51. Delanty, Community, pp. 135-8. 52. M. Maffesoli, The Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society, London: Sage, p. 15. 53. L. Bryson and M. Mowbray, ‘Community: The Spray-On Solution’, Australian Journal of Social Issues, vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 255-67. 54. M. Mowbray, ‘Community capacity building or state opportunism?’, Community Development Journal, vol. 40, no. 3, 2005, pp. 255-64. 55. J. Walmsley, ‘Putting Community in Place’, Dialogue, vol. 25, no. 1, 2006, p. 5. 56. I.M. Young, ‘The ideal of community and the politics of difference’. 57. M. Jha, ‘Community organization in split societies’, Community Development Journal, vol. 44, no. 3, 2010, pp. 305-19.

56 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80.

Martin Mulligan Ibid., p. 318. Ibid. Jha, ‘Community organization in split societies’, p. 316. Ibid.. Op. cit. Rose, Powers of freedom, p. 196. Delanty, Community, p. 12. Ibid., p. 71. Ibid., p. 130. Ibid., p. 193. Ibid., p. 187. Ibid. Ibid., p. 132. See B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso, 1991. Delanty, Community, p. 192. Ibid., p. 195. See A. Scerri and P. Janies, ‘Communities of Citizens and “Indicators” of Sustainability’, Community Development Journal, vol. 45, no. 2, 2010, pp. 219-36. J. Alexander, The Civil Sphere, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. J. Brent, Searching for Community: Representation, Power and Action on an Urban Housing Estate, Bristol: Polity, 2009. M. Maffesoli, The Time of the Tribes, 1996. Brent, Searching for Community, p. 230. Ibid., p. 261. Bryson and Mowbray, ‘Community: The Spray-On Solution’, 1981.

References Aldous, Joan, Emile Durkeim and Ferdinand Tönnies (1972), ‘An Exchange Between Durkheim and Tönnies on the Nature of Social Relations with an Introduction by Joan Aldous’, American Journal of Sociology, 77, no. 6, pp. 1191-1200. Alexander, Jeffrey (2006), The Civil Sphere, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Anderson, Benedict (1991), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso. Bataille, George (1985), Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-39, translated by Allan Stoekl, Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press.


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Bauman, Zygmunt (1993), Postmodern Ethics, Oxford: Blackwell. ——— (2001), Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World, Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Brent, Jeremy (2009), Searching for Community: Representation, Power and Action on an Urban Housing Estate, Bristol, UK: Polity Press. Bryson, Lois and Martin Mowbray (1981), ‘Community: The Spray-On Solution’, Australian Journal of Social Issues, vol. 16, no. 4, 255-67. Castells, Manuel (1983), The City and the Grassroots, Berkeley: University of California Press. ——— (1989), The Informational City, Oxford, UK: Blackwell. ——— (1994), ‘European Cities, the Informational Society, and the Global Economy’, New Left Review, 204, pp. 18-32. Cohen, Anthony (1985), The Symbolic Construction of Community, London: Tavistock. Davis, Mike (1990), City of Quartz: Excavating the Future of Los Angeles, London: Verso. ——— (1999), Ecology of Feat: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster, London: Picador. Delanty, Gerard (2003), Community, London: Routledge. Durkheim, Emile (1984, 1st pub. 1893), The Division of Labour in Society, New York: Free Press. Esposito, Roberto (2010), Communitas: The Origin and Destiny of Community, Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. Hobsbawm, Eric (1994), The Age of Extremes; The Short History of the Twentieth Century, 1914-1991, London: Michael Joseph. Jha, Manoj (2010), ‘Community Organization in Split Societies’, Community Development Journal, vol. 44, no. 3, pp. 305-19. Lynd, Robert and Helen Lynd (1929), MiddleTown, New York: HarcourtBrace. ——— (1937), MiddleTown in Transition, New York: Harcourt-Brace. Maffesoli, Michel (1996), The Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society, London: Sage Publications. Mowbray, Martin (2005), ‘Community Capacity Building or State Opportunism?’ Community Development Journal, vol. 40, no. 3, pp. 255-64. Nancy, Jean-Luc (1991), The Inoperative Community, Minneapolis, USA: University of Minnesota Press. Rose, Nikolas (1999), Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Scerri, Andy and Paul James (2010), ‘Communities of Citizens and ‘Indicators’ of Sustainability’, Community Development Journal, vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 219-36. Sennett, Richard (1986), The Fall of Public Man, London: Faber and Faber. ——— (1998), The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, New York: W.W. Norton. Tönnies, Ferdinand (1957, 1st pub. in 1887), Community and Society: Gemeinschaft unt Gesellschaft, translated and edited by Charles Loomis, Michigan: Michigan State University Press. Turner, Victor (1969), The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, London: Routledge. Walmsley, Jim (2006), ‘Putting Community in Place’, Dialogue, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 5-12. Whyte, William Foote (1943), Street Corner Society, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wirth, Louis (1938), ‘Urbanism as a Way of Life’, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 44, no. 1, pp. 1-24. Williams, Raymond (1983), Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, London: Flamingo. Young, Iris Marion (1990), ‘The Ideal of Community and the Politics of Difference’, in L.J. Nicholson (ed.), Feminism/postmodernism, New York: Routledge.

Chapter 3

Transnational Community and Money in the Indian Diaspora in Melbourne Supriya Singh

Introduction In this paper I argue that migrants participate in multilayered multiple communities. Migrants are part of local neighbourhood, occupational, school and special interest communities. They are also part of transnational communities that span local, transnational and global communities based on the country of origin, language, religion or educational institution. In this paper I examine these multiple dimensions of transnational community through patterns of diaspora philanthropy among the Indians in Australia. I do this within the frameworks of ‘transnational urbanism’ and the sociology of money. I draw on participant observation and openended interviews with 137 persons in Australia (predominantly in Melbourne) and India in two studies conducted between May 2005 and August 2012. This study shows that participation and giving to the transnational community is shaped by a person’s gender, life stage and history of migration. At the same time this philanthropy reflects

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the different spatial dimensions of transnational communities that shape the characteristics of the transnational city. Melbourne is a ‘transnational city’ with an Asian flavour. In Melbourne Central in 2012 more than half (58.9 per cent) the population was born overseas. More than a third (38.2 per cent) spoke a language other than English. Though Melbourne has traditionally been seen as a European city, in 2006, 30.2 per cent of its population was born in Asia.1 Melbourne continues to attract the newest migrants. Just less than a third (29.7 per cent) of the international students in Australia enrolled in Victoria.2 These international students are predominantly Asian. Following Smith (2001), I use the term ‘transnational city’ to emphasize that Melbourne provides the socioeconomic opportunities and advanced communication networks to sustain transnational connections. The focus on ‘transnational urbanism’ rather than on the ‘global city’ signals a focus on everyday life, the importance of agency and the need to give equal weight to the economic, social, cultural and political aspects of life in a city. Smith sees everyday life not just as a site for local culture ‘but as a dynamic crossroads of local, national, and transnational place-making practices’.3 This approach reflects the perspectives of the sociology of money where money is a medium of relationships which shapes and is shaped by social relations and cultural values.4 In this paper, I draw on two qualitative studies. The first was of 86 persons belonging to the Indian diaspora in Melbourne conducted between May 2005 and July 2010. In this study 18 participants were first-generation migrants who had come between the 1970s and 1990s; 20 were second generation in that they were either born in Australia or migrated with their families before they were 12 years old; 35 were international Indian students or on a spouse visa who had come to Australia to study in 2005 or later; and 13 were community leaders or representatives dealing with the Indian community. The second transnational study covered 51 persons from 13 families in India and Australia. Nine of the 13 families were matched samples in that members of both the Indian and Australian parts of the transnational family were interviewed. These interviews were conducted between November 2011 and August 2012.

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Conceptualizing Transnational Communities The transnational community has not been as clearly conceptualized as the transnational family. The transnational community is not splintered across borders in the same way as the transnational family. It is not as if Sikh or Hindu temples have divided themselves—one arm being in Melbourne and the other in Amritsar or Varanasi. Yet like the transnational family, participation in a transnational community is at different times and contexts, local and transnational. Community participation can also be global. Participation in transnational communities can be multi-layered without necessarily being multisited. As Smith says (Smith, 2001) ‘Transnational urbanism . . . is a complex process of meaning-making involving global, transnational, and local dynamics’.6 Transnational communities are found across borders and within borders. People continue to be linked to their communities in the source country, but communities are also formed in the country of destination built on transnational ties of religion, language and place. The coming together of the local, transnational and the global is illustrated in some 74 Indian community organizations in Victoria.6 Community organizations that focus on language, religion, arts, caste, alumni relationships or ethnic origin provide local networks, a sense of belonging and comfort in the continuation of culture in Melbourne. They are also transnational for they seek to reproduce the language, religion, music, and rituals of India. The transnational aspect of Hinduism and Sikhism has also metamorphosed into the global and seeks virtual expression in sites such as http://www. hindunet.org and http://www.sikhnet.com. As Ehrkamp and Leitner (Ehrkamp and Leitner, 2006) note, ‘contemporary migrants are embedded in, identify with, and participate in multiple communities’.7

Diaspora Philanthropy Migrants often donate to transnational communities in the destination and source countries. We have little firm data on giving locally or for giving to communities in the source countries.

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Officially recorded remittances to developing countries were an estimated $401 billion to developing countries.8 We know from individual case studies that family remittances comprise a large part of overall remittances and that some of the family remittances go towards community welfare in the form of donations to religious organizations and the needy.9 The lack of strong data on community remittances is partly because the mix of formal and informal remittance channels makes it difficult to estimate the total funds. It is also partly because the governance of community remittances remains opaque and at times unaccountable at both the giving and receiving ends.10

Motives and patterns of giving Transnational giving in the country of destination is motivated by the same charitable impulses as giving to communities across borders. There are two motives for giving. One has religious roots in the value of giving. But there is a tension between private giving and selfless giving. Giving has traditionally been individual, reflecting the religious importance of charity and selfless service. In India, there is a long history of personal giving rooted in religious beliefs. In Hinduism, the concepts of daana (giving) and dakshina (alms) correspond with bhiksha (alms) in Buddhism. Islam has prescribed offerings in the form of zakaat and voluntary offerings as sadaqaat.11 In Sikhism, the concepts of nishkam sewa (selfless service) and daan (donations) are central to a moral life. Most of the money goes to religious institutions or personal acts of charity. The other motive is more associated with the Jats, the landowning caste of Punjab, where the giving is involved with honour (izzat) and being seen as a person of status (sardari). Hence much of the money goes to the village from where the person comes—to religion, education and health.12 For the main part, the giving is not continuous, as there is little follow-up of the projects.13 Successful projects of diaspora philanthropy in the Punjab have had people from the philanthropist’s family stationed there for the project to succeed.


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Community remittances often involve gifts to religious institutions, villages of origin and clans or support wider education, health, sports, disaster relief and infrastructure projects. Though there are stories of giving from Australia to a particular part of a state, there are no known parallels in Punjab to the hometown associations that are active in collective giving from the United States to China and countries in Latin America.14 Local institutions in Punjab are not involved with their diaspora to develop a programme of giving and implementation. A study of Sikh diaspora philanthropy in Punjab (Dusenbery and Tatla, 2009) shows that community remittances to Punjab remain difficult to estimate. There is a long history of giving, particularly in Amritsar, but community remittances are not evenly distributed through the state. A 2002 survey conducted by NRI (non-resident Indian) Sabah Punjab of 477 villages in the Doaba region revealed that more than half of the community remittances went to religious institutions.15

Male Face of Diaspora Philanthropy Community remittances are overwhelmingly male in India as in other countries with patriarchal traditions. We do not know enough about women migrants’ community remittances. The male nature of community remittances mimics the patriarchal nature of family remittances where men remit more than women when men and women migrate together. When men working in the Middle East send money, as Prema Kurien’s study shows, variable proportions of the family remittances are used for community donations. The giving is male, though women contribute much of the on-ground work. Even when women are the inspiration behind the diaspora philanthropy, the project carries a male name. This is seen in the story of Kapoor Singh Siddhu, an Indian migrant to Canada. He took up his wife Basant Kaur’s dream of setting up a hospital in her village. The hospital is called ‘Kapoor Singh, Canadian, Hospital’. However, the hospital’s viability was because of the work of Basant Kaur and her daughters in the village.16

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Bibi Balwant Kaur’s (Bibi Ji’s) story stands out against the male landscape of giving. She migrated to Kenya from Punjab in 1925 as a young girl and then from Kenya to the UK in 1972. Over 60 years, she organized the building of a crematorium in Nairobi; went to India after Partition to help in the refugee camps in Punjab; set up Gurdwara Bebe Nanaki Ji in honour of Guru Nanak’s sister in India and later established the Bebe Nanaki Charitable Trust in 1972 in the United Kingdom.17 She engaged in charitable work when she was married with a son, and when she became a widow around 1948. Purewal writes that Bibi Ji at 90 was more of a matriarchal head. As the first generation of philanthropists retired, they were replaced by men. So Bibi Ji’s story may yet reinforce the male face of diaspora philanthropy. In the rest of the paper, I describe the qualitative study of the Indian diaspora in Melbourne. I chart donations to community by the three groups in the Indian diaspora in Melbourne. They give to communities that are local—Indian and non-Indian. They also give to communities in India. Some of these donations to communities in India go through the local Indian community organization in Melbourne, broader Australian NGOs that focus in part on India or informally through face-to-face giving. As the story of community in Melbourne changes with life stage, generation, and migration experience, I show how people balance local, transnational and global community ties through community philanthropy within the city of Melbourne among the firstgeneration migrants, the second generation and the Indian international students.

Seeking Community: The First-generation Migrants from the 1970s to the 1990s For the first-generation migrants from the 1970s to the 1990s, the early years were marked by a loss of extended family, friendship and community networks. Migrants we interviewed turned to people who spoke the same language and/or belonged to their religious group, as one way of reproducing the closeness of family ties. In some cases they themselves set up community organizations.


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Religion became more important for 6 of our 18 first-generation migrants after they migrated. Two took on leadership roles in their religious organizations. Anand, a professional who is over 65 years old, says when he lived and worked in India, ‘going to the temple would have been a once in a six month affair’. When he and his family moved to Australia in 1973, he found going to the Hindu temple added ‘a certain sense of security. . . . It ultimately allows you to be comfortable with what you are’. It gave them a network of people and activities and a group for their children. He was secretary of the organization for six years. His community networks in Melbourne continue to centre round the Hindu temple and a group of South Indian Brahmin friends. For others like Niranjan, 91, the temple has increased in importance as other activities like the Senior Citizens’ Club have declined. He says, ‘The gurdwara (the Sikh temple) is the centre of our networks. We exist based on the gurdwara. If we did not have the gurdwara we would start feeling lonely. We have a lot of social contacts in the gurdwara’. The first-generation migrants did not talk openly about giving, for most of the giving was directed informally to religious organizations. Many would give through religious organizations in Melbourne to religious organizations in India. Indian religious and welfare organizations would also collect money for wider Australian projects such as the Cancer Council and support for the Victorian Bush Fire Victims. Global disasters such as the Tsunami in Japan and the earthquake in Pakistan also became triggers for giving. As Dusenbery (2009) says, most of the giving is a personal act of charity. As we did not ask directly about giving to communities, some of the more explicit information about giving by the first generation came from their children. Ina, 27, married with one child, said: I think my parents donate to local charities. I know that they do a local thing with Red Cross and Fred Hollows and some other foundations as well. I think my Dad used to donate to Hare Krishna. He used to feed people for free, the homeless in Australia. I don’t think they donate to any specific Indian charity. But if their friends are selling tickets to an organised Indian charity concert they will go to that. But I don’t think they are particularly fixated to giving . . . to Indians who are doing things in India. . . . ‘I mean

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he does go to his village (where his parents still live) . . . he would give some money to people, you know, but not in a sense of a charity. . . . He gives little things and . . . all that. . . .’

Building Community Rodney, a professional over 65 years old, migrated from Kerala in India in 1971. He and his wife began going to the Catholic church, as his wife Rita is Catholic. By 1977, they had about 20 Malayali friends from the Syrian Orthodox and Jacobite faiths that are well established in Kerala. In 1977, a few of them decided to buy a church so that they could have Syrian Orthodox services. Over time there were 300 families in the congregation. The numbers grew and dispersed and the church split. It also became necessary to buy another church. For Rodney, the Syrian Orthodox church in Melbourne has been an enduring commitment. It has given him a local community, a connection to the church of his country of origin, and a global link through the global hierarchy of the Syrian Orthodox church. His wife Rita says, ‘I didn’t think he was . . . such a religious person’. Rodney demurs saying, ‘It’s just that for some reason as you get older you become a bit more (religious).’ He adds, ‘I’ve got a . . . feeling that . . . you get it back somehow, somewhere else. . . . The blessings come in different ways’. Daya, married with grown-up children, was a reluctant migrant when she gave up a prestigious career in India to follow her husband to Australia in 1983. She talks openly about her feelings of loneliness and aloneness. She says that after migration, without a challenging job, she had no self-confidence. She says, ‘Having such a prestigious job and when you come here, you are nothing. An ordinary housewife. I was already in shock. I didn’t like anything here. Nothing at all. I used to cry. Nothing really lured me.’ She adds, ‘It was as if you were nothing. It affects your self esteem. Your inner person.’ She was anxious about hiring babysitters. Her parents would not come and stay because they were traditional and never ate or drank at her place. Separated from her natal family with whom she was close, she felt her connections with her extended family were fading. There


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were few visits home and telephone calls were expensive. Though she continued to feel part of a large family (pariwar), she says she felt like ‘a cut-off part’. When they migrated in 1983, they knew nobody. Slowly they started going to the temple. There were also Indians living in the nearby flats. They built up a mainly Indian network so that their children had Indian friends. Building on her experience of loneliness and lack of community, she nurtured community by starting an Indian women’s organization in 2002. It is a place for women to get together. It is somewhere they can seek help. They organize programmes where women can get support and information about jobs and services in Melbourne. Daya said, ‘I think loneliness (akelapan) is something that every woman faces here. There is no family support. No extended family. A woman has to face the consequences (of migration) more.’

Giving Locally to Give Transnationally Ashok, 44, is a twice migrant. He was with his mother in India for three years, while his father was travelling between India and Kenya. After that, the family moved to the United Kingdom. After 23 years in the UK he moved to Australia. His story of diaspora philanthropy is a mixture of personal and semi-organized giving through his temple in Australia to religious and educational projects in his home state of Gujarat. In both cases it is through a trusted religious leader in Gujarat. It is interesting that the community remittances are directed to the country of his birth, even though only his mother’s sisters continue to live there. His wife grew up in India but she too has no family left there. However, she sends money for the puja, a special prayer to be conducted in India. When I visited Ashok and his wife in their home in Australia for the transnational study, professional cleaners were making the house ready for their religious leader and his entourage from Gujarat. As they have a longstanding relationship, Ashok prefers to channel the money from Australia to Gujarat through him via formal bank transfer, so there is accountability. He says in 2010, $AUS 100,000

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would have gone from his temple to the temples in India for their schools. Often the people who come to collect the money have no references—only fancy pictures. Ashok tells of a group who collected $AUS 25,000 for a school in Gujarat. ‘People gave $50, $100, $500. But there were no receipts, no accountability.’ Ashok has also contributed to the new Swaminarayan temple complex that opened in Bhuj, in the Kutch region of Gujarat, in May 2010. It is a temple built of marble and gold on five acres of land to replace the original temple that was destroyed in the 2001 earthquake. He was there for all the seven days of the opening. ‘Every day 600,000 to 700,000 people were being fed,’ he says. Much of the estimated Rs 150 crore (Rs 1.5 billion) came from UK, Africa and Australia; Rs. 6-8 crores came from Sydney, Melbourne and Perth in Australia. At a personal level also, Ashok donated the inheritance he received from his father and mother’s side towards building a physics room and a computer lab named after his father. He did it again through the same trusted religious leader and his organization. He says, ‘Often people from the UK and Africa donate money. There are garlands and a photograph. But that is it.’

Giving Locally and Transnationally: The Second-generation Experience The second-generation participants grew up with a sense of family around them. Some also had extended family in Australia, and/ or visited the family in India with their parents when they were young. Participants who were single—all except three—lived with their parents. Two of them lived apart because of work or study. So for them, community does not have to take the place of family, as with the first generation and the Indian international students and student migrants. Two spoke of setting up or participating in Indian clubs in universities. A few continued to go to regional community organizations, following the pattern set by their parents. The second generation—when they gave—gave to Indian organizations in India and Australia and the wider Australian community organizations. Giving to organizations in India usually


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meant there was a close relationship with India. This was either a continuation of their parents’ relationship with India, or the result of their own need to know India. Chitra in her late 20s was born in Singapore and moved with her parents to Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and then to Melbourne when she was about six years old. She sends money to India for community work through Oxfam and a religious organization in Melbourne with links to India and across the world. She sees herself as Indian, Malaysian and Australian in three equal parts. For 17 years, her life was filled with Bharatanatyam. After that she turned to a Hindu religious organization to better understand the connection between dance and spirituality. Chitra is herself surprised at the importance that religion and India have in her life. It was confronting when she first went to India with her family when she was in her teens. It was her subsequent visits to India through an Indian religious organization in Melbourne that connected her deeply to India. She says: I think that stems from the fact that you want to know your origins. . . . That’s where your family or your lineage comes from. . . . When you’re young, you follow . . . your parents . . . and that was the right thing to do. But when you grow up you tend to question these things a bit more, and you want to know for yourself: Where do you come from? Why do I do these things?

Etash, in his late 20s, contributed directly to an organization in India when the tsunami struck there. He says, ‘I guess it was more a national contribution because the one state that was affected was the state I was from. So I wanted to give something there’. Etash migrated with his parents from India to the United States, back to India and then to Australia when he was 11 years old. Except for his first few years in Australia, he has had continuous involvement in India through his extended family and his interest in music and dance. In Melbourne he has been involved with community service in the Hindu temple. When he was in a university in Melbourne, he led an Indian club. He said, ‘We used to organize various things, social gatherings, cultural shows. We sponsored a child from India.’ When he went to the United States, as part of his graduate programme, and observed Indian organizations in action, he became

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conscious that in Melbourne they had not seriously raised funds for social causes. He was not sure why Indian community organizations were so different in Australia and the United States. He said: . . . I saw a lot of organizations that were giving back to the community in India. A friend of mine used to run a marathon . . . as part of an organization which sets up schools in India . . . I went to a concert where they got a band from India to come and play and again the proceeds . . . were going to some organization which was giving money back to India. If I look at the number of organizations over here that do such a thing, there aren’t as many.

For Harsh and Dahlia, India does not consciously figure in the giving. Harsh assesses the need when he donates. He says: I wouldn’t think so much about whether this is an Indian cause or an Australian cause. If it was a religious cause maybe I would question it and think, why are we discriminating based on religion? I’m not comfortable with that . . . I think I’d be more likely to consider what cause the money is going to, rather than what culture it is going to support.

Dahlia, 29, says she gives to Muslim countries that are most troubled at the moment. She says: I’ll tick those boxes . . . usually Palestine and Indonesia . . . and Sri Lanka. Again, these aren’t countries which are devoutly Muslim or necessarily Indian. But I think the . . . deciding factor was how dire the need was and you know if there were a lot of people suffering. That would be my issue.

Giving Informally: Indian Students and Student Migrants The first few months, for the international students and student migrants, were marked by loneliness and loss of family. The transnational family is most immediate for the Indian students and student migrants, who often have not yet established a family in Melbourne. The majority of the students we interviewed lived in a nearly wholly Indian world, in terms of their living arrangements, education and friends. Their sense of a family-like community was mostly experienced with other Indian students. Most of the Indian


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students spoke of a disconnect with the settled Indian community, that is, Indian professionals who migrated to Australia in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Religious organizations were important for comfort and familiarity, but did not necessarily offer support and friendship. Language and sport organizations helped a few connect. Indian students do not also connect closely with the secondgeneration Indians or Indian community organizations (Singh and Cabraal, 2010).18 Only four of the 35 participants were connected to Indian community organizations—one through hockey, two through Gujarati dance and one through voluntary work. Students were focused on surviving in Melbourne. If there was any money left over, they sent it to help their parents or pay back the student loans. International Indian students give in terms of service, most often to religious organizations in Melbourne. Amar, 27, an international student from Punjab, says: Indian students do community service in India. They go to the gurdwara (Sikh temple) and are involved in serving langar (the ritual meal at the temple). . . . Once they come here they feel that they should do, the same thing. They can’t just sit home and do nothing. So they just go to the gurdwara.

Charandeep, in his 30s, came as an international student to Melbourne in 2005. Now he has Australian citizenship and a desirable job. As his ties with India loosen, particularly since his parents are now in Australia, he has committed himself to community work through his gurdwara and Australian government and non-government organizations. When in India, he chooses to give informally to his extended family in the village, or help the community around his family home. He says he does not trust formal giving through religious institutions.

Conclusion: Transnational Communities in a Transnational City Drawing on a qualitative study of the Indian diaspora in Melbourne, I have shown how community participation and formation is shaped by the different migration experiences of the first generation, second

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generation and Indian student migrants. These differences are reflected in community philanthropy at the local, transnational and global levels. When we study community in a transnational city, the local, transnational and global dimensions of community co-exist in different contexts. Transnational communities are found across borders and within borders. They are also local and part of everyday life in Melbourne. Without these transnational aspects to community life, city life would lose its diversity in people, culture, food, language and cultural precincts. This is an everyday celebration of local, national and transnational ties in a transnational city. It is what distinguishes the colour and sounds of its streets and the variety of its cultural life. In this paper the focus was on transnational community in the Indian diaspora in Melbourne. In future research, the city needs to come to the centre of the study of communities. It is important to ask: How does the study of cities change when studied from the perspective of transnational communities? What are the metaphors, stories and myths that represent community in a transnational city? As Smith (2001) says,19 ‘To envision cities as sites of transnational urbanism is a central task for present and future urban research’.

Acknowledgments I would like to acknowledge the contribution of Dr Anuja Cabraal who interviewed and coded many of the participants. She was part of the Indian diaspora study team. I would also like to acknowledge the help of Dr Chloe Patton who conducted two of the secondgeneration interviews. I also gratefully acknowledge the support of the Global Cities Research Institute for its support of the Indian diaspora project.

Notes 1. Australian Bureau of Statistics (2012). National Regional Profile: Melbourne (C) (Local Government Area) Retrieved 14 July 2014 from http://stat.abs.gov.au/itt/r.jsp?RegionSummary®ion=24600 &dataset=ABS_NRP9_LGA&geoconcept=REGION&maplayer


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id=LGA2012&measure=MEASURE&datasetASGS=ABS_NRP9_ ASGS&datasetLGA=ABS_NRP9_LGA®ionLGA=REGION& regionASGS=REGION 2. Australian Education International, ‘International Student Data 2013’. Available https://aei.gov.au/research/International-StudentData/Pages/ InternationalStudentData2013.aspx#Pivot Table, accessed on 9 May 2013. 3. M.P. Smith, Transnational Urbanism: Locating Globalization, Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001, p. 185. 4. See V.A. Zelizer, The Social Meaning of Money, New York, Basic Books, 1994. 5. Smith, Transnational Urbanism, p. 183. 6. Personal communication, Jasvinder Sidhu, 18 July 2013. 7. P. Ehrkamp and H. Leitner, Rethinking immigration and citizenship: new spaces of migrant transnationalism and belonging, Environment and Planning A, vol. 38, no. 9, 2006, p. 1593. 7. G.A. Aga, C. Eigen-Zucchi, S. Plaza, and A.R. Silwal, Migration and Development Brief 20, Washington D.C.: Migration and Remittances Unit, Development Prospects Group, The World Bank, 2013. 9. P.A. Kurien, Kaleidoscopic Ethnicity: International Migration and the Reconstruction of Community Identities in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002. 10. D. Kapur, A.S. Mehta, and R.M. Dutt, ‘Indian Diaspora Philanthropy’, in P.F. Geithner, P.D. Johnson and L.C. Chen (eds.), Diaspora Philanthropy and Equitable Development in China and India, Cambridge, Mass.: Global Equity Initiative, Asia Center, Harvard University, 2004, pp. 177-257; M. Sidel, L.C. Chen (eds.), Diaspora Philanthropy and Equitable Development in China and India, Cambridge, Mass.: Global Equity Initiative, Asia Center: Harvard University, 2004, pp. 215-57. 11. P. Viswanath and N. Dadrawala, Philanthropy and Equity: The Case of India, Global Equity Initiative: Harvard University, 2004. 12. V.A. Dusenbery, ‘Through wisdom, dispense charity’: Religious and cultural underpinnings of diasporan Sikh philanthropy in Punjab, in V.A. Dusenbery and D.S. Tatla (eds.), Sikh Diaspora Philanthropy in Punjab: Global Giving for Local Good, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 79-104. 13. V.A. Dusenbery and D.S. Tatla (eds.), Sikh Diaspora Philanthropy in Punjab: Global Giving for Local Good, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009.

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14. L. Goldring, ‘Family and Collective Remittances to Mexico: A Multidimensional Typology’, Development and Change, 35, 4, 2004, pp. 799840; M. Gabbarot, and C. Clarke, ‘Social Capital, Migration and Development in the Valles Centrales of Oaxaca, Mexico: NonMigrants and Communities of Origin Matter’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, vol. 29, no. 2, 2010, pp. 187-207; M. Orozco, ‘Transnationalism and Development: Trends and Opportunities in Latin America, in S.M. Maimbo and D. Ratha (eds.), Remittances: Development Impact and Future Prospects, Washington DC: World Bank, 2005, pp. 308-28. 15. Dusenbery and Tatla, Sikh Diaspora, Philanthropy. 16. H. Johnston, ‘The Sikhs of British Columbia and their philanthropy in Punjab’, in Y.A. Dusenbery and D.S. Tatla (eds.), Sikh Diaspora Philanthropy in Punjab: Global Giving for Local Good, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 169 -83. 17. N.K. Purewal, ‘Gender, Seva, and Social Institutions: A Case Study of the Bebe Nanaki Gurdwara and Charitable Trust, Birmingham, UK’, in W.A. Dusenbery and D.S. Tatla (eds.), Sikh Diaspora Philanthropy in Punjab: Global Giving for Local Good, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 205-15. 18. S. Singh and A. Cabraal, Indian student migrants in Australia: Issues of community sustainability, People and Place, vol. 18, no. 1, 2010, pp. 19-30. 19. Smith, Transnational Urbanism, p. 183.

References Aga, G.A., C. Eigen-Zucchi, S. Plaza, and A.R. Silwal (2013), ‘Migration and Development Brief 20’, Washington D.C.: Migration and Remittances Unit, Development Prospects Group, The World Bank. Australian Bureau of Statistics (2012). National Regional Profile: Melbourne (C) (Local Government Area) Retrieved 14 July 2014 from http://stat.abs.gov.au/itt/r.jsp?RegionSummary®ion=24600 &dataset=ABS_NRP9_LGA&geoconcept=REGION&maplayer id=LGA2012&measure=MEASURE&datasetASGS=ABS_NRP9_ ASGS&datasetLGA=ABS_NRP9_LGA®ionLGA=REGION& regionASGS=REGION Australian Education International (2013), ‘International Student Data 2013’, https://aei.gov.au/research/International-Student-Data/Pages/ InternationalStudentData2013.aspx#Pivot_Table, accessed on 9 May.


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Dusenbery, V.A. (2009), ‘“Through Wisdom, Dispense Charity”: Religious and Cultural Underpinnings of Diasporan Sikh Philanthropy in Punjab’, in V.A. Dusenbery and D.S. Tatla (eds.), Sikh Diaspora Philanthropy in Punjab: Global Giving for Local Good, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 79-104. Dusenbery, V.A. and D.S. Tatla (eds.) (2009), Sikh Diaspora Philanthropy in Punjab: Global Giving for Local Good, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Ehrkamp, P., and H. Leitner (2006), ‘Rethinking Immigration and Citizenship: New Spaces of Migrant Transnationalism and Belonging’, Environment and Planning A, vol. 38, no. 9, pp. 1591-7. Gabbarot, M., and C. Clarke (2010), ‘Social Capital, Migration and Development in the Valles Centrales of Oaxaca, Mexico: NonMigrants and Communities of Origin Matter’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 187-207. Goldring, L. (2004), ‘Family and Collective Remittances to Mexico: A Multi-dimensional Typology’, Development and Change, vol. 35, no. 4, pp. 799–840. Johnston, H. (2009), ‘The Sikhs of British Columbia and Their Philanthropy in Punjab’, in V.A. Dusenbery and D.S. Tatla (eds.), Sikh Diaspora Philanthropy in Punjab: Global Giving for Local Good, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 169-83. Kapur, D., A.S. Mehta, and R.M. Dutt (2004), ‘Indian Diaspora Philanthropy’, in P.F. Geithner, P.D. Johnson and L.C. Chen (eds.), Diaspora Philanthropy and Equitable Development in China and India, Cambridge, Mass.: Global Equity Initiative, Asia Center, Harvard University, pp. 177-257. Kurien, P.A. (2002), Kaleidoscopic Ethnicity: International Migration and the Reconstruction of Community Identities in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Orozco, M. (2005), ‘Transnationalism and Development: Trends and Opportunities in Latin America’, in S.M. Maimbo and D. Ratha (eds.), Remittances: Development Impact and Future Prospects, Washington D C: World Bank, pp. 308-28. Purewal, N.K. (2009), ‘Gender, Seva, and Social Institutions: A Case Study of the Bebe Nanaki Gurdwara and Charitable Trust, Birmingham, UK’, in V.A. Dusenbery and D.S. Tatla (eds.), Sikh Diaspora Philanthropy in Punjab: Global Giving for Local Good, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, pp. 205-15.

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Sidel, M. (2004), ‘Diaspora Philanthropy to India: A Perspective from the United States’, in P.F. Geithner, P.D. Johnson and L.C. Chen (eds.), Diaspora Philanthropy and Equitable Development in China and India, Cambridge, Mass. : Global Equity Initiative, Asia Center, Harvard University, pp. 215-57. Singh, S. and A. Cabraal (2010), Indian Student Migrants in Australia: Issues of Community Sustainability. People and Place, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 19-30. Smith, M.P. (2001), Transnational Urbanism: Locating Globalization. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Viswanath, P. and N. Dadrawala (2004), Philanthropy and Equity: The Case of India: Global Equity Initiative, Harvard University. Zelizer, V.A. (1994), The Social Meaning of Money, New York: Basic Books.

Chapter 4

Bangladeshis in Delhi Making Sense of the Small Voices against the Big Narrative Partha S. Ghosh

Introduction How does a small migrant community survive in a mega-city? What is its best strategy? Is it to remain as face-less as possible, or, is it to make its voice heard by the political class? Who are its sympathizers, and who are its enemies? How does the community retain its communication with the native community back home? To find an answer to these questions an attempt is made here to make a case study of the Bangladeshi migrants in Delhi, India’s fastest growing metropolitan city. The task is not easy because there is little hard data on the subject.1 The present paper too is limited in scope and not field-based. Its purpose is to understand the subject from the larger political perspective of migration, urbanization and religious commualism.

The Pattern Initially the poor Bangladeshis used to migrate to only the neighbouring states in India, namely, West Bengal, Assam, Tripura and

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Meghalaya. The reasons were geographical, historical and economic all put together. Because of linguistic affinity their migrations to a densely populated West Bengal did not give rise to any political controversy. But Assam was a different matter because their massive presence in this sparsely populated state contained the possibility of making Assamese lose their majority status in the state. In the late 1970s such a fear was for the first time politically articulated resulting in the defeat of the ruling Congress party in the state in the hands of a new political party, the Assam Gana Parishad (AGP), which rode the anti-foreigner bandwagon. Ever since, the issue of Bangladeshi migrations to Assam has been a constant fixture in Assam politics. West Bengal, Assam, Tripura and Meghalaya are not the only destinations of these migrants any more. They are more attracted now to India’s mega cities which are booming with economic activity thanks to India’s unprecedented economic growth. There are 35 cities in India having more than one million population. There are many cities which have exceeded even the three million mark. Some such cities are: Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur, Pune and Surat. These cities are vital economic, cultural and political nerve centres which are crucial hubs for inter-regional and international communications. Because of historical and sociological reasons these cities are the meeting points of tradition and modernity. Delhi is in the forefront of this fusion.

The Eternal Delhi Delhi’s history is traced from the mythological times. As the legend goes, in the Mahabharata epic, the Pandava king Yudhishtara established his capital at Indraprastha (now the Purana Qila or Old Fort area). This was in about 1400 bce. The name Delhi is attributed to King Dhilu who built a town near the present day Qutub Minar in the first century before the Christian Era. For several centuries thereafter one did not hear much about Delhi. It was in the twelfth century that the Chauhan king Prithviraj III made Delhi his capital. Thereafter it fell to the Muslim rulers who shifted their capital from

Bangladeshis in Delhi

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one part of the town to another. During the rule of one of the Great Mughals, Shahjahan, the present walled city of Old Delhi became the capital which was called Shahjahanabad. In 1911 the British Indian Government shifted its capital from Calcutta (now called Kolkata) to Delhi and built a new township south of Shahjahanabad that came to be known as New Delhi which continues to be the capital of India. Delhi, which includes both the Old and New, has expanded beyond the river Yamuna in the east and beyond the ridge in the west. The population of Delhi systematically grew after it became the capital of British India. By becoming the seat of power it started attracting people from all parts of India either as officers and clerks of the government or as engineers and contractors or everyone else from other walks of life. Delhi’s cosmopolitanism thus began. But the major population rise was during the Partition riots which compelled millions of Hindu and Sikh refugees from West Punjab, which had become a part of Pakistan, to flee to India a large section of which took shelter in Delhi. This massive migration accounted for 11 per cent increase in Delhi’s population which was as much as the previous 38 years. Thereafter Delhi’s migrant population arriving from other Indian states constantly contributed to the population growth as follows—10 per cent in 1951-60, 13 per cent in 196170, 19 per cent in 1971-80, 21 per cent in 1981-90 and 15 per cent in 1991-2001. Delhi now is the eighth largest metropolis in the world with a population of about 17 million. Soon the hinterlands started getting included in the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi which now spreads much beyond Delhi into the adjacent states of UP (Uttar Pradesh), Rajasthan and Haryana. It is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest metropolis by population after Greater Mumbai. According to 2011 Census the population of NCT is 22.2 million. At the time the British made Delhi their capital it was virtually a Muslim town as reflected in the literary and cultural traditions of the city. With the massive flow of Hindu and Sikh refugees the city suddenly started getting the looks of a Punjabi city.1 With the passage of time as Delhi’s economy grew at a fast rate,2 accompanied

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by a construction boom, large numbers of enterprising Indians from all over the country, more particularly from less developed states like Bihar, UP and Rajasthan flocked to the city. The lure of Delhi spread even beyond India, particularly Bangladesh. The types of jobs Bangladeshis were willing to do did not irk the comparative economic classes. But since most Bangladeshis were Muslims the issue got caught in India’s larger Hindu-Muslim politics. To give legitimacy to the religion-factored discourse a section of the urban Hindu middle-class tended to allege that the rise in the crime graph of Delhi and the problems in the availability of civic amenities were attributable to their presence though evidence hardly established the connection.

History of Bangladeshi Migration There was an exodus of millions of Bengali refugees to India during the Bangladesh liberation war of 1970-1. It is estimated that following the unprecedented repression by the Pakistani military junta, about 10 million refugees came to the neighbouring Indian states of West Bengal, Tripura, Assam and Meghalaya. Following the creation of Bangladesh most of them returned, but not all. Presumably many Hindus preferred to remain in India. In the early years of Bangladesh, when Islamists made a political comeback, Hindu migrations picked up though in almost all cases they were clandestine. The Vested Property Act of Pakistan which had been reinforced by the Enemy Property (Custody and Registration) Order of 1965 in the aftermath of the Indo-Pak war of 1965 was not only retained, it was actually consolidated by the Bangladesh Vesting of Property and Assets Order, 1972. It seriously disadvantaged the minorities, most notably, the Hindus. According to estimates, during 1974-81 around 1,220,000 and during 1981-91 about 1,730,000 Hindus migrated to India. On the basis of this it has been calculated that between 1974 and 1996 about 475 Hindus disappeared from Bangladesh every day. The same happened to the Christians as well although they were in very small numbers, not even 1 per cent of the country’s population. These Hindus mostly migrated to Kolkata and other parts of West Bengal.


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The phenomenon, however, was not confined to Hindus alone; a large number of poor Muslims too migrated for economic reasons. India-Bangladesh border is virtually open. Due to the hurried job of partitioning India that Sir Cyril Radcliffe had to perform (he had no prior knowledge of India and the maps and population figures supplied to him were insufficient and full of errors) and on account of the inherent difficulty of demarcating areas in mixed Hindu-Muslim localities which existed along the entire border he could hardly do the job to his satisfaction. The international boundary, therefore, hardly gives the impression of being one. Economic and social interactions across the border are as common as they were before the Partition in most places. These interactions became even more after the creation of Bangladesh because unlike Pakistan the new nation did not have an enemy image in India which made border enforcement even more difficult. As a result many people have settled on the Indian side of the border as a matter of routine. The 1981 census revealed that in the eight border districts of West Bengal the population grew at over 30 per cent between 1971 and 1981 whereas the remaining districts reported growth rates below 20 per cent. According to Indian census reports the number of people who migrated illegally from Bangladesh to India was 1,800,000 in 1961-71 and about 600,000 in 1971-81.4 These figures did not include the estimated 600,000 who entered Assam between 1971 and 1981. It is possible that many of the Bangladeshi settlers were the so-called Biharis.5 To these infiltrators one should also add those Bangladeshis who enter India with forged travel documents or even with valid ones but do not return to their country after the expiration of their validity. In the late 1990s the governments of Assam and West Bengal made some statistics available in this regard. For example, according to a 1998 report prepared by the Governor of Assam there were 5.4 million Bangladeshi migrants in West Bengal, 4 million in Assam, 0.8 million in Tripura, 0.5 million in Bihar, 0.5 million in Maharashtra, 0.5 million in Rajasthan and 0.3 million in Delhi.6 In 1999, the Government of West Bengal revealed that at least 400,000 passport holders from Bangladesh who entered West Bengal during the previous 10 years had disappeared into the Indian community

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without any trace. In a status report on illegal immigration submitted to the Supreme Court in January 1999 the Government of West Bengal admitted that 1,240,000 Bangladeshis who entered the state with travel documents had melted into the local population while 570,000 had been pushed back into Bangladesh between 1972 and 1998. The document said that till 1997 the intercepted infiltrators were summarily pushed back but after 1997 this practice was discontinued.7 At present a rough guess is that there are millions of unauthorized Bangladeshis living in various parts of India generally doing small and menial jobs. Demographers agree that such out migrations of people from poorer regions to less poor neighbouring areas are as natural as water seeking its own level. The density of population per square kilometre is more than about 1,000 in Bangladesh as against about 300 in Assam and just seven in Arunachal Pradesh. Earlier, these settlements were concentrated in the states neighbouring Bangladesh, namely, West Bengal, Tripura, Assam and Meghalaya but lately even distant places such as Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Haryana, Punjab and UP have also started getting illegal Bangladeshi immigrants. It is difficult to figure out the extent of Bangladeshi immigration to India. Based on the criteria of ‘place of birth’ and ‘place of last residence’ the 2001 census revealed that Bangladesh accounted for about 60 per cent of all immigrants in India, which is 3.1 million. The corresponding figures for 1991 and 1981 were 3.4 and 3.2 million respectively.8 The government, however, agreed in reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha dated 14 July 2004 that there were about 400,000 Bangladeshis in the NCT region.9 Sanjoy Hazarika who has extensively worked on the issue of Bangladeshi immigration says that ‘according to estimates based on fertility rates and increase of population along the borders and elsewhere, there are at least about 1.5 million Bangladeshis who came to Assam post-1971. India as a whole has perhaps 18-20 million’.10 Official data, however, puts it at an unbelievably low level because that is what the government can certify. The Ministry of Home Affairs confessed in reply to an RTI (Right of Information) query that it was ‘not possible to estimate the total number’ of such illegal


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migrants. In respect of such people from Bangladesh the ministry merely said that 32,644 people were overstaying in India (Times of India, 25 July 2011) meaning thereby that they had at least entered India at some point with valid papers. But what about those who entered India with no papers at all?

Mapping Bangladeshis in Delhi The origin of Bangladeshis in Delhi can be traced to late 1960s and early 1970s when of the millions who had come to India many did not return even after the creation of Bangladesh. During 19689 Hindus had faced repression from the Pakistani military junta forcing many of them to flee to India. The process was given a boost following the start of the liberation war. The situation improved thereafter but soon the deteriorating political situation coupled with massive floods of 1974 once again encouraged outmigration from Bangladesh into India. The rejuvenated Islamic politics of the country further encouraged the process (in August 1975 Mujibur Rehman and the entire family staying with him were assassinated by these forces). Under the circumstances the non-returnees had even less incentive to go back to their country. Many of them together with the new entrants started migrating to Delhi as it provided better economic opportunities. The flow continued as the city registered high economic growth compared to many other parts of India and certainly more than West Bengal, Assam and North East, and certainly also more than Bangladesh. The number of Bangladeshis in Delhi, however, remains an enigma. As noted above, the government had given a figure in 2004, i.e. about 400,000 lived in the NCT region. But there is hardly any latest figure available. What one is sure about from government sources is how many illegal Bangladeshis have been evicted. According to data supplied either in the parliament or through replies to RTI queries, in 2006, 2007 and 2008 the number of evicted Bangladeshis were 4824, 4025 and 3815, respectively. The total number of such people between 1991 and 2012 was 44,692.12 It is clear from these figures that the government either has no clue about their actual numbers

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or it is reluctant to share its speculations with the public leave alone provide hard statistics. Even NGO studies discuss everything else but shy away from guessing about their numbers. Probably, since these studies mostly deal with either the humanitarian concerns or the sociological issues exact numbers really do not matter to them as much as they do to political scientists.13 The problem is that often Bengali speaking Muslims from West Bengal and other parts of India get mixed up with the Bangladeshis thereby inflating their numbers in popular imagination. It is commonly believed that there are at least 400,000 Bangladeshis in Delhi. They live in slums and shanty towns located in such areas as Govindpuri, Nizamuddin, Yamuna Pushta, Madanpur Khadar, Okhla, New Seemapuri, SawadaGvevda resettlement colony, Meethapur, Chakkarpur (GurgaonDelhi NCR), Nathupur (Gurgaon-Delhi NCR) and many other slum clusters that have come up around middle class localities which depend on domestic maids and cooks supplied by these migrants. Bangladeshis generally eke out their livelihood through small jobs like rickshaw pullers, domestic help, rag-pickers, and casual daily wage earners.

Survey of Literature One of the major problems to do research on a topic like this is to get hard data. While there is a huge store of knowledge about Bangladeshi migrations to India but a large part of it is with reference to Assam. Not even West Bengal, which also hosts a large number of them, has been subjected to academic scrutiny in this regard barring some important studies on border settlements.14 But they too are from a humanitarian perspective and not from the perspective of West Bengal’s politics or national security. Insofar as the Bangladeshi presence in the Indian metropolitan towns is concerned, only Mumbai and Delhi have mattered, more or less for the same reason—their religion and their illegal existence. The problem is that nobody knows precisely how many such people are there resulting in all kinds of wild guesses depending upon the political orientation of the estimator. Even the state machinery, for example,


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the Delhi administration in this context, is hardly sure about its information and whatever it has it is most reluctant to share with academics.15 Thanks to the Right to Information (RTI) Act it is now forced to share some of them which Abhisek Nath has ingeniously taken recourse to in his 2014 Ph.D. dissertation of the University of Delhi.16 To supplement his data he has also interviewed some of these Bangladeshis though his sample is small (30 only). This lacuna is partially compensated by his questionnaire which is designed in a fashion to evoke answers from the respondents about their original homes, previous occupations, factors that led to their migration, and, more importantly, their present hardships and strategies for survival. Prior to Nath’s study there was just one study which directly addressed the theme. This field-based study which was published in 1995 still remains the best on the subject though it was a micro study (Lin and Paul 1995 and Paul and Lin 1995, both publications being essentially the same).17 Though its data are outdated, still they give us a good idea about how to understand and study the politics of Bangladeshi migrants in Delhi. Besides, there are some NGO reports and journalistic studies which fill the data gap to some extent but they are weak in analytical terms.

Bangladeshis in Delhi Politics Delhi sends seven MPs to India’s parliament and 70 MLAs to its state assembly. Traditionally the electoral contest has been between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But as the assembly elections of 2013 indicated a third force has emerged in the form a new party called the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP—meaning, the party of the common man), which won as many as 28 seats as against BJP’s 34 and Congress’s 8 (prior to the elections Congress held 42 seats). The unexpected success of AAP came in the way of BJP’s sweeping the polls and forming the government though the situation was very conducive for that given the Congress’s dismal governance record and the anti-Congress wave. Following the elections, AAP formed the government with the support of Congress and Arvind Kejriwal became the Chief Minister. Besides these three parties, there is also

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the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) which has some presence though not significant. At present all the seven parliamentary seats are held by Congress but since AAP has decided to contest the parliamentary elections in 2014 the political picture is uncertain. To what extent do migrants from other states influence Delhi’s elections? With the changing demographic composition of Delhi they have started figuring in the politics of the city and as a result each party is trying to vie with the other to identify itself with the interests of some migrant community or the other. It often becomes important to identify with the ethnic markers of the communities concerned. For example, since the people from Bihar and Eastern UP constitute a sizable population in certain electoral pockets the religious festival of this community, i.e. chhath (worship of Sun God), has assumed political significance as never before. But in this political game Bangladeshis do not figure little partly because of their small number and partly because of their precarious day-today existence. It may be noted that a recent study of city’s electoral politics done by one who has been surveying such data for years did not even mention the presence of Bangladeshis in this context.18 Bangladeshis, however, matter indirectly in certain broader contexts such as Hindu-Muslim communalism and internal-external security dynamics. Earlier, in the 1970s and 1980s, they mattered in certain specific localized vote-bank politics as discussed below. Had the Delhi-based Bangladeshis been mostly Hindus probably the votebank dynamics would have played out differently. In the 1970s when Indian politics witnessed the Sanjay Gandhi (Indira Gandhi’s younger son) phenomenon with its unprecedented activism exerted for making Indians go for sterilization so as to control the population growth of India, Bangladeshis became the softest targets in Delhi though Muslims in general had been similarly targeted. But unlike other Muslims who protested against the drive on religious grounds Bangladeshis could not do since their very stay in Delhi was questionable as most to them had no legal papers. Rather the incentive that the Delhi administration offered to these unauthorized migrants, ostensibly under political pressure, was attractive enough to agree to sterilization. Tiny plots of land


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were sanctioned to them which not only provided shelters but also legitimized their stay. These one-time land allotments to the original Bangladeshi immigrants having ‘refugee status’ became the basis of subsequent authorized concrete houses in such places as New Seemapuri.19 In due course these people either entrenched their stay in Delhi by acquiring such legitimizing documents as ration cards and voter cards or sold off their plots at a high price to resettle in the Terai region of UP (now in Uttarakhand) and Cooch Behar (now in West Bengal) to become agriculturists which was presumably their original occupation. All this was achieved largely through the good offices of Abdullah Bukhari, the Imam of Jama Masjid and one of the influential leaders of India’s vast Muslim population.20 As voters Bangladeshis became an important political community which the Congress leader H.K.L. Bhagat did not fail to make full use of in his East Delhi constituency where the Bangladeshis were largely concentrated. Bhagat expanded his support base by enrolling more and more Bangladeshis as voters resulting in greater confidence amongst these people. By 1990 there were three Islamic schools in Seemapuri where one of the teachers was a legal Bangladeshi with valid papers. The pupils there learnt Bengali, Arabic and Urdu.21

The Communal Dimension Bangladeshis, however, had to pay a political price for their voting rights. Soon they got entangled into the communal politics of the city which was a microcosm of north Indian politics. The decade of 1980s saw the resurgence of Hindu nationalistic politics which the BJP championed as never before after its creation in 1984.22 The political controversy over the issue of Hindu god Ram’s birthplace at the Babri Mosque site in Ayodhya (UP) picked up militant proportions culminating in the demolition of the structure on 6 December 1992. The incident changed the texture of Indian politics. Against this background the question of Muslim loyalty to the Indian nation became a poll plank for the BJP and in that context the demand for eviction of all Bangladeshis figured prominently in its agenda. To dramatize the demand in Delhi, Madan Lal Khurana, MP and

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Delhi’s BJP leader, marched to the banks of Yamuna near Okhla to physically oust the unauthorized Bangladeshi setters. Though his efforts failed because of resistance from concerned individuals yet Khurana earned his political dividends. BJP won the Delhi assembly elections held in November 1993 and Khurana became the Chief Minister.23 He, however, realized before long that administration was a different ball game than street politics. His efforts to drive the ‘infiltrators’ out from Delhi failed miserably. By mid-1995 keeping an eye on the forthcoming 1996 parliamentary elections Khurana convinced himself that he must go slow on the matter. Given the texture of Delhi’s politics Bangladeshis did not seem to have any option other than supporting the Congress. In the late 1980s they had decided to throw their lot with the Janata Dal which contributed to the defeat of H.K.L. Bhagat. The coming to power of the V.P. Singh-led National Democratic Front (NDF) government, however, did not benefit the Bangladeshis. With the collapse of the V.P. Singh government in 1990 and the subsequent installation of the Congress government under the leadership of P.V. Narasimha Rao in 1991, the policy of Operation Pushback was implemented aimed at evicting all illegal Bangladeshis. Faced with this direct danger Bangladeshis considered it wise to return to the Congress fold, which seemed to work. Operation Pushback was abruptly suspended ostensibly on the advice of the Delhi unit of the Congress. Bangladeshis realized how important it was to side with the Congress even if it was not in power. The reason for the suspension of Operation Pushback was also that it was logistically impossible to deport the Bangladeshis as Bangladesh was unwilling to accept them. The logic of Bangladesh was: How can one say they are Bangladeshis when they do not have their Bangladeshi passports? Also, how can one distinguish them from those Indians who speak the same language and look alike? Even the Government of West Bengal complained that in the name of deporting the Bangladeshis the Central Government was dumping thousands of them on its soil complicating its already complex migrant/refugee predicament.24


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Deportation Issue in the Larger Context Broadly speaking whether it is the central government or the state government, whether it is the Election Commission or the law courts, all have one identical public posture: The illegal Bangladeshis must not figure in the electoral rolls anywhere in India. But when it comes to the play of politics, Muslim Bangladeshi illegal migrants found themselves at greater disadvantage. In the border districts of West Bengal which have a fairly large migrant population, the Hindu migrants defied such Election Commission mandates openly. When the high profile Chief Election Commissioner T.N. Seshan (19906) made the headlines by announcing his no-nonsense approach to prevent all unauthorized persons from voting, which essentially meant illegal Bangladeshis, a satirical poem published in a popular magazine in the border district town of Malda in West Bengal ridiculed the diktat in the following words: Flop Master Seshan Ami Bangladesh hoi Ami Jodi Bangladeshi hoi Bari amar Rajshahite Indiate roi Jodio ami chakri kori Bangladesher daftarete Nam tulechi Indiate Sheshan ki ar korbere!! (How does it matter to you if I am a Bangladeshi, if my house is in Rajshahi and I live in India? Even though I serve in an office in Bangladesh, I have enrolled myself as voter in India and what can Seshan do? [Samaddar, 1999: 166])25

There are two ways of looking at the issue. One, it was the avowed policy of the Hindu nationalistic BJP that it had no problem if the illegal Hindu Bangladeshis were granted voting rights but their Muslim counterparts should have none. Two, probably there is an element of guilt complex on the part of the Indian state that

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emanates from the partition of the country. A majority Hindu state can ill afford a policy that evicts illegal Hindu migrants and throws them back into the same land which they have deserted under duress. It is not they who had asked for the partition and then if they have chosen to come to India, should not the latter be duty bound to give them shelter? Since Delhi-based Bangladeshis are mostly Muslims the danger of their eviction always hangs over their heads as Damocle’s sword. At present India is in the process of issuing biometric identity cards to all Indians called the Unique Identity Cards (UIDs). The popular understanding of the scheme is that it is meant to certify citizenship to only genuine Indian nationals and weed out the unauthorized ones. But the issue is complex. First, because of mass illiteracy, poverty and the magnitude of the task involved, the UID experiment is progressing very slowly. Two, because of endemic corruption across the board one is not sure of the enrolments themselves. For example, what is basic information required to get a UID card—proof of date of birth and proof of residence. The supporting documents are— passport, or, ration and voter cards. Many unauthorized Bangladeshis have acquired ration as well as voter cards. They are, therefore, potentially eligible for their UID registration. No wonder that the UID card clearly mentions that it ‘is proof of identity, not of citizenship’. At the most UID is something like the American Social Security number which can be issued even to temporary residents. But the critical difference is that in the UID system the actual place of birth can be tampered with but not in the case of Social Security cards. In short UID is not the solution to the problem of identifying the Bangladeshis, leave alone deporting them. The helplessness of the government is also reflected in the helplessness of the national parties, the Congress and BJP, which have alternated in power in Delhi during the last two decades. So long as BJP was in opposition one of its constant criticisms of the Congress government was that it was not doing enough to evict the illegal Bangladeshis. But after coming to power in 1998 and ruling India till 2004 it realized that discretion was the better part of valour.


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The Security Factor To understand the linkage between the issue of illegal Bangladeshi migrants in Delhi and the alleged internal security threat posed by them four interrelated factors have to be grappled with: one, the overall Hindu-Muslim politics of India; two, the growth of international Islamist terrorism and the jihadist threat posed to India by elements in Pakistan and Bangladesh with the help of their conduits on Indian soil; three, the nexus between politicians, illegal migrants and trafficking in drugs and other black money rackets such as smuggling; and four, the control of the Delhi Police by the central government unlike other metropolitan cities where the police is under the control of the concerned state government. It is possible to assume that along with other migrants from Bangladesh some jihadists too are sneaking into India and some of them end up in Delhi. But given the porous India-Bangladesh border any motivated jihadist would not wait for this sort of cover. For political reasons, however, this connection is always highlighted. Since at the national level the contest for power is between the Congress and BJP, the issue of secularism versus communalism, the two ideological positions over which these parties contest, is ever vibrant though neither the Congress is totally secular nor is the BJP totally communal.27 It is because of this ideological divide that the Bangladeshi Muslim migrants in Delhi have a natural ally in the Congress and for the same reason a natural enemy in the BJP. No wonder that during the rule of the BJP-led NDA government, internal security threat emanating from illegal Bangladeshi migrants figured in a big way. BJP leader L.K. Advani as the Deputy Prime Minister thundered that the government would ‘locate and throw out’ all illegal Bangladeshi migrants from India. Under such a diktat the Delhi Police had to show un-called for enthusiasm. It flaunted intelligence reports to suggest that under police pressure Bangladeshis had left Delhi to join the jihadists in Jammu and Kashmir to serve mostly as carriers and messengers. Whether or not one finds any connection between security threats and the presence of Bangladeshis in Delhi the city police seemingly

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does not take any chance whoever is in power, the Congress or BJP. During the Commonwealth Games held in October 2010 many Bangladeshis were asked to vacate certain sensitive areas or were kept under strict surveillance. A contemporary World Bank-funded survey had to skip Delhi because the respondents were too scared to answer questions. The survey had to satisfy itself with data from Lucknowbased Bangladeshis because there ‘the security threat perception from illegal migrants didn’t appear to be a dominant public discourse. As a result the sample was found to be far less resistant to respond to the questionnaire (to reveal identity) as compared to the sample in Delhi’.29

The Small Voices The Bangladeshis in Delhi are a poor lot somehow eking out a living. The types of jobs they take up do not evoke organized challenge from the comparative economic classes. On the contrary in the growing economy of Delhi that constantly widens the middle class, such jobs like that of domestic maids and construction workers are in high demand. Another job which is in high demand, of car drivers, would soon be open to the children of Bangladeshis as they will pass class ten, which is the essential qualification for applying for a driving license. One positive development noticeable in Delhi is that these migrants are not necessarily hiding their religious identity any more. Previously it was common for these people, particularly women working as domestic maids or cooks, to take only Hindu or secular names, or wear Hindu Bengali identity markers meant for married women like conch-shell bangles and vermillion marks on the forehead, but that is not the case now. Many middle class households do not mind any more to have these Bangladeshi maids and cooks even if they are Muslims flaunting Muslim names. This is an important social progress for the conservative Hindu middle class of Delhi. Overall, the story of Bangladeshis in Delhi is sad. The Yamuna Pushta area on the banks of Yamuna, one of the fastest growing slums in the city, which is known to be the shelter for many Bangladeshis, is the best example. With an average family size of about six their


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average income is as low as Rs. 2,000-4,000 ($35-70) per family per month. Back home in Bangladesh it is not even that much. That explains their migration to India braving so much risk. Most of them manage to send some money home. An NGO that looked into the cases of sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS amongst them concluded that on account of their illegal existence public health and other facilities are non-existent.

Conclusion The story of Bangladeshis in Delhi is not unique. Any thriving metropolis with poor hinterlands or a poor neighbouring country will have the similar experience. Added to this indeed is the historical experience of Partition of India and the subsequent creation of Bangladesh with India’s support. How much of this Bangladeshi migratory phenomenon is attributable to the forces of globalization is not clear barring the general trend of labour and capital movement that has contributed to the unprecedented growth of metropolitan centres all over the world. We have noticed in the paper that Delhi’s ethnic mosaic has been constantly changing over the last hundred years making it more and more cosmopolitan and if now the Bangladeshis contribute to that montage it is not something unusual. But because of the communal politics of India as well as the growth of Islamic conservatism and militancy in Pakistan and Bangladesh the issue would remain controversial involving both national and international politics.

Notes 1. The road signs of Delhi are written in four languages, Hindi, English, Urdu and Gurumukhi (the Punjabi script) highlighting Delhi’s ethnolinguistic mosaic. 2. According to a 2011 report on Estimates of State Domestic Product of Delhi the per capita income of Delhi rose from Rs. 61,560 in 2004-5 to Rs. 1,01,381 in 2008-9 to Rs. 1,16,886 in 2009-10 to Rs. 1,35,814 in 2010-11. This was almost three times the national average. Only Goa and Chandigarh were ahead of Delhi. The Hindu (New Delhi) and Times of India (New Delhi), 21 May 2011.

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3. Saradindu Mukherjee, ‘Migration: Generous of Hapless Hosts?’ Hindustan Times (New Delhi), 13 October 1996. 4. Imtiaz Ahmed, ‘Refugees and Security: The Experience of Bangladesh’, in S.D. Muni and Lok Raj Baral (eds.), Refugees and Regional Security in South Asia. New Delhi: Konark, 1996, pp. 143, 150. 5. Biharis are Urdu-speaking migrants from north India, mostly Bihar and UP, to erstwhile East Pakistan, which is now Bangladesh. For details, see Partha S. Ghosh, ‘Refugees and Migrants in South Asia: Nature and Implications’, NMML Occasional Paper, New Series 10, New Delhi: Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, 2013. 6. Governor of Assam, S.K. Sinha, in his report to the Central Government said that the national policies were serving the interests of illegal migrants only. Admitting the fact that deportation of illegal migrants was not easy as international law did not provide for unilateral deportation his report suggested that the government policy should be more imaginative which should see to it that immigration was controlled yet they it should be ‘fair, just and transparent, taking into account the legitimate fears of the minorities’. See Sunday Times of India (New Delhi), 10 January 1999; Asian Age, 28 December 1998. 7. Asian Age (New Delhi), 8 February 1999. 8. Aswini Kumar Nanda, ‘Immigration from Bangladesh to India based on Census Data’, Asian and Pacific Migration Journal (Manila), vol. 14, no. 4, 2005, pp. 489-90. 9. Chandan Nandy, Illegal Immigration from Bangladesh to India: The Emerging Conflicts, Waltham, MA: Brandies University, Slifka Program in Inter-Communal Coexistence, 2005, pp. 102-3. 10. Sanjoy Hazarika, ‘Contested Space and Identity in the Indian Northeast’, ATWS (Academy of Third World Studies), Monograph 14, New Delhi: Jamia Millia Islamia, 2008, p. 49. 11. Times of India, 25 July 2011. 12. Abhishek Nath, ‘Migration and Identity: A Study of Post 1971 Bangladeshi Migrants in Delhi’, Ph.D. dissertation of the University of Delhi, 2014, pp. 153-5. 13. Even humanitarian and social research is extremely difficult because of fear on the part of the respondents to open up to the interviewer. See Sujata Ramachandran, ‘“There are Many Bangladeshis in New Delhi, but...”: Methodological Routines and Fieldwork Anxieties’, Population, Space, and Place, vol. 10, 2004, pp. 255- 70. 14. See for example, Ranabir Samaddar, The Marginal Nation: Transborder Migration from Bangladesh to West Bengal, New Delhi: Sage, 1999.


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15. The problem is that as soon as such figures are officially provided the state becomes duty-bound to deport them to Bangladesh which is not politically possible. As a result a conspiracy of silence that suits all. It may be relevant to note here that the United States Bureau of Census does not mind informing about millions of unauthorized Mexican residents in America. There is an added incentive for Mexicans to smuggle themselves into America for once they beget children on American soil these children automatically become US nationals a law in existence since 1868. There is nothing like that in India, on the contrary naturalization is a complex process in India. For more on these points, see Jeffrey S. Passel and Paul Taylor, ‘Unauthorized Immigrants and their U.S.-Born Children’, Pew Hispanic Center Report (Washington, DC), 2010, 11 August 2010, and Anupama Roy, Mapping Citizenship in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010. 16. Nath, ‘Migration and Identity: A Study of Post 1971 Bangladeshi Migrants in Delhi’. 17. Sharat G. Lin and Madan C. Paul, ‘Bangladeshi Migrants in Delhi: Social Insecurity, State Power, and Captive Vote Banks’, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, vol. 27, no. 1, January-March 1995, and Madan C. Paul and Sharat G. Lin, ‘Social Insecurity, Vote Banks and Communalism: A Study of Bangladeshi Migrants in Delhi’, Social Action (New Delhi), vol. 45, no. 4, October-December 1995. 18. Sanjay Kumar, Changing Electoral Politics in Delhi: From Caste to Class, New Delhi: Sage, 2013. 19. Paul and Lin, ‘Social Insecurity, Vote Banks and Communalism’, p. 471. 20. Ibid., pp. 472-3. 21. Lin and Paul, ‘Bangladeshi Migrants in Delhi’, p. 13. 22. For details, see Partha S. Ghosh, BJP and the Evolution of Hindu Nationalism: From Periphery to the Centre. New Delhi: Manohar, 1989. 23. Lin and Paul, ‘Bangladeshi Migrants in Delhi’, p. 12. 24. Ibid, pp. 18-9. 25. Ranabir Samaddar, The Marginal Nation: Transborder Migration from Bangladesh to West Bengal, New Delhi: Sage, 1999, p. 166. 26. The Hindu, 4 January 2011. 27. Ghosh, BJP and the Evolution of Hindu Nationalism, pp. 401-2. 28. The Hindu (New Delhi), 15 September 2003.

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29. TARU, ‘Survey of Migrant Households—Cross Border Labor Mobility, Remittances and Economic Development in South Asia: Rapid Review Report’, New Delhi: Taru Leading Edge, November 2010. 30. SARDI (South Asian Research and Development Initiative), ‘Deconstructing Migrant Workers Vulnerabilities to Hiv/Aids in South Asia: Report of the Situational Assessment’, New Delhi, n.d..

References Ahmed, Imtiaz (1996), ‘Refugees and Security: The Experience of Bangladesh’, in S.D. Muni and Lok Raj Baral (eds.), Refugees and Regional Security in South Asia, New Delhi: Konark. Ghosh, Partha S. (1989), BJP and the Evolution of Hindu Nationalism: From Periphery to the Centre, New Delhi: Manohar. ——— (2013), ‘Refugees and Migrants in South Asia: Nature and Implications’, NMML Occasional Paper, New Series 10, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library. Hazarika, Sanjoy (2008), ‘Contested Space and Identity in the Indian Northeast’, ATWS Monograph 14, New Delhi: Jamia Millia Islamia, ATWS (Academy of Third World Studies). Kumar, Sanjay (2013), Changing Politics in Delhi: From Caste to Class, New Delhi: Sage. Lin, Sharat G. and Madan C. Paul (1995), ‘Bangladeshi Migrants in Delhi: Social Insecurity, State Power, and Captive Vote Banks’, Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, vol. 27, no. 1, January-March: 3-20. Mukherjee, Saradindu (1996), ‘Migration: Generous of Hapless Hosts?’, Hindustan Times (New Delhi), 13 October. Nanda, Aswini Kumar, ‘Immigration from Bangladesh to India based on Census Data’, Asian and Pacific Migration Journal (Manila), vol. 14, no. 4, 2005, pp. 487-99. Nandy, Chandan (2005), Illegal Immigration from Bangladesh to India: The Emerging Conflicts, Waltham, MA: Brandies University, Slifka Program in Inter-Communal Coexistence. Nath, Abhishek (2014), ‘Migration and Identity: A Study of Post 1971 Bangladeshi Migrants in Delhi’, Ph.D. dissertation of the University of Delhi. Passel, Jeffrey S. and Paul Taylor (2010), ‘Unauthorized Immigrants and Their U.S.-Born Children’, Pew Hispanic Center Report (Washington, DC), 11 August.


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Paul, Madan C. and Sharat G. Lin (1995), ‘Social Insecurity, Vote Banks and Communalism: A Study of Bangladeshi Migrants in Delhi’, Social Action (New Delhi), vol. 45, no. 4, October-December: 46877. Ramachandran, Sujata (2004), ‘ “There are Many Bangladeshis in New Delhi, but…”: Methodological Routines and Fieldwork Anxieties’, Population, Space, and Place, vol. 10, pp. 255-70. Roy, Anupama (2010). Mapping Citizenship in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Samaddar, Ranabir (1999) The Marginal Nation: Transborder Migration from Bangladesh to West Bengal, New Delhi: Sage. SARDI (South Asian Research and Development Initiative) (not dated), ‘Deconstructing Migrant Workers Vulnerabilities to HIV/AIDS in South Asia: Report of the Situational Assessment’, New Delhi: South Asian Research and Development Initiative. TARU (2010), ‘Survey of Migrant Households—Cross-Border Labor Mobility, Remittances and Economic Development in South Asia: Rapid Review Report’, New Delhi: Taru Leading Edge, November.

Chapter 5

Kuala Lumpur City

At the Confluence of History, Identity and Nation-making* Yaso Nadarajah

Introduction It is not possible to understand Kuala Lumpur as a city without also simultaneously understanding it as a metropolitan region, variously juxtaposed with its surrounding satellite cities—Putrajaya, Cyberjaya, Petaling Jaya, Shah Alam and Klang. The city with its various extensions is also now referred to as the expanded Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan Area (KLMA); and together constitutes a metropolitan area whose population is close to 5 million.1 Kuala Lumpur (also known the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur) is the national capital of Malaysia and forms the core of the nation’s most populous urban region. From the spaces of the wider Kuala Lumpur urban region with their competing grand ideas and mutually eroding inconsistencies (what Lefebvre (1991) calls representations of space— that vision from above) to the represented space (where spatial spaces * Drawn in parts from the author’s earlier essay entitled ‘Kuala Lumpur’, for the Global Cities Institute Annual Report 2010, RMIT University, 2010.

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take on meaning and life in an everyday reality)—Kuala Lumpur presents a challenge. As King (2008: xxiv) points out,2 Perhaps more so than most cities, KL presents itself as a city of contradictions, inconsistencies and resentments. The architecture and design of the city is intimately caught in the long term communal segregations and their reinforcing representation, in the legitimation of colonial authority and subsequently in its denigration, and in the historic attempts to define both community and nationality.

Sardar (2000: 21) quips, To understand Kuala Lumpur, one has to understand Sejarah Melayu,3 a rip-roaring narrative, full of adventure, history, myth, migration, poetry and wordplay; where people experience migration, uprooting, disjuncture and metamorphosis. It is both fiction and history; and as befits such a postmodern epic; it has no dates. Some scholars date it from the Portuguese period, while others claim it was commissioned by Sultan Abdullah of Malacca, who reigned from 1610–1621.4

In Malay, the word ‘Kuala Lumpur’ means muddy confluence. Formed in the 1850s at the confluence of the Klang and Gombak rivers, the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur is the national capital of Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur has grown in a short time from a sleepy little capital-town built around a river into a postmodern city with a thriving, diverse and affluent cultural life. The discovery of tin by a group of Chinese miners in 1857, and the opening up of the Klang Valley for tin prospectors by a member of the Selangor royal family, Raja Abdullah, brought many miners to the area and a new settlement soon began. Much of this empire settlements was destroyed in the fire and subsequent floods of 1881 because of the ephemeral quality of the building materials—wood and atap (thatch roof ).5 Malacca (now Melaka) had been the main point of entry and administration, and there had been a high concentration of city dwellers in the commercialized areas of the Straits of Malacca prior to colonial rule,6 but with the rapid development of Kuala Lumpur, the centre soon shifted there. Malaysia’s rich and diverse urban history developed primarily from the second half of the twentieth century when it shifted from a largely rural to a largely urban population.

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Frank Swettenham, a British official, was charged with the task of overseeing the development of the town; he instructed that all buildings be constructed in brick and tile. The advent of the railways increased accessibility; and growth intensified. The multi-racial community of this period settled in various sections of the town: Market Square, east of Sungai Klang, became the commercial centre for the whole town. The Chinese congregated around this Square and south into Chinatown. To the north, across Java Street (now Jalan Tun Perak), were the communities of the Malays. The Indian Chettiars (money-lenders), and in later years Indian Muslim traders, set up businesses. West of the river, the Padang (now Merdeka Square) was the focal point of the British administration.7

The town continued to grow despite the two World Wars. Following independence in 1957, and then the formation of Malaysia in 1963, Kuala Lumpur became the administrative centre and took centre-stage in national development. By the 1970s, the gazetted area of the city held a population of about 450,000,8 which grew steadily due to the combination of industrialization and a concentration of government employees in Kuala Lumpur as both a federal and Selangor State administrative centre. Kuala Lumpur industrialized rapidly in the post-independence period and was conferred city status in 1972. It soon became a separate Federal territory by 1974. By then, Kuala Lumpur had already grown to become part of a larger urban region extending south-westwards into Port Klang (previously Port Swettenham), which also included the industrial estates of the new town of Petaling Jaya and Old Klang Road. In 1972, the greater Klang Valley urban region, incorporating the four Selangor state districts of Gombak, Klang, Petaling Jaya and Ulu Langat was officially recognized. As Bunnell and Nah state: . . . far from diluting the significance of the Federal Territory, the development of the Klang Valley urban region reaffirmed Kuala Lumpur’s national centrality. The New Economic Policy (NEP) from the early 1970s though designed to primarily address regional distribution goals, favoured developments particularly in this western corridor and towards Kuala Lumpur in particular.9

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From the mid-1980s Kuala Lumpur underwent policy shifts, notably privatization and economic liberalization.10 It was fairly evident that the centralization of political authority, particularly within the Kuala Lumpur Federal Territory, especially in the Mahathir era, had made Kuala Lumpur the locus of spectacular megaprojects involving government-linked conglomerates and tycoons. Major development and supporting policy shifts were primarily undertaken under the premiership of Dr Mahathir Mohammed, and within two decades, there were major transformations and dramatic landscape changes not just in Kuala Lumpur, but in many of Malaysia’s urban regions. Since the early 1990s, Kuala Lumpur has again undergone another reorientation from local node to a national node in global networks. This city is now known more formally as Wilayah Persekutuaan (Federal Territory) Kuala Lumpur, and has an estimated population of 1.6 million (2006 census). At the heart of this burgeoning development of Kuala Lumpur is an increasing complexity between state, civil society and the general public. Here, a very sophisticated, political elite maintains a hegemonic system of control and cultural dominance but finds that it is also contending with political pressures from Islamic supremacists on the one hand, and Malay ethnicity and moderate civil society groups on the other. The capacity to maintain economic growth, cultural, religious and social cohesions within diverse and contrasting practices of the everyday life of a plural society, is in the end, a complex interplay of domination, accommodation and negotiation between the state and its citizens. The city of Kuala Lumpur, in particular, throws the cosmopolitan diversity of the city into sharp relief; reflecting in many ways both the places of cohesion but also the contested spaces, corridors of rifts that run through the city and its communities. Its long history and its readings as a city of ‘collisions of the fragments of different pasts’11 also means that it is not going to be easy to simply suppress discursive reflections or memories. Kuala Lumpur remains a city of multiple levels and realities, able to be many spaces at the same time. In this greater narrative about identity politics and contested space, the way the different communities in this city relate to each other and the places around them presents an interesting understanding

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of contemporary Malaysia. The narrative is also embedded within the question of the architectural processes (mechanisms of spatial domination) that have shaped and continue to shape a predominantly Malaya-Muslim identity. What stands out is how a form of spatial hegemony in the capital city is increasingly wearing down on what is remembered. And like King (2008, p. 260) contends, ‘It is this inconsistency, it seems, that is at the heart of the pervading angst of Malaysian society. Many things cannot be said’.

The Mega-Project City This global refurbishing of urban space in Kuala Lumpur from the 1980s right into the late 1990s needs to be understood not just as a strategy to change the landscape and external effects, but also as a deliberate material and discursive venture of the state and identified corporate partnerships. Under Mahathir’s programme of Wawasan 2020,12 the material and symbolic transformations of the then existing city spaces of Kuala Lumpur and its newly developing territories of Klang Valley were at the forefront of a national identity and positioning in both Asia and the world. The mid-1980s to the mid-1990s saw not just the transformation of Kuala Lumpur, but also that outside the city of Kuala Lumpur and the greater Klang Valley region.13 Kien in his extensive study of the processes, visions, narratives and political agendas surrounding the construction of major projects in Kuala Lumpur, provides an interesting perspective into the process through which the ‘issue of ethnic-integration in a plural nation-state was addressed via an architectural medium’.14 A principal aspect of the development of Kuala Lumpur, other than the expected population increase, spatial expansion and economic growth, has been the dramatic nature of infrastructural change. This change, according to Bunnell and Phang et al., represents and articulates a Malay-centred conception of national identity through architectural designs and buildings:15 for example, the Menara Maybank, the Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC) project, the PETRONAS towers, and the Hiijas Kasturi (LUTH) tower, and the more recent Telecom Tower.16 As Bunnell claims, the national political role of Kuala Lumpur was augmented by

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the progressive centralization of authority over the city.17 In 1978, the Mayor of Kuala Lumpur was responsible to the newly-created Federal Territory Ministry; in 1983, the authority of the Minister of the Federal territory was shifted directly to the then Prime Minister’s department. Many claimed that this had to do with the fact that the then Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohammad had a ‘personal interest in the development of Kuala Lumpur’.18 Mahathir’s words that ‘there is no reason why a skyscraper should not have a roof which reflects our national identity’,19 captures to an extent the spirit of a rapidly dominant sprit of neo-Malay revivalism.

Engineering Visible Politics One of the earliest manifestations of Mahathir’s ‘visible politics’ was the Bumiputera Bank, completed in 1985 by Hiijas’s architectural firm. It was ‘hailed as a pioneer in the emerging post-modern search for a Malaysian identity’—a high-rise international-style office tower, juxtaposed with a low-rise banking hall and articulated as a blown-up version of a traditional Malay house.20 The Putra World Trade Center, also designed by Hiijas, was yet another project with projections of an oversized traditional Malay-house with an international-style office tower. Other buildings designed and constructed by Hiijas includes the Dayabumi Complex (1984) and the Tabung Haji building (1986). For both these buildings, plans were derived from Islamic geometric motifs while the five massive pillars within the Tabung Haji (organization that helps arrange pilgrimages to Mecca) allude to the five pillars of the Muslim faith.21 The building itself is shaped like the drum that is supposed to summon pilgrims. In addition to these massive developments in architectural form, infrastructure development was also a major priority in the 1984 Kuala Lumpur Structure Plan. Modern telecommunications and transport infrastructures were emphasized to ensure that Kuala Lumpur was building for a global network. A new light rapid-transit system (LRT), a commuter train-network and the people-mover rapid transit (PRT) in the commercial core of Kuala Lumpur were completed in 2005, all seeking to reposition Malaysia (through Kuala Lumpur). Certainly the globalization of greater Kuala Lumpur over

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the past two decades has been manifested in its extensive landscape transformation; and as Morshidi and Suriati claim, it is the clearest sign of the city’s increased role in global financial networks.22 As the authors add, when the Multimedia Super corridor became a reality, mega-architectural icons such as the KLCC were the first to incorporate the idea of a city within a city, connecting the Golden Triangle (Kuala Lumpur’s business hub) and make the area more accessible through a maze of covered veranda ways accessible only by foot. The KLVCC project development encompassed a freehold prime property of nearly 40.5 hectares, enclosing the PETRONAS twin towers and divided into seven sections—office buildings, hotels, retails, a convention centre, residential and recreational facilities. The master plan, driven primarily by the then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad was to turn what was originally a 100-acre horse race track located in the centre of Kuala Lumpur’s Golden Triangle into an integrated, self-contained modern city as well as create a worldclass new landscape of a city within a city. At the same time, an expanse of land, about 60 km south of Kuala Lumpur, was chosen for the construction of an international airport (now known as Kuala Lumpur International Airport—KLIA). Interestingly, the new city of Putrajaya, a new administrative capital, was also begun in 1995. Putrajaya is located about 25 km south of Kuala Lumpur. Built on what was originally one of the biggest palm-oil estates in Malaysia, it is stated that the site was chosen as it was located equal distances from Kuala Lumpur and the new Kuala Lumpur International Airport. As Moser states: the building of Putrajaya was intended to demonstrate both to Malaysians and the international community that Malaysia is a stable, prosperous, progressive, and technologically sophisticated Muslim country, but at the same time, showcase Malaysia’s rootedness in traditional culture and religion. It was designed to be the new home to all of Malaysia’s federal government ministries and national level civil servants, host all diplomatic activities for the country, and function as a potent symbol of the nation’s ambitious modernization agenda and of its new ‘progressive Muslim’ identity. At the same time, this was not to take away the importance of Kuala Lumpur as the hub for local global networks and businesses.23

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Augmenting Communication The announcement of the plans to build a new multimedia super corridor in 1996 began to put in place a sense of the building of a vast but interconnected urban region—the Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan Area (KLMA). A series of new transport projects would now integrate Kuala Lumpur with KLIA and Putrajaya and including the new ‘intelligent’ city, Cyberjaya, with the broader Klang Valley region. The whole corridor extending from KLCC in Kuala Lumpur to KLIA has been built upon a fibre-optic backbone, both to attract ‘world class’ information technology companies and to hook up the greater metropolitan area into an emerging global information economy and society. As Zainuddin Sardar remarks, the Federal Territory is ‘the space from which the whole of Malaysia is made; it was made by Malaysian history and today makes the course of Malaysia’s future’.24 The Kuala Lumpur Central train station and the Kuala Lumpur monorail transportation networks, both mega projects, brought in what was easily the most significant design of urban space within what may be termed techno-rational lines. These projects, designed and developed by a consortium consisting of principally Kuala Lumpur Sentral Sendirian Berhad (Private Limited) constituted by Malaysian Resources Corporation Berhad,25 Keretapi Tanah Melaya (Malaysian Railways) and Pembinaan Redzai Sendirian Berhad (Private Limited) ensured that inner-city public transportation to the central business district, shopping malls and tourism precincts within Kuala Lumpur were well connected. Recently a lifestyle complex (centre) was built ‘offering the new-age, discerning urbanites unique Health, Beauty & Dining Experiences’.26 It is strategically located within the integrated precinct of Kuala Lumpur Central; the ‘play’ element of the whole development of Kuala Lumpur Central’s ‘Live, Work, and Play’. In June 2010, Prime Minister Najib Razak unveiled a 230-billion Malaysian Ringgit ($69 billion) development plan as part of the government’s plan to boost growth and propel the economy into high-income status by 2020. Central to this is the building of ‘a world class city’ and encapsulates the ambition to make

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Kuala Lumpur a city that will enjoy a major global profile and be a global hub. The National IT Agenda (NITA) was formulated in 1996 and provided the framework for the development of an extensive infrastructure to support an ICT network that would encompass the KLMA area and the wider Klang Valley region. The length of the ICT corridor was to be served by a 2.5 to 10 gigabit fiber-optic and coaxial network with direct links to Japan, the USA and Europe. This Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) designated a world test-bed for ICT developments in Malaysia, supported by a set of world-leading cyber laws. One of the key ones was the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998, the main cyber law, that aimed at promoting deregulation, streamlining licensing procedures and categories as well as facilitating market liberalization. Given such a scale of development, there have been evictions of squatters and marginal groups as well massive resettlement initiatives. Researchers such as Ong, Bunnell, and Graham and Marvin27 have suggested that this high-tech zone, depicted as a super-privileged and sophisticated area of communication and global networking has really worked to serve the information elite: . . . Private-sector-driven development of wired urban living and working spaces and their purportedly ‘world class’ exclusivity implies new possibilities for social and spatial ‘splintering’. A pervasive discourse of ‘high-tech’ has legitimized the eviction of socio-economically marginal groups for ‘wiring’ of their land.28

The Contested City Insights into the city of Kuala Lumpur are also invariably tied up with the intersections, contestations and interstices between each of the surrounding satellite cities; as well as the spaces between what is evidently Malay or Chinese or Indian spaces. Tensions and underlying causes built into the fabric of the city through what (King 2007, p. 74) called ‘a patchwork of enclaves and ghettos’ that followed the combined effect of the Malay Reservations Enactment (1930s)29 and the Briggs Plan for the New Villages30 in the 1950s

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persist as old spatial divisions. Studies of Kuala Lumpur (King, 2008; Hara, 2003; Lee, 1998) attest that the combined effect of the Malay Reservations Enactments and the Briggs-Templer Strategies of the New ‘White’ Area Villages exacerbated the segregations that had always characterized Kuala Lumpur. At independence in 1957, Kuala Lumpur was a modest, up-country mining and administrative town. There was first the compact and mostly impenetrable labyrinth of the Chinese inner-city enclaves; the loose, mostly unseen and informal spaces of the ‘kampung’, linked to an idyllic imaginary of a Malay rural village and the solid, structural and expansive spaces of the then ruling British administration (see King, 2008; McGee, 1991; and Thompson, 2002). Indian labourers, mostly affected by changes to the British-run plantation industries since 1930 were in many ways ‘ejected’ (Bunnell, 2002) without land or possessions and sought places to live, mostly within squatter settlements; seeking employment in factories and other small holdings or service industries as cleaners, road sweepers and drivers. Now, 50 years after independence, although culturally hybrid, the architecture and design of the city is intimately caught in the longterm segregations and their reinforcing representations, and in its historic attempts to define both community and national identity. Despite such constrictions, open racial conflict, except for the May 1969 riots, has been absent in the city and the broader KLMA. But as King (2008) points out in his study of the city, the clumsy patchwork and politicized enclaves and settlements and illegal squatters that spilled out around them were manifestations that followed the Malay Reservation Enactments and the New Villages Strategy both of which radically transformed and entrenched the different spaces of the city. While there had been segregations before, these remained messy, permeable at times, contested at other times, but evolving around the way these spaces grew—producing through the characteristic ways of life of its inhabitants. The reserves and the new villages produced a new kind of containment (for authority a way of responding to confrontations). In some ways, these containments avoided encounters and confrontations or arguments, but within an atmosphere of what was evidently (particularly from the 1970s) a Malay-ization of the civil service and the support of a broader social

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policy and ‘positive discrimination’ programme for the Malays.31 For those left out, the outcome was a proliferation of ghettos and a deepening resentment, particularly those further marginalized by the abysmal lack of housing or any form of social policy support.

In the shadow Kampung Desa Hormat (previously Kampung Gandhi), a squatter settlement of approximately 500 families, was nestled within a sprawling cluster of squatter settlements on the fringes of Kuala Lumpur city. Because of its position at the intersection of what was once the main road linking metropolitan Kuala Lumpur to one its main ports Klang, this squatter settlement was caught in the spill over from the dramatic development of the city. During the course of my fieldwork since 2007, this kampung together with the other Kampung groups in this squatter settlement hub have been relocated into low-cost high-rise commission-style flats in the same area. A majority of the residents of Kampung Desa Hormat were of Tamil ancestry, with a smaller population of non-Tamil and Indonesian people. Almost all of the residents were of the lowest socio-economic group, working either as manual labourers, factory workers, clerks, drivers or petty traders. Much like other squatter settlements, residents of Kampung Desa Hormat’s day-to-day existence, more often in flux than a constant, depended on a complex and interconnected mix of both individualized everyday bricolage (Yeoh, 2001) or activities supported or patronized by the same ethnic members. Many had chosen to settle at Kampung Desa Hormat (much like other kampungs) because of kin and friends who were there already. Some of those interviewed32 said that they had been living in this place for well over 40 years. Employment opportunities in nearby factories were certainly another driving factor, from since the 1970s as manufacturing industries rapidly displaced plantation and mining industries, within which a large number of Tamils were employed. At the same time, Kampung Desa Hormat, like others, rapidly acquired a reputation as a place of social ills which harboured criminals, drug addicts and illegal immigrants. Police raids into such

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areas were not uncommon; and many residents resented their heavyhandedness and indiscriminate rounding up of various people, young and old. The young men particularly, reacted to such raids with anger and sometimes counter-violence. Over the years, social service groups or Hindu temple committee groups have resorted to providing and conducting community services and activities such as medical clinics, essential food rations, building water pipes or communal drains as well as advocating for citizen rights and or employee rights (particularly for factory workers). These localized welfare aid and support have in many instances, provided much needed assistance. In one of the interviews conducted in 2009 with a woman in her early 70s (and still working as a road sweeper on a daily wage), it was evident that the essential rations of milk powder and rice provided her and her ‘addicted’ grandson with some basic nutrition. The Indian community in Malaysia constitutes nearly 8 per cent of the population, and its working class has long been associated with some of the most menial economic positions in the country—road sweepers, plantation workers and labourers (Nadarajah, unpublished manuscript). Their interests are presumed to be represented at the national level by the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC), a component party of the National Coalition (Barisan Nasional). But it is apparent that after more than 50 years of independence, the needs of this stratum of Malaysian Indians remain unmet. Many remain in squatter settlements or in densely compacted low-cost housing complexes. A dramatic and unprecedented public demonstration of up to 40,000 Malaysian Tamils directed against the Malaysian government, spearheaded by the then ‘Hindu Rights Action Force’ (HINDRAF) in November, 2007,33 attest to the fact that many, in particular lower-income Indians, perceive themselves to be victims, marginalized by an emergent force of Islamization, compounded in its weddedness to ethnic politics. According to Sidhu and Bunnell, squatting in Kuala Lumpur can be traced back to the early history of settlement itself when miners from China built temporary shelters near their place of work.34 As land and land-administration acts and practices became more stringent and formalized, squatters started to move to the periphery of the

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city. With the end of the World War II, the demise of plantations and mining activities and the post-war Communist Emergency saw an exodus of rural settlers moving into city fringes. A Federal Capital (Clearance of Squatters) By-Law was issued in 1963. By the year 1970, there were more than 140,000 squatters in the city.35 In the beginning, there was some positive response to the squatters, many of whom found jobs in the newly-emerging manufacturing and processing plants in the Klang Valley region. But at the same time, as the demand for and the economic value of land in the city and the Klang Valley region grew rapidly, many of these squatter settlements came to be considered a nuisance, their possession of illegal land a hindrance to either public or private-led development activities. For the squatters, this became an increasing tension, especially as many of them had already established places and their own neighbourhoods; for others illegal squatting was either ignored or tolerated by state authorities. This became an increasing contestation with the Kuala Lumpur City Hall, charted with the implementation of the zero squatter settlement directives. As the city began a process of ‘cleaning up’, many of these squatters, like for example Kampung Desa Hormat were either voluntarily or forcibly resettled into temporary long houses with an option to purchase a low-cost flat in the future. In late 2008, almost all squatter settlements in my field of study had moved into their new low-cost high-rise flats (complexes) in the vicinity after a twoyear waiting period in transit quarters. Further fieldwork in 2009 revealed that, to an extent, poor planning and building, severely inadequate infrastructures and services as well as poorly-resettled residents was taking their toll; and it is evident that these places are straining to cope within their new settlements and life.36

Contesting Identities Yeoh (2001: 37) says that: Ethnic Malays were embedded in a more-wide ranging and top-down network that had evolved from the early 1970s. The nature of pembangunan (development) that was propelled from under the auspices of the NEW Economic Policy (NEP) began to transform the Malaysian ethnoscape

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radically. Under the sweeping and wide-ranging policies of the NEP, ethnic Malays were encouraged to ‘modernize’ by gravitating to the urban centres, dissolving the colonial legacy of a spatial ethnic divide. Preferential quotas in education, commercial and civil service opportunities and an explicit industrialization programme have been particularly instrumental in catalyzing this rural-urban drift.37

Both Yeoh (2001) and Bunnell et al. (2004) report thought that many rural Malays resorted to either building their own homes or moving into existing squatter settlements, attempting to recreate their village lifestyle. But as these squatter settlements began to spiral out as also places of social concern as well as breeding ground for criminal as well as subversive and religious activities, government authorities soon addressed these issues through an incremental process of resettlement into the six Malay reservation areas within the city, covering 1,182.6 hectares and in 2000 housing around 101,500. Various mechanisms for ensuring the legal rights of these landowners over new squatters were upheld, and the ‘national land Code was cited as incontrovertible evidence that squatting was a criminal activity’ (Yeoh, 2001, 38) For Malay scholars like Shamsul (2004), any attempt of the study of Malay settlements (in his case Malay identity) has been erroneous from the beginning. In his chapter in A History of an Identity, An Identity of a History: The Idea and Practice of Malayness in Malaysia Reconsidered, Shamsul points out that this needs to start with the concept of kampung itself, a term that has been far too easily treated by scholars as synonymous with Malay and Malayness: Kampung has many meanings, and sooner or later, we all will come to realise that these meanings are the result of a never-ending contestation between numerous interest groups with ‘authority-defined’ and ‘authoritydefining’ collectives in Malaysia, both in the past and in the present.38

When the New Economic Policy was launched in 1971, Bumiputera became an important ethnic category; and became critical in the distribution of economic benefits to poor people and also the entrepreneurial middle call, creating a whole new generation of upper middle and upper class Malays. Yet, over time, this concept of ‘Malayness’ has come into its most contentious period. Malayness as

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defined by the Malay nationalist movement in the 1920s and 1930s, reformulated and implemented by UMNO, had to be reformulated in Sabah again—showing how easily such a concept can shift meaning—and making clear-cut statements impossible. The rallying 1969 federal elections was another watershed in the way the Malay-Chinese ethnic relationship took on a new tension. Different accounts describe the open confrontation and jibes that were directed at the Malay communities located in primarily the Malay strongholds of both Kampung Bahru and Dataran Merdeka by supporters of the main Chinese parties in Kuala Lumpur. King (2008), drawing from the work of Hwang In-Won (2003, p. 78) writes that, confident in their victory, some of the Chinese supporters chanted anti-Malay slogans, adding to the tense situation. The next day, 13 May, the immediate reaction came from Kampung Bahru—and a counter-rally of UMNO supporters took to the streets. Kampung Bahru remains the stronghold of intense Malay sentiment—and ironically in the 2008 national elections, was also the key usurper of coalition stronghold in the inner city electorate. A significant publicationm at that time, called The Malay Dilemma by the young UMNO luminary from Kedah, Mahathir Mohammad, was a scathing criticism of the passiveness of the mainly rural Malays and the need to ‘urbanize, take charge’ and to recover what had been lost—as the birthright and land right of the Malays. The Malay Dilemma paved the way and with the support of key ‘Malayness’ custodians like Tan Sri Abdullah, the question of the ‘modern Malay’ emerged to play a compelling part in Malaysia’s political and cultural past, present and future chapters.

A City in Transition—Widening Divide or Conciliatory Space? The increased demands for urban space continue to be contested vigorously within new and evolving systems of evaluation about land-use. As in many former British colonies, land-law in Malaysia is based on the Torrens system,39 and was implemented on a state-bystate basis, beginning with the state of Perak in 1879. The National Land Code which was enforced in 1965 drew on the logic of the

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Torrens system, but specified precisely who can make legal claims regarding the ownership, alienation and use of land. With the exception of claims made in the name of Malay custom, only the state and the registered owner(s) were able to address the status of the land. At the same time, legally-registered property owners, ‘while formally granted a series of rights under the Code, are ultimately considered entirely subservient in legal matters related to land to individual State authorities’.40 An amended Land Acquisitions Act of 1991 now enables the state authority, without provision for judicial review, to alter or invalidate any previously disposed land in the name of ‘general public good’. Specifically, the 1991 Act states that the State Authority can, when deemed in the public good, acquire land that is ‘needed by any person or corporation for any purpose which in the opinion of the State Authority is beneficial to the economic development of Malaysia or any part thereof or to the public generally or any class of the public’ (Public Acquisition (Amended) Act 1991, s.3 {b}). This amended act was possibly drafted after a series of protests from several political groups opposing the state’s policies regarding land and development in the 1980s, especially the eradication of ‘squatter’ colonies in Kuala Lumpur. Mohd. Nasir Hashim gives a good account of these struggles in and around Kuala Lumpur; and the proliferations of pamphlets such as the ‘Peneroka Bandar Menuntut Keadilan (Urban Pioneers Demand Justice).41 The Kuala Lumpur Structure Plan 2020 indicates that the population base of the city is set to increase from 1.4 million to 2.2 million over the next 20 years; and that optimizing limited land resources will be a priority. The new Kuala Lumpur 2020 Strategy Plan was undertaken in the early 2000s to revise the existing 1984 Kuala Lumpur Structure Plan (KLSP 1984) and to cope with the unprecedented growth and changes in the urban landscape, particularly given the massive developments of the Multimedia Super Corridor, the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) and the transfer of federal government administrative functions to the newly built Putrajaya township. Strategies in the document appear to cover not just the spatial and infrastructure development,

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but also identify the need ‘to understand the less tangible qualities of the City experience that shape and mould people’s perceptions of the City and their place within it’.42 At the same time the Kuala Lumpur Strategy Plan also carries a stipulation that enables the Mayor to develop and implement local plans: The local plan consists of a map and written statement and shall formulate in such details as the Commissioner thinks appropriate, his proposal for the development of use of land in the area of the local plan, including such measures as the Commissioner thinks fit for the improvement of the physical environment and the improvement of transportation and contain such matters as the Minister may in particular case specify.43

Elsewhere, in a broader study on Malaysia and in particular of the plight of working class Tamils, I have elaborated too that in the last 20 years, the concept of an Islamic state, incrementally applied through a complicated mixture of responses to maintaining MalayBumiputera ethno-nationalist aspirations, privileging fidelity to rulers and Islamic religious structures, has reopened questions of and issues related to the negotiation of common national citizenship and belonging. The spatial practices of urban development in the last decade have transformed land use patterns, and Selangor for example is now seen as the symbolic centerpiece of a modern ‘Malay’ township and the imagined ‘Malay’ race (see Bunnell, 2004; Nadarajah, 2008). The various satellites that have sprung around these new places to cater to a growing predominantly Malay middle class were once plantation land, from where many of the working class Indians were displaced, once these plantations (where they had worked in since the 1900s) closed down. The Kampung Desa Hormat settlement community members, since their move in 2008 into the much more compact housing complex (called Desa Mentari), have incrementally build up what was a small corner just outside the boundaries of the complex as a space for a temple. Despite protestations and imposing fines from the local municipality, the residents have continued to build on the temple, promising political favour (votes) to supportive local MPs and representatives. Through interviews, it was evident that

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this temple was also a response to what many Indians (particularly Hindus) saw as growing dispersions, intrusions and intolerance of their faith. On the one hand, secularist modernization and aggressive proselytization by other religious groups have combined to depict Hinduism as either archaic or complicated, especially to the young. But, on the other hand, as Hindus and Tamils (who are primarily Hindus) feel that they are either ‘left behind’ or marginalized because they have no voice or identity, religious festivals, and particularly those that involve street space, engender various layers of both social and mythical space, and also increasingly political space. In this case, as Yeoh (2001, p. 60) points out, ‘. . . being a Hindu is as much informed by an awareness of being a culturally different and relatively disadvantaged ethnic group (Malaysian Indians) in the national ethnoscape, as the more immediate experience of local-level power (and class) struggles around the kovil (temple)’. In my continued conversations and interviews with members of the squatter settlements through 2006 and 2007, who were now located in the new low-cost high-rise housing commission flats, there appeared to be a growing sense of powerlessness and desolateness amongst many of the residents, and particularly the young men; those aged between 20 and 35 years of age. A key issue was the demolition of a number of temples, some of them quite old, despite vociferous protests by devotees, civil society organizations and even members of the Malaysia India Congress. Though the state claimed no involvement, demolitions were carried out by the local council and district offices of the state governments. Councillors are appointed by the state government. The new and slowly growing number of devotees of this temple was not only a show of a cohesive ethnic identity and solidarity, but also a reassertion of a ‘rejuvenated’ (King 2008), but what my fieldwork suggests is a ‘defiant’ Hindu (Indian) identity. The 2008 temple event I attended brought together more than 2,000 devotees, not just from the Desa Mentari settlement, but also from across the state. From interviews and conversations at the temple event, it was evident that many had come to show solidarity and to push for their right to the space in a city that also belonged to them. As King (2008: 63) states in his study of another Indian community

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. . . There is unease, that, as a politically demarcated group, ethnic Indians are being left behind in the country’s current phase of rapid development and economic buoyancy. The high incidence of crime and drug abuse by an underclass of Indian youths eloquently epitomizes this double bind. . . . Informed by these contending forces, leaders and devotees alike endeavor to construct a meaningful and recognizable locality by re-creating Hinduism within the spaces where they live, work and play.

Kuala Lumpur is emblematic of what is a pattern across former colonies to replace a former colonial city with a city that symbolizes the state’s national ideology and aspirations. As Goh and Liauw (2009) suggest, this search for what the then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad termed the new Malaysia has seen a shift from rationalistic and Malay-revivalist architectural models to what many now claim is a trend which the authors label as Middle Eastern eclecticism.44 The city of Kuala Lumpur is both a vibrant expression of postcolonial nation-building and a formidable expression of the entanglements of a Malaysian national identity with global political Islam and Malay identifications. The attempts to manifest imaginations and power of the nation over time in post-colonial Malaysia through a city such as Kuala Lumpur may well continue to keep the focus on this city as the site of continuing contestations over what is ‘modern Malay’, what is ‘national’, what is ‘global’ and what inevitably is rooted in local sensibilities. While Shamsul (2004) suggests that Malaysian historiography, is an ideological struggle involving different interest groups—an articulation of an ‘unfinished cultural/ethnic nationalist project, I think it is useful to also unpack Malaysian historiography as an evolving political/class nationalist project. Herein lies the potential for Kuala Lumpur to transform Malaysia, and as (King, 2008, p. 261) points out …‘to resolve the angst of repressed discourse, thereby to unite a nation divided against itself ever since independence’.

Notes 1. T. Bunnell, P.A. Barter and Sirat Morshidi (2002), ‘Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan Area: A Globalizing City-region’, Cities 19 (5): 357-70, have drawn their estimates from Malaysian census data and the Department of Statistics estimates.

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2. R. King (2008), Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya: Negotiating Urban Space in Malaysia, Singapore, National University of Singapore Press, p. xxiv. 3. The Sejarah Melayu or the Malay Annals remain the only available account of the history of the Malay Sultanate in the fifteenth and earlysixteenth centuries. This historical literature holds a historical narration on the origins, evolution and demise of a great Malay maritime empire, with its unique system of government, administration and politics (source: UNESCO Memory of the World Register, accessed 10 July 2010) 4. Ziauddin Sardar, The Consumption of Kuala Lumpur, London, Reaktion Books, 2000, p. 21. 5. Wan Azhar Sulaiman and Syed Sobri Zubir, ‘Verandahways as Catalysts for Walking in a Tropical City’, paper presented to The Fifth International Conference on Walking in the 21st Century, 9-11 June 2004, Copenhagen, Denmark. 6. Anthony Reid (1993), Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce: Expansion and Crisis, 2 vols., New Haven, Yale University Press 7. Sulaiman and Zubir, ‘Verandahways as Catalysts for Walking in a Tropical City’, p. 7. 8. H.D. Evers and R. Korff, Southeast Asian Urbanism: The Meaning and Power of Social Space, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2000. 9. Tim Bunnell and Alice Nah (2004), Counter-global Cases for Place: Contesting Displacement in Globalising Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan Area, Urban Studies, vol. 41, no. 12, pp. 2449-50. 10. Jomo K.S. Introduction, in K.S. Jomo (ed.) Privatising Malaysia: Rents, Rhetoric, Realities, pp. 1-10, Boulder, CO, West view Press, 1995; E.T. Gomez and K.S. Jomo, Malaysia’s Political Economy: Politics, Patronage and Politics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997; T. Bunnell, T and Alice M. Nah, ‘Counter-Global Cases for Place: Contesting Displacement in Globalising Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan Area’, Urban Studies, vol. 41, no. 12, 2004, pp. 2447-67. 11. R. King (2008), Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya: Negotiating Urban Space in Malaysia, Singapore, National University of Singapore Press, p. 260. 12. Wawasan 2020 or Vision 2020 is a phrase in Malaysia that stands for a vision of a more developed future Malaysia. It was a new national development plan introduced in 1991 referring to the development of an industrialized, self-sufficient, modem nation, underpinned by an economy that will eightfold stronger by the year 2020. The slogan was coined by the former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Datuk Mahathir Mohammed.

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13. Tim Bunnell and Alice Nah (2004), ‘Counter-global Cases for Place: Contesting Displacement in Globalising Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan Area’, Urban Studies, vol. 41, no. 12, pp. 2447-67, November. 14. Quote from Beng-Lan Goh and David Liauw, ‘Post-Colonial Projects of a National Culture’, City, vol. 13, no. 1, 2009, p. 72. 15. Bunnell (2002b) and S.N. Phang, S. Kuppusamy and M.W. Norris (1996), ‘Metropolitan Management of Kuala Lumpur’, in J. Ruland, ed., The Dynamics of Metropolitan Management in Southeast Asia, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 1996. A search for a Malaysian identity arose from a confluence of a number of diverse factors; primarily the then Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad (see Jiat-Hwee Chang, Natural Traditions: Constructing Tropical Architecture in Transnational Malaysia and Singapore, Explorations, vol. 7, Issue 1, Spring 2007) pushing architecture’s potential for the ‘visible politics’ of expressing Malay/Islamic nationalism. Immediately recognizable forms using ethnic and religious symbols were foremost when discussing any architectural designs; and coupled with the growing South East Asian self-awareness from the 1980s, such forms of architecture provided the impetus for Asian countries such as Malaysia to assert difference from the hegemonic West. 16. Hiijas bin Kasturi, a graduate of architecture from Melbourne University (1965), has been a key influence within the Malaysian architectural (and cultural) context; as he states ‘reconciling form and function within cultural continuity’. His landmark buildings include Tabung Haji, Kl (1984), Menara Apera-ULG, Kl (1984), Menara Maybank (1989) and Menara Teekom (2002). Together with Mahathir Mohammad (Prime Minster of Malaysia from 1981-2005), Hiijas, probably Malaysia’s first architect hero, Hiijas played a significant role in developing the iconic Malay-centred conception of national identity and has managed to find a Malaysian vernacular for modem architecture. 17. Bunnell (2002b) 18. Phang, Kuppusamy, and Norris, ‘Metropolitan Management of Kuala Lumpur’, p. 136. 19. Cited in Udo Kultermann, Architecture in Southeast Asia: Malaysia, Minar, no. 26, 1987, pp. 64. 20. Lillian Tay and Ngiom, Eighty Years of Architecture in Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Pertubuhan Arkitek Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur city of publication?, 2000, p. 15).

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21. See Jiat-Hwee Chang, ‘Natural Traditions: Constructing Tropical Architecture in Transnational Malaysia and Singapore’, Explorations, vol. 7, Issue 1, Spring 2007 for details. 22. S. Morshidi and G. Suriati, Globalisation of Economic Activity and Third World Cities: A Case Study of Kuala Lumpur, Utusan, Kuala Lumpur, 1999. 23. Sarah Moser, ‘Putrajaya: Malaysia’s New Federal Administrative Capital’, Cities: The International Journal of Urban Policy and Planning, 27 (3), 2010, p. 285 24. Sardar, The Consumption of Kuala Lumpur, p. 46. 25. The Malaysian Resources Corporations Berhad (MRCB) is one of the largest a property (residential, commercial and industrial) development and investment company in Malaysia. Started in 1969 as Perak Carbide, it has now diversified to include not just propertydevelopment activities and investments, but also into the print and electronic media industry. 26. See http://www.sookasentral.com/main.php 27. A. Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality, Duke University Press, London, 1999. Bunnell (2002a) and Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin, Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition, New York, Routledge, 2001. 28. T. Bunnell, P.A. Barter and S. Morshidi, ‘Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan Area: A Globalizing City-Region’, Cities, vol. 19, no. 5, 2002, p. 364. (see also Bunnell and Nah, ‘Counter-Global Cases for Place’). 29. The Malay Reservations Enactments of 1913 and 1933 followed on from an earlier identification of land by the British administration (about 101 hectares on outskirts of the city) to the north of the Selangor Turf Club as a Malay settlement, part subsistence, and part agricultural. This was to provide ‘protection’ to the Malays from the rapidly encroaching activities and place-making of the Chinese traders and entrepreneurs, moving outwards from the inner density of the city. 30. The ‘New Villages Program’ (otherwise also known as the Briggs Plan) were the result of a strategy introduced in 1949 by the then Director of Operations Lt General Sir Harold Briggs. This programme had regrouped and transferred close to a million Chinese rural dwellers into over 600 new settlements, mostly in around the main city centre. Surrounded by barbed wires and strict curfew hours, this strategy affectively starved off food supplies to the Malayan Communist Party (MCP) members. When General Sir Gerald Templer arrived in

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1951 to replace Sir Henry Gurney (who had been murdered by the communists ‘terrorists’ in October 1951), he introduced the idea of ‘White’ or ‘Safe’ areas which were considered free of terrorist (communist) activity – and rewarded with relaxed restrictions on food and travel. 31. The Malay Dilemma (1970), 29, penned after the 1969 riots by Mahathir Mohammad (Malaysia’s Prime Minister 1981-2003) spoke of the need for, especially rural Malays, to remove the shackles of their own subjugation, caused in part by their ‘inferior’ Malay genes; as also by ‘the cumulative effects of a subsistence existence, poverty, absence of proper schooling, and the effects of parasitic diseases’ (King, p. 83). Traditional custom, which kept Malays as subjects, was also blamed. As ‘definitive’ or ‘rightful’ owners of Malaysia, Malays were asked to urbanize, to flee from their repressive village life and to take on status as urban and sophisticated people. As Evers and Korff (2000, p. 58) also attest, race alone does not lie behind these 1969 riots. Questions of class weave through the new constructions of identity that were far from homogenous within the ethnic divisions - and Mahathir’s new Malay brings new focus to the social construction of identity and difference (King, 2008). 32. This article has primarily drawn on fieldwork data collected between 2006 and 2009. The research was made possible through financial funding from the then RMIT University Virtual Research Institutes Initiatives (VRII), conducted through the Globalism research Institute’s Community Sustainability Research project. 33. Wilford (2008), ‘The Indian Uprising and the Haunting of Justice in Malaysia’, Lecture Series 2008-2009, The Centre for South East Asian Studies, Department of Anthropology, Cornell University, Ithica, New York. 34. Sidhu M.S., Kuala Lumpur and Its Population, Kuala Lumpur, University of Malaya Press, 1978 and Tim Bunnell and Alice Nah, Counterglobal Cases for Place: Contesting Displacement in Globalising Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan Area’, Urban Studies, vol. 41, no. 12. pp. 244767, November 2004 35. K. Azizah, ‘The Genesis of Squatting in West Malaysia with Special Reference to the Malays in the Federal Territory’, Malaysia in History, 26, 1983, pp. 60-83 36. Yaso Nadarajah (2010), ‘Abiding by Malaysia: Mediating Belonging through Cultural Contestations’, in Alperhan Babachan and Supriya

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Singh (eds.), Migration and Belonging, London: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 37. Seng Guan Yeoh (2001), ‘Creolised Utopias, Squatter Colonies and the Post-colonial City in Malaysia’, in Sojourn, 16 (1), pp. 102-23. 38. A.B. Shamsul (2001), ‘A History of an Identity, an Identity of a History: The Idea and Practice of “Malayness” in Malaysia Reconsidered’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 32 (3), 356. 39. Baxstrom Richard, ‘Living Between Promise and Danger: The Law, Urban Development and the Transformation of Everyday Life in Kuala Lumpur’. Edinburgh, Edinburgh Papers in South East Asian Studies, Centre for South East Asian Studies, University of Edinburgh, 2007. 40. Ibid., p. 16 41. Mohd. Nasir Hashim, Urban Pioneers: The Struggle for Justice, translated by C. Kumar, Kuala Lumpur, Daya Komunikasi, 2003. 42. http://www.dbkl.gov.my/pskl2020/english/land_use_and_ development_strategy/ index.htm - accessed 10 November 2010. 43. Ibid. 44. Goh and Liauw, ‘Post-Colonial Projects of a National Culture’, City, vol. 13, no. 1, 2009.

References Azizah, K. (1983), ‘The Genesis of Squatting in West Malaysia with Special Reference to the Malays in the Federal Territory’, Malaysia in History, 26, pp. 60-83. Baxstrom, R. (2007), ‘Living Between Promise and Danger: The Law, Urban Development and the Transformation of Everyday Life in Kuala Lumpur’. Edinburgh: Edinburgh Papers in South East Asian Studies, Centre for South East Asian Studies, University of Edinburgh. Bunnell, T. (2002a), ‘Cities for Nations? Examining the City–Nation-State Relation in Information Age Malaysia’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 284-98. ——— (2002b), ‘Kampung Rules: Landscape and the Contested Government of Urban(e) Malayness’, Urban Studies, vol. 39, no. 9, pp. 1686-701. Bunnell, T. and A. Nah (2004), Counter-global Cases for Place: Contesting Displacement in Globalising Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan Area, Urban Studies, vol. 41, no. 12, pp. 2449-50. Bunnell, T., P.A. Barter and S. Morshidi (2002), ‘Kuala Lumpur Metropolitan Area: A Globalizing City-Region’, Cities, vol. 19, no. 5.

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Chang, J.H. (2007), ‘Natural Traditions: Constructing Tropical Architecture in Transnational Malaysia and Singapore’, Explorations, vol. 7, Issue 1, Spring. DBKL. (2010), ‘Kuala Lumpur Structure Plan 2020’, accessed 10 November http://www.dbkl.gov.my/pskl2020/english/land_use_and_ development_strategy/index.htm, DBKL. (2010), ‘Need for a Plan’, http://www.dbkl.gov.my/pskl2020/ english/introduction/index.htm, accessed 10 November. Evers, H.D and R. Korff (2000), Southeast Asian Urbanism: The Meaning and Power of Social Space, New York: St. Martin’s Press. Gomez, E.T. and K.S. Jomo (1997), Malaysia’s Political Economy: Politics, Patronage and Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goh, B.L and D. Liauw (2009), ‘Post-Colonial Projects of a National Culture’, City, vol. 13, no. 1, p. 72. Graham, S. and S. Marvin (2001), Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities and the Urban Condition, New York: Routledge. Hashim, M.N. (2003), Urban Pioneers: The Struggle for Justice, tr. C. Kumar, Kuala Lumpur: Daya Komunikasi. Hara, F. (2003), Malayan Chinese and China: Conversion in Identity Consciousness 1945-1957, Singapore: Singapore University Press (first published in Japan by Institute of Developing Economics, 1997) Jomo, K.S. (1995), ‘Introduction’, in K.S. Jomo (ed.) Privatising Malaysia: Rents, Rhetoric, Realities, West View Press: Boulder, CO, pp. 1-10. King (2007), ‘Rewriting the City: Putrajaya as Representation’, in Journal of Urban Design 12 (1), pp. 117-38. Kultermann, U. (1987), ‘Architecture in Southeast Asia: Malaysia’, Minar, no. 26, p. 64. Low, S.M. (ed.) (1999), Theorizing the City – The New Urban Anthropology Reader; New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press, pp. 1-37. Lee, Lih Shyan (1998), ‘Planning a New Town: Petaling Jaya’, in V.F. Chen (ed.), The Encyclopaedia of Malaysia, Volume 5: Architecture, Singapore: The Archipelago Press, pp. 104-5. McGee, T.G. (1991), ‘The Emergence of Desakota Regions in Asia: Expanding a Hypothesis’, in N. Ginsberg, B. Koppel and T.G. McGee (eds.), The Extended Metropolis: Settlement Transition in Asia. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, pp. 26-33.

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Morshidi, S. and G. Suriati (1999), ‘Globalization of Economic Activity and Third World Cities: A Case Study of Kuala Lumpur’, Kuala Lumpur: Utusan. Moser, S. (2010), ‘Putrajaya: Malaysia’s New Federal Administrative Capital’, Cities: The International Journal of Urban Policy and Planning, 27 (3), p. 285. The Malaysian Resources Corporations Berhad (MRCB) Nadarajah, Y. (2007), ‘The Outsider Within—Commencing Fieldwork in the Kuala Lumpur/Petaling Jaya Corridor’, Malaysia’s International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, 3(2), Malaysia: University Sain Malaysia. ——— (2010), ‘Abiding by Malaysia: Mediating Belonging Through Cultural Contestations’, in Supriya Singh and Alperhan Babachan (eds.), Migration and Belonging, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ——— (2010), ‘Kuala Lumpur’, in Global Cities Institute Annual Review Report, RMIT University, Global Cities, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 88-97. Ong, A. (1999), Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality, London: Duke University Press. Phang, S.N., S. Kuppusamy and M.W. Norris (1996), ‘Metropolitan Management of Kuala Lumpur’, in J. Ruland (ed.), The Dynamics of Metropolitan Management in Southeast Asia, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore. Reid, R. (1993), Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce: Expansion and Crisis, 2 vols., New Haven: Yale University Press. Sardar, Z. (2000), The Consumption of Kuala Lumpur, London: Reaktion Books. Shamsul, A.B. (2001), ‘A History of an Identity, An Identity of a History: The Idea and Practice of “Malayness” in Malaysia Reconsidered’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 32 (3), pp. 355-66. Sidhu, M.S. (1978), Kuala Lumpur and Its Population, Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press. Sooka, Sentral,. (2009), Life is Best Enjoyed at Sooka Sentral, accessed 15 May 2010. http://www.sookasentral.com/main.php, Sulaiman, W. and S. Zubir (2004) ‘Verandahways as Catalysts for Walking in a Tropical City’, paper presented at the Fifth International Conference on Walking in the 21st Century, 9-11 June 2004, Copenhagen, Denmark. Tay, L. and Ngiom (2000), Eighty Years of Architecture in Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, Pertubuhan Arkitek Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur.

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Thompson, E.C. (2002), Migrant Subjectivities and Narratives of Kampung in Malaysia’, in Sojourn, 17 (1), pp. 52-75. UNESCO, Memory of the World Register, accessed 10 July 2010. Wilford, A. (2008), ‘The Indian Uprising and the Haunting of Justice in Malaysia’, Lecture Series 2008-2009, The Centre for South East Asian Studies, Department of Anthropology, Cornell University, Ithica, New York. ——— (2006), ‘The “Already Surmounted” yet ‘Secretly Familiar’ Malaysian Identity as Symptom’, Cultural Anthropology, 21(1), New York. ——— (2006), Cage of Freedom: Tamil Identity and the Ethnic Fetish in Malaysia, Michigan: University of Michigan Press. ——— (2002), ‘Weapons of the Meek: Ecstatic Ritualism and Strategic Ecumenism Among Tamil Hindus in Malaysia’, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 9(2), Routledge. Yeoh, Seng Guan (2001), ‘Creolised Utopias, Squatter Colonies and the Post-colonial City in Malaysia’, in Sojourn, 16 (1), pp. 102-23.

Chapter 6

Urbanization, Modernity and Community in the Global South The Case of Colombo* Siri Hettige

Introduction Increasing economic, social and cultural significance of cities in the context of the emergent system of globalized production and exchange relations, encourages rural-urban migration leading to urban growth. Expanding urban economic activities create new income opportunities for an increasing proportion of the local population. Increasing integration of the city with the outside world through migration, communication, trade, travel and tourism generates considerable demand for a whole range of functionaries with the necessary skills and orientations. The need to use a common international language in the emergent, transnational business world encourages these functionaries to transcend primordial divisions that * A revised version of a paper presented at the Roundtable on Community, City and Globalization, 9-10 June 2011, RMIT University, Melbourne.

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have traditionally kept different ethno-linguistic communities apart. Being exposed to a cosmopolitan world of work, consumption and modern communication, members of the emergent transnationally oriented, modern affluent classes display characteristics that are quite different from those of more inward-looking, nationally-oriented middle classes. Unlike the latter, the former become more receptive to secular, liberal values and ideas. Increasing integration of urban economic activities with the global system helps urban communities, in particular affluent classes to participate in networks that often cut across traditional boundaries. The corporate sector that largely operates across national boundaries militates against narrow ethno-linguistic identities among employees. Yet, such identities exist even in the city and are continually reproduced by political, social and cultural processes. In this regard, the role of the state and public policies are critically important. Educational and media landscape in the city also changes under the weight of increasing global integration. Transnationally oriented affluent classes demand educational and media services that are of a transnational character. New cosmopolitan educational institutions tend to proliferate side by side the nationally and even communally oriented educational institutions. The same happens in the media sphere as well. So what happens in the city is as much influenced by global forces as endogenous forces. City is populated as much by physically bounded communities as by loose networks of corporate employees, professionals, civil society groups, etc. The formation of social classes, identities, associations and communities in a city integrated into a hierarchy of global cities (Fainstein, 1992) does not follow the pattern of city expansion that was associated with early capitalist industrialization (Smith, 1984). In the new globalized urban environment, locally-based, community-focused analyses do not provide an adequate analytical framework to understand the life worlds of an increasing part of the urban population even in a peripheral country (Harvey, 1998; Smith, 1992). Yet, the fact that even a cosmopolitan center linked to the outside world remains embedded in a nation-state framework cannot be overlooked as state-

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society relationship extends beyond the city and encompasses the wider social, ideological and political forces associated with the larger national society. This often creates considerable tension between the city and the wider society, both economically and politically. It is in the above wider global context that this paper maps the changing social, economic and political landscape of the city of Colombo with a focus on how various groups of residents in the city have strived to lay claim over urban space through various processes of community building, both real and imagined. The process of urbanization, unfolding over time guided by economic, political, social and cultural forces, has determined the shape and the size of the city. While its historical backdrop continues to be a significant dimension that cannot be overlooked in any sociological analysis of Colombo, recent developments in the country in general and in the Colombo metropolitan region in particular have decisively shaped its character today. In this regard, the adoption of neo-liberal policies by the Sri Lankan state in the late 1970s has been critical. The economic, social and cultural consequences of economic liberalization have not been as clearly evident or visible in any other part of the country as in Colombo. Similarly, the country’s devastating ethnic conflict, mostly concentrated in the north-eastern region, manifested itself in Colombo in various forms, making the city an important theatre of the conflict.1 Colombo, being the seat of centralized political power from the colonial times to the present, has also been decisively influenced by diverse socio-political currents over time. What is implied above is that the city of Colombo cannot be examined merely as another urban agglomeration in the light of the theoretical and empirical literature emanating from the dominant, Western urban sociological and anthropological traditions, though such theoretical orientations cannot be overlooked in the context of any empirical investigation. The point being made here is that specific historical and contemporary circumstances have shaped the urban landscape of Colombo. This is not to suggest that there is no possibility for generalization and comparative analyses. In fact, as Gilbert and Gugler (1992) have demonstrated, in spite of great diversity of urban experience across the globe, there are significant commonalities among the developing countries, largely owing to

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similar experiences of many countries that were incorporated into the global economic system both during the colonial period and in more recent times. There have also been studies of what has been called ‘divided cities’ that point to the complex nature of urban social structures (Gaffikin and Morrissen, 2012). Such attempts at comparative analysis and generalization are crucially significant because empirical observations often do not lead to similar conclusions. As is well known, the conclusion of L. Wirth’s classic essay ‘Urbanism as a Way of Life’, published in 1938, was contradicted by subsequent ethnographic studies that did not find evidence to support Wirth’s assertion that urban social life was characterized by transitory, contractual and superficial social relations. Summarizing a large number of community studies in the United States, Gans (1962) found enduring and close-knit social relations among people living in cities. In other words, the large size and heterogeneity of urban agglomerations do not always determine the nature of social relations among city dwellers, many of whom live their social and cultural lives in the microcosms of neighbourhoods, ethno-religious groups and kinship networks. Many other contextual factors play a decisive role in shaping urban social organization, though the latter is unlikely to be uniform across the entire city population. For instance, social and political networks can correspond to both horizontal and vertical inequalities among residents to a great extent. We will return to this point later, as this is the main theme elaborated in the paper.

Rise and Expansion of Colombo The emergence of Colombo as the premier commercial, administrative and political capital of the country is closely associated with the dawn of Western colonial rule in the island. Before the British captured the entire island and established Colombo as the country’s capital, their predecessors, namely the Portuguese and the Dutch who established their rule in the coastal regions of the country, also used Colombo as the seat of their power and the main commercial centre. Commercial and administrative functions however appear to have been confined to a small area surrounding the harbour. The surrounding areas that fall within today’s city limits appear to have been inhabited by


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peasant and artisan producers living in distinct settlements known as wattas (literally gardens). Most of these localities are still identified by their old village names and refer to gardens of diverse crops such as plantains and cinnamon. The growth of the city into a sizable metropolis is essentially a consequence of the British colonial rule. The city then acquired its modern features such as the CDB, elite residential quarters, political and administrative institutions, key social infrastructure such as roads, transport services, health and educational institutions and wholesale and retail markets. With its increasing economic, political, social and cultural functions, Colombo attracted a wide range of social and occupational groups. The socio-economic diversity in turn gave rise to a complex array of settlements ranging from exclusive upper-class residential quarters to slums and shanties that provided shelter to unskilled workers and informal-sector activists. Colombo became home to the members of a colonial elite that included old landed aristocrats as well as the new rich and top public officials and professionals. Their spacious residences dotted the almost exclusive upper class residential quarters in the western part of the city. The rise of Colombo as a primate city clearly conformed to a widespread pattern of urbanization in the colonial world aptly described as ‘dependent urbanization’ by Manuel Castells (1977). Devoid of any industrialization in the country under the British rule, the country’s economy emerged as a dual economy comprising an export-oriented plantation sector and a vast peasant economy spread across the rural hinterland (Snodgrass, 1963). As far as economic functions were concerned, the city of Colombo provided the key link between the local economy and the outside world by way of facilitating exports and imports and providing the financial and other services needed by the plantation companies. Given the almost total absence of any industries in and around Colombo, the city did not attract many migrants. Those who migrated were attracted by service industries such as transport, public works, shipping, internal trade, public health, education and personal services like domestic help. Even in 1871, the population of Colombo was less than 100,000 inhabitants (DCS, 2004).

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As regards the residential pattern, there appears to have emerged three distinct types, with their clear spatial distribution across the city. In general, low-income settlements including slums and shanties were mostly concentrated in the eastern half of the city, while the most affluent groups have occupied the western half of the city. On the other hand, the most privileged sections of the population such as the upper class business elite, affluent professionals and the landed aristocrats had found their way into the most exclusive upper-class residential quarters of the city known as the Cinnamon Gardens. These affluent neighbourhoods have expanded in recent years beyond the boundaries of older affluent residential areas. Culturally, Colombo emerged as the most multi-cultural agglomeration in the country. Being a colonial city, it naturally absorbed Western cultural traits, both material and symbolic. For instance, the British rule introduced many landmarks into the Colombo landscape such as parks, monuments, functional buildings and streets named after important colonial figures such as top administrators and the members of the British royal family. The Westernized elite could freely adopt foreign lifestyles and consumption patterns propagated through social and cultural practices, association with social clubs, celebration of important events, modern colonial institutions, etc. Influx of various ethnoreligious and caste groups gave rise to mixed as well as distinct settlements and their distinct symbolic markers such as places of worship, ethnic enclaves, educational and civic institutions, ethnoreligious festivals and distinct life styles. On the other hand, poor migrants engaged in low-income activities moved into disadvantaged areas where slums and shanties proliferated. Living in often overcrowded settlements, they established close-knit communities where survival and well-being depended on reciprocal and generalized exchange. As I have discussed elsewhere (Hettige, 1990), the poor and low-income communities often have a symbiotic relationship with the informal sector of the urban economy and the upper social strata. Upper- and middle-class families benefited from cheap goods and services supplied by the poor. This pattern has changed considerably in recent decades when modern supermarkets, private transport, etc., have taken over many goods and services earlier delivered by


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the urban poor. Yet, disadvantaged communities continue to supply cheap labour and personal services to more affluent sections of the city population. The structure of the colonial economy, the relatively small size of the indigenous population2 and the high labour absorptive capacity of the peasant economy3 militated against rapid urbanization in the country, at least until the time of political independence. As a result, the population of Colombo did not grow beyond several hundred thousand inhabitants. The above pattern was further reinforced by certain measures taken by the state even prior to independence. These included the alienation of state land among landless peasants and the rehabilitation of hitherto neglected ancient irrigation infrastructure in sparsely populated north-central, eastern and southern region of the country. These encouraged intra-rural rather than rural-urban migration. As the data from successive population censuses shows, there was a significant decline in the rate of growth of the population of Colombo after political independence. This was in spite of rapid population growth in the country at large during the same period. No doubt, post-independence social and economic policies played a critical role here. (See Table 6.1). As is evident from the data, the rate of growth of the city population slowed down between 1971 and 1981, followed by a significant increase in the next two decades, indicating the impact of economic liberalization on urban population growth. The slow expansion of the city of Colombo during the colonial period and in the immediate aftermath of political independence did not reduce the importance of the city as the premier urban agglomeration in the country in economic, political, social and cultural terms. Though the city did not offer many economic opportunities, it nevertheless continued to be the most attractive destination for the upwardly mobile sections of the rural population. The anti-capitalist, state-led development policies adopted by the post-independence regimes since the mid 1950s did not facilitate urban expansion either. In fact, the post-1956 policies were hostile to the interests of the privileged, westernized urban elites and led to a major exodus of English-educated professionals from the country

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Table 6.1: Population, Percentage Increase and Average Annual Rate of Growth Colombo, 1871-2001 Census Year

Enumerated Population

1871 1881 1891 1901 1911 1921 1931 1946 1953 1963 1971 1981 2001

95,843 110,502 126,825 154,691 211,274 244,163 284,155 362,074 426,127 511,644 562,420 587,647 647,100

Percentage Increase – 15.3 14.8 22.0 36.6 15.6 16.4 27.4 17.7 20.1 9.9 4.5 10.1

Average Annual Rate of Growth (percent) – 1.5 1.4 2.0 3.2 1.5 1.5 1.6 2.4 1.8 1.1 0.5 0.5

Source: Department of Census and Statistics, Colombo (DCS), (2004).

from the late 1950s onwards. Yet the city remained the centre of gravity for the privileged, urban propertied classes including the country’s business, professional, bureaucratic and political elites. As will be discussed later, these urban elite groups flourished after economic liberalization.

Post-Independence Policy Shifts and Their Impact on Colombo The native political elite that took over state power following political independence in 1948 did not immediately adopt any new economic policies but maintained the status quo until the mid1950s. However the increasing influence of Marxist political parties and nationalist political forces paved the way for a reformist regime in 1956. The new regime embarked upon a major package of economic reform that included nationalization of private firms, establishment of a range of public enterprises, in particular import-substitution industries, the change of official language from English to Sinhalese


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and land reforms. These reforms reduced the political and economic significance of Westernized urban elites and Colombo-based private enterprises in both the economy and society. Most of the newly established, import-substitution industries were taken to rural areas, away from Colombo, creating new employment opportunities in the countryside. In fact, such industries were established in almost every province of the country. The above state of affairs did not change until the late 1970s and therefore, did not contribute much to urban growth in Colombo or elsewhere. This is evident from the data in Table 6.2. However, the urban landscape in Colombo began to change in an unprecedented manner following the adoption of neo-liberal economic reforms in 1977. The Colombo-based private corporate sector was immediately Table 6.2: Population of Colombo and its Environs Census Year

1871 1881

430.00 506.50

95.8 110.5

Colombo City Population as a Percentage of District Population 22.3 21.8

1891 1901 1911 1921 1931

578.90 690.80 826.80 923.10 1,081.20

126.8 154.7 211.3 244.2 284.2

21.9 22.4 25.6 26.5 26.3

1946 1953 1963 1971 1981 2001

1,420.30 953.70 1,248.60 1,498.40 1,699.20 2,251.30

362.1 426.1 511.6 562.4 587.6 647.1

25.5 44.7 41.0 37.5 34.6 28.7

Enumerated Population (thousands) Colombo district

Colombo city

Source: Department of Census and Statistics, Colombo (DCS), (2004). Note: Population of Gampaha district located adjacent to Colombo was included in the population of Colombo district from 1871 to 1946.

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recognized as the engine of economic growth. Various incentives were offered to foreign investors to bring FDI into newly established Free Trade Zones or Export Processing Zones. Relaxation of exchange controls and imports facilitated the inflow of foreign goods and services in an unprecedented manner. Private investors were allowed to move into areas that hitherto remained almost entirely in the hands of the state. These included education, health, public transport and housing. Private investment in real estate development began to transform the city skyline with many high rise commercial and residential buildings springing up in and around the city centre. The new income opportunities emerged not just in the expanding private corporate sector. The expanding import-export economy also gave rise to a thriving urban informal economy involving retail trade, construction work, personal services, catering, transport, personal security, and domestic services. New health and educational institutions came up to cater to the new demand created by the affluent sections of the population. The newly established private educational institutions began to provide instruction in the English medium in order to meet the growing demand for English education. Given the strong tendency on the part of large private firms to recruit English-educated persons for white-collar positions, Englisheducated youth could easily find their way into such firms. Given the high cost of private education, those who benefit from such education have tended to come from affluent families, both urban and rural. Colombo’s increasing economic and social significance following economic liberalization has encouraged many people to migrate to Colombo and its surrounding suburbs. Though many poor and low-income persons have found their way into slums and shanties in Colombo over the years, very high property prices in the city have compelled low-income persons to settle down in outlying areas where property values have not appreciated as much. This explains the rapid expansion of the population in the Colombo metropolitan region. As Table 6.2 shows, population in the district of Colombo has increased from 1.2 million in 1963 to 2.3 million in 2001. If we add the district of Gampaha to the north of the city, the figure is well over 3 million.


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The impact of the devastating ethnic war on the Sri Lankan economy cannot be over-emphasized. In fact, the conflict intensified in the early 1980s, at a time when the economy was already undergoing significant structural change under the influence of the new liberal economic policy environment. It is important to note that the war and the liberal economic policies continued to impact simultaneously on the economy, society, and polity in Sri Lanka. Firstly, the escalating cost of the war made significant inroads into public finances, making it difficult for the state to increase public investments in social and other sectors. Secondly, increasing insecurity impeded FDI and tourism. Thirdly, the conflict also produced a major exodus of people directly or indirectly affected by violence, depriving the country of many experienced and qualified persons. And finally, occasional but devastating bomb attacks on economic and civilian targets in Colombo made the latter a highly insecure place and had a major impact on the urban economy. So far in the present paper, an attempt has been made to provide an overview of the development of Colombo as a major urban agglomeration, particularly over the last three decades. While its economy and the visible affluence of the elites are indicative of the extent of concentration of wealth in the Colombo metropolitan region in recent years,4 the social composition of the city population is a product of a range of social, political and cultural processes as well. As mentioned earlier, the sense of insecurity felt by people affected by political and ethnic conflict over the years has encouraged many to find refuge in relative anonymity prevailing in many urban settlements and certain ethnic enclaves in the city. As mentioned earlier, Colombo city is part of a much larger urban agglomeration. Many people who live in surrounding suburbs in fact commute daily to Colombo for work and other purposes. A survey conducted by a team of researchers several years ago revealed that there are several concentric circles around Colombo accommodating several social classes and range of occupational groups fitting into the above circles in a hierarchical manner: higher the income or occupation, the closer the distance to the centre (Hettige, 1995). On the other hand, Colombo city is divided into many neighbourhood areas, ranging from exclusively upper-class residential quarters in the

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west and highly congested disadvantaged areas in the north and east of the city. It is estimated that a majority of Colombo residents live in highly congested disadvantaged areas in the eastern half of the city. In fact, the highest population densities are found in settlements in the north-east of the city where most of the low-income settlements are concentrated. Though Colombo is widely recognized as the preeminent centre of economic power in the country, its political importance has not waned inspite of an attempt in the recent past to shift important political and administrative institutions to a sub-urban area in the metropolitan region. Post-independence regimes have made every effort to have political control over the Colombo municipality. On a more communal level, leaders of different ethnic communities have also been keen to have control over certain urban spaces. They have adopted various strategies to achieve their objectives. These include naming of streets, parks, playgrounds and public buildings after prominent community leaders and erection of religious or cultural monuments at strategic locations. On the other hand, allocation of urban space over the years has been guided by market, political and socio-cultural forces. While escalating urban property prices have increasingly excluded the poor and low-income people from the competition, the latter have used their political and social connections to protect their land rights and remain in the city. Yet the state takeover of public land occupied by the poor for commercial or public purposes has at times led to resettlement of slum and shanty dwellers in and outside the city, often leading to various issues of displacement.5

Social Inequality and Patterns of Social Organization The population of the city of Colombo has become more segmented on class and ethnic lines in the recent past. As mentioned before, increasing ethnic tensions and the resulting sense of insecurity have encouraged the members of minority communities, in particular Tamils, to migrate to Colombo.6 This seems ironical given the fact that at the peak of ethnic violence in 1983, many Tamils initially left Colombo in favour of Jaffna, a region mostly inhabited by


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Table 6.3: Key Source Districts and the Number of Recent Migrants to Colombo (Key Districts) Source District

Number of Migrants

Jaffna

44,000

Badulla

11,000

Matara

12,000

Galle

13,000

Kandy

22,000

Kaluthara

10,000

Gampaha

11,000

Nuwara Eliya

15,000

Source: Department of Census and Statistics, Colombo (DCS), (2004).

their brethren, in the more secure northern district of Jaffna. This migratory pattern has been reversed since then largely due to an increasing sense of insecurity felt by the people there due to the escalation of the conflict. This has made the population in the city more ethnically mixed, reducing the Sinhala majority to an ethnic minority there. Such population movements have also reinforced several pre-existing ethnic enclaves in Colombo. As regards social class, it is apparent that the city population has become more diverse and stratified. As mentioned before, increasing economic and other opportunities have attracted a complex array of groups to the city from all parts of the country, not just from the conflict-ridden north and east (See Table 6.3). As a result of increasing rural urban migration in recent years, Colomob population has become more diverse in terms of ethnic and religious affiliation. This is evident from Table 6.4 below. While the Sinhalese who constituted 50 per cent of the city population in 1981 has become a minority by 2004 comprising 42 per cent, the proportion of Tamil and Muslim minorities had increased significantly. As mentioned before, the members of the propertied, upper classes occupy exclusive residential neighbourhoods in the western part of the city. Dozens of high-rise luxury condominium complexes

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Table 6.4: Percentage Distribution of Population by Ethnicity in Colombo, 1981 and 2001 Ethnicity Sinhalese Sri Lankan Tamil Indian Tamil Sri Lankan Moor Other Total

1981 50.0 22.2 2.0 20.8 4.9 100.0

2001 41.9 28.9 1.9 23.3 4.0 100.0

Source : Department of Census and Statistics, Colombo (2004).

that have come up in the privileged residential areas generally accommodate the members of the upper middle class comprising professionals, corporate executives, etc. Many members of the traditional middle class continue to reside in Colombo though some of them and the many members of the lower middle class have moved out to suburbs in order to benefit from the relatively lower property prices outside the city. On the other hand, low income groups deriving their sustenance from informal sector activities in the city also continue to reside there. Increasing subdivision of land and residential units in low income settlements have led to greater congestion and over-crowding there in recent years. This is evident from the data on housing conditions in various parts of the city. Class and ethnic divisions in Colombo have given rise to a complex pattern of social organization. These divisions are produced and reproduced through social and cultural practices. If we first look at class divisions, upper class families live in largely atomized neighbourhoods and the residents there appear to relate to one another mostly through informal social networks that transcend the boundaries of their immediate neighbourhoods. These associations include business chambers, social and recreation clubs, voluntary associations and religious organizations. The high walls and protective gates that separate their residences from that of their neighbours and strangers, help maintain their anonymity and autonomy. Social interaction with neighbours appears to be minimal. The same pattern is reproduced in middle class neighbourhoods. In


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this regard, condominium complexes are not very different, though sharing of common amenities such as open spaces, swimming pools and health clubs facilitate social interaction among neighbours to a certain extent. It would not be an exaggeration to say that their sense of belonging to the city is more social than physical so their immediate neighbourhood is not all that important in determining their day to day social interactions and exchanges. By contrast, more congested, disadvantaged settlements widely identified as wattas (lit. gardens) are often closely-knit communities where residents interact and exchange favours with their neighbours on a regular basis. Social organization here is characterized by both cooperation and conflict. Many of these settlements have experienced external interventions by way of government, municipal and nongovernmental support to improve housing, health conditions, common amenities, etc. Many have formally organized community associations with democratically elected leaders.7 Some locally elected municipal council representatives have also brought in project interventions to improve access roads, or provide access to water and electricity. On the other hand, differential political affiliation among low income settlers is also a significant source of conflict and cooperation among them, at times dividing settlements on political party lines. So, the neighbourhoods as physical and social spaces are critically important in the lives of people living in non-affluent parts of the city. Their occupational patterns, income sources and congested neighbourhoods characterized by very limited social spaces, the lack of privacy and ethno-linguistic diversity make the physical space of the neighbourhood also the most important social space that to a large extent determines their identities and sense of belongingness. Their intra-community relationships often transcend broader ethnoreligious divisions that dominate public discourse on identity in the mainstream society. What is evident from the above discussion is that there is marked horizontal and vertical inequality among people living in Colombo. It is also significant that the city is mostly a product of both colonialism and subsequent socio-economic developments. In the absence of a significant industrial capitalist class, the upper

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class mostly comprises importers, exporters, merchants, financiers, landed proprietors owning agricultural land and plantations in rural areas, professionals and various service providers such as transporters and moneylenders. Many of these groups have had their origins in various parts of the country, particularly during the colonial period. Some had also migrated from India and elsewhere during the colonial period and settled down in Colombo. A few of the leading business families in Colombo are of Indian origin. Some early migrants continue to keep their rural links alive by paying regular visits to their ancestral villages, where some of their kinsmen continue to live. When some of these upper class persons entered national politics after independence, their rural links helped them mobilize popular support to win parliamentary seats in rural areas. When anti-colonial nationalist politics subsequently took an explicitly communalist turn at the time of independence, the native political elites based in Colombo mobilized their ethnic constituencies to win parliamentary seats. Increasing ethno-nationalism in Sri Lankan politics after independence reinforced ethno-nationalist forces in Colombo as well, influencing the spatial ordering of certain sections of the city. Religious and educational institutions catering to different ethno-religious communities have provided exclusive spaces for the members of such communities to congregate. So, as an ex-colonial, dependent city, Colombo is by no means a modern metropolis where mass, transitory social relationships simply dominate the lives of the inhabitants. There is no single, dominant form of social organization. Instead, there co-exist several different forms of social and spatial organization. The sense of identity and community among residents is shaped as much by their fleeting, casual day-to-day encounters in atomized urban neighbourhoods and transitory work and social settings as by close-knit neighbourhood communities and largely exclusive ethno-religious enclaves. The city dwellers are as much drawn into mass spectacles such as carnivals, impersonal markets, ethno-religious festivals and political rallies as they are exposed to daily encounters with their intimate neighbours in long-established, closely knit settlements. Migrants moving into such settlements cannot remain there as strangers as the neighbours are keen to determine their origin and background. On the other


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hand, the same does not happen in more affluent neighbourhoods where the residents usually respect the privacy of their neighbours. Many people living in such residential quarters often remain virtual strangers to each other. This does not mean that they do not participate in social networks. Many of them have multiple memberships in formal and informal organizations and groupings that usually transcend their neighbourhood boundaries.

Urban Space and Multiple Communities The discussion so far in the present chapter has shown that the city has undergone a process of socio-economic transformation over the last fifty to sixty years under the influence of changing demographics, economic and social policy shifts, political upheavals and continuing external influences. In spite of these changes, the city continues to be the nerve centre of the country’s economy and the focal point in national politics. While the class divisions among the inhabitants have become sharper over time, largely due to the high concentration of wealth in the region, the city population continues to be socioculturally diverse. It is the growing class divisions and the ethnoreligious diversity that underpin the diverse life worlds of different communities that inhabit the city. However, the physical, social and political contours of these life worlds vary widely depending on class and community location of the inhabitants. Their sense of community and belonging, therefore largely correspond to their differential locations or spaces. Looking at the processes of community formation across the city, it is possible to identify at least three distinct patterns. Conceptually, these can be identified as follows: a. Ethno-religious communities b. Grass-roots communities c. Cosmopolitan communities As mentioned earlier, ethno-linguistic diversity in Colombo has continued to increase over time, particularly over the last few decades due to the inflow of migrants from other provinces. Migrants have

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been from different social class and occupational backgrounds and have moved into different residential quarters in the city depending on their relative socio-economic status. While some of these residential areas are ethnic enclaves, others are ethnically mixed settlements like slums and shanties. Ethnic communities do not simply overlap with ethnic enclaves, though there is a certain degree of correspondence between the two. The formation and reproduction of ethnic communities are dependent on wider social and political processes that often unfold at a macro societal level, i.e. education, public debate and political mobilization. So, these processes are not necessarily confined to the city boundaries, though what happens in the city also contributes to these processes. For instance, the role of the ethno-linguistically segregated schools in Colombo in the above regard should not be underestimated. Similarly, the threats posed by extremist, ethnoreligious groups tend to reinforce solidarity among the members of ethnic groups that are threatened. As mentioned earlier in the chapter, the disadvantaged communities that are mostly concentrated in the northern and eastern parts of the city are home to many low income families, in particular, those who derive their sustenance from the expanding informal sector. These are usually mixed settlements where people belonging to different ethnic and religious groups reside. Even at the height of ethnic violence in the country, these communities did not display significant ethnic tensions, indicating that there is a high level of tolerance of the other and mutual understanding among diverse groups living there. Moreover, they do not seem to be very much influenced by ethnoreligious mobilization elsewhere. Though there is bound to be some interpersonal conflicts over resources and other issues, these do not seem to develop into inter-community conflicts. Given the marginal socio-economic position of the people living in these communities, locally based social networks and exchange relations that often cut across primordial divisions are critical for their survival. The third category of communities that we identify in the context of Colombo has been referred to as ‘cosmopolitan’. These communities encapsulate residents who constantly come together through a series of social, cultural, professional and political networks. Being


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cosmopolitan, members of these communities often transcend both physical boundaries of their neighborhoods and primordial social divisions of ethnicity and religion. The members of these communities come from relatively more privileged socio-economic backgrounds and reside in relatively more affluent urban neighborhoods. In terms of identity and belonging, they by and large tend to embrace a national identity that cuts across narrow social and cultural divisions. In terms of political ideology, they are more likely to tilt towards liberalism. Given the diversity of communities that inhabit the urban space, many people living in Colombo tend to resist the homogenizing influence emanating from dominant nationalist ideologies. The key factors that seem to underpin this tendency seem to be the high density of media institutions, relatively low dependence on the state sector for livelihoods and the greater opportunities for social interactions and cultural exchanges across ethno-religions divisions. As the data from the Department of Census (2004) shows, the vast majority of the employed people in Colombo derive their income from private sources. As is also evident from the available data, population in Colombo is largely bilingual and many (40%) can communicate in English, a situation which is at variance with the rest of the country. The three community formations mentioned above are not exhaustive and may not account for the lived experience of every inhabitant in the city. In other words, it is not claimed here that all inhabitants of Colombo can be neatly fitted into one or another of the three community forms. Yet, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the three conceptually distinct categories by and large correspond to the lived experiences of most residents of Colombo, though by no means the life worlds of many people are always mutually exclusive.

Conclusion Colombo is essentially a product of Western colonial rule in terms of its early beginnings but much of subsequent developments and symbolism (Schut, Nas and Hettige, 2012) have been influenced by

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emerging nationalist political, social and cultural forces. More recent developments have influenced the demographic, socio-economic and political landscape of Colombo in significant ways. The city has not only retained its diversity but has even become more so in recent years. This is true as much for its social structure as for the community life and the sense of belonging of its inhabitants. As a result, there are diverse forms of community and their sense of connection to the place depends very much on the nature of the community that they feel they belong to. As far as the inhabitants of Colombo are concerned, there are three distinct types of community that can be conceptually and empirically discerned. These have been referred to as ethno-religious, grass-roots and cosmopolitan. These are not necessarily mutually exclusive but may overlap to a certain extent. Though some people may have a sense of belonging to more than one of these, in general one of them would dominate the life world of most inhabitants. This would, in turn determine the way they relate to each other at an inter-personal and community level as well as how they relate to the social, cultural and political processes within the city.

Notes 1. The LTTE carried out devastating bomb attacks targeting many economic, political and civilian targets in Colombo since the mid 1980’s onward. These sporadic attacks made Colombo an insecure place for its inhabitants. The ethnic war ended in 2009 when the LTTE was defeated by the Sri Lankan security forces. 2. According the first Island wide census conducted in 1871, the country’s population was around 2.5 million persons. 3. The absence of any mechanization of peasant agriculture at the time no doubt made agricultural production highly labor intensive. 4. Well over 50% of the country’s GDP has been concentrated in this region in recent years, clearly pointing to the increased concentration of wealth in and around Colombo. 5. See Hettige, S.T, et al. (2004). 6. When the ethnic conflict became intense in the 1990’s, many Tamils who initially left Colombo returned to their long established


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neighborhoods in Colombo. As Table 3 shows, Tamils from the north constitute the largest single migrant group in Colombo. 7. As part of an externally assisted basic services program implemented in the early 1980’s by the Colombo Municipal Council Community Development councils (LDC’s) were established in many disadvantaged communities. These were formally organized community based associations headed by elected local office bearers. Some of these CDS’s continue to function in Colombo to this day. 8. Escalation of the ethnic conflict since the 1980’s compelled many people from the north-east of the country to migrate to Colombo and this has swelled the ranks of the Tamil community. According to the Department of Census and Statistics, largest segment of migrants to Colombo, 32% in the late 1990’s has been from Jaffna.

References Bridge, G. (2005), Reason in the City of Difference, Pragmatism, Communicative Action and Contemporary Urbanism, London: Routledge. Bromley, R. (1978), ‘The Urban Informal Sector: A Critical Perspective’, in World Development, vol. 6, pp. 1031-98. Castells, M. (1977), The Urban Question: A Marxist Approach, Edward Arnold. Census and Statistics, Department of Population and Housing Data, City of Colombo, Colombo, 2004. Dos Santos, T. (1970), ‘The Structure of Dependence’ in American Economic Review, 60, pp. 231-6. Fainstein, S., I. Gordon, and M. Harloe (1992), Divided Cities: New York and London in Contemporary World, Oxford: Blackwell. Frisby, D. (2001), Cityscapes of Modernity, Cambridge: Polity Press. Gaffikin, F. and M. Morrissey (2011), Planning in Divided Cities, Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. Gans, H.J. (1962), ‘Urbanism and Urbanism as Ways of Life: A Reevaluation of Definitions’, in A.H. Rose (ed.), Human Behaviour and Social Process, Houghton Mifflin, pp. 625-48. Gilbert, A. and J. Gugler (1992), Cities, Poverty and Development: Urbanization in the Third World, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harvey, D. (1978), ‘The Urban Process Under Capitalism: A Framework of Analysis’, in International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2, pp. 101-31.

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Hettige, S.T. (1990), ‘Subsistence Reproduction Among Settled Urban Poor’, in Urban Anthropology, Fall, pp. 185-213. ———, ‘The Impact of Economic Liberalization on Suburban Growth’, (Unpublished Report). Hettige, S.T., Nishara Fernando, Markus Mayer, Christiane Noe, Gayathri Nanayakkara (2004), Improving Livelihoods of the Urban Poor, A Study of Resettlement Schemes in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka: GTZ/ CMC/IMCAP. Hettige, Colombo, P.J.M. Nas (ed. 2005), ‘Directors of Urban Change in Asia’, London: Routledge. Hill, R.C. (1984), ‘Modern Political Economy: Emergence, Consolidation and Development’, in M.P. Smith (ed.), Cities in Transformation: Class, Capital and the State, London: Sage Publications. Roberts, B.R. (1978), Cities of Peasants: The Political Economy of Globalization in the Third World, Edward Arnold/Sage. Schut M., P.J.M. Nas and S.T. Hettige (2012), ‘Emotion in the Symbolic Spectrum of Colombo, Sri Lanka’, in P.J.M. Nas (ed.), Cities Full of Symbols, Leiden: Leiden University Press, pp. 27-54. Simmel, G. (1997), ‘Metropolis and Mental Life (1910)’, in D. Frisby and M. Featherstone (eds.), Simmel on Culture: Selected Writings, London: Sage, pp. 174-85. Smith M.P. (ed.) (1992), After Modernism: Global Restructuring and the Changing Boundaries of City Life, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. Snodgrass, Ceylon: An Export Economy in Transition, Holmwood, IL: R.D. Irwin, 1963. Tonnies, F. (1955), Community and Association (trans. C.P. Loomis), London: Routledge. Whyte, W.F. (1981), Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Shanty, Chicago: University of Chicago Press (3rd edn.). Wirth, L. (1938), ‘Urbanism as a Way of Life’, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 74, pp. 1-24.

Chapter 7

Port Moresby Contesting Tradition, Identity and Urbanization Peter Phipps

Tok Stori In late April 2011 the Koiari landowners, living east of Port Moresby, instigated a short civic crisis when they selectively shut down water supplies and hydro-generated electricity to the city. The dispute was a case study in the challenges that confront the rapidly growing national capital of almost half a million people. The crisis was sparked by the stabbing of a Koiari man in the Port Morseby suburb of Hohola, allegedly at the hands of a Southern Highlander from a squatter settlement. Illustrating the intersecting discourses of tribal compensation for loss, refigured in a monetary system, and the ‘capacity building’ and ‘good governance’ language of the development sector, Koiari leaders were demanding 1.5 million kina (about AUD$700,000) in compensation, and an ‘MOU’ (memorandum of understanding) committing to comprehensive resolution of broader land and water compensation issues before returning the water and related power supply. Political and media commentary on the dispute was fascinating for largely acknowledging the legitimate rights of

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customary landowners to protest in this way, while the resolution revolved around the amount of compensation and how it was to be negotiated. At the same time it was reported that the Mosbi (PNG tok pisin for Port Moresby) social media blogosphere was awash with a stronger sense of outrage against the Koiari action.1 Miria Ikupu, Chairman of the Motu Koita Assembly which represents the more prominent Motu-Koita traditional landowners of the capital, was forthright in his support of the Koiari protest. In a statement that could equally apply to his own people, he said the government needs to acknowledge that, ‘since World War II (Koiari people) sacrificed their land and resources for the development of the city of Port Moresby.’ He went on to make a link with the resource royalties flowing to many other parts of the country and that landowners of the capital should be similarly compensated, saying, ‘The people of Koiari and Motu-Koitabu must be treated the same with other landowners in the country who enjoy gold, copper, oil and other resources because land, water and power are our only resources.’ As the 2010 UN Habitat Report on Port Moresby puts it, ‘The traditional residents of the city feel that their culture and way of life is under threat from expanded urban development. They also feel excluded from urban decision making despite being represented by the Motu Koitabu Assembly.’2 The residents, possessive views summarized in this UN report reflect my own research findings. ‘Villagers in the city’ as Michael Goddard calls them, are under intense pressure from a range of forces: commercial development pressures to sell their land, illegal settlements on their land, violence from new neighbouring communities and within communities (particularly gendered violence against women), resource depletion (firewood, trees, grasslands, game, reef fisheries, clean water) not to mention the limits placed on their own, internal population growth by alienated land and infrastructure such as roads. However it seems there is a much deeper anxiety afflicting Motu-Koita people: the inexorable sense of loss that comes to a traditional-tribal community finding its life worlds overwhelmed by the forces of global, capitalist modernity. These people are not just concerned about their place in

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the city; they are concerned about their place in the world, and the possibility of continuing a distinctive Motu-Koita way of life. These issues are not limited to the people of Port Moresby; in many ways (as other chapters in this volume attest) it is a story that resonates across the rapidly growing cities of much of the developing world. In Papua New Guinea, one of the bigger driving questions around this rapid urban growth is how to create a distinctive, sustainable, Melanesian pattern of urbanism? While there are no simple answers to this question, rather it is a problem in formation, the situation of Port Moresby is both an exemplary illustration of the problems of this urbanism and also a possible indication of how patterns of sustainable, Melanesian urbanism rooted in local community life ways might be possible. For example, the much-discussed conflicts over land use, urban crime and violence, a sense of community and personal vulnerability, limited urban infrastructure and services are only half the story. The other half is of course the incredible resilience of these urban communities, their capacity to negotiate and manage their mostly cooperative coexistence, and to ensure certain local forms of reciprocity and justice are observed. These urban negotiations are in no way a simple, formulaic pattern that can be rolled out as the policy framework for ‘good Melanesian urbanism’, rather they are an indication of the way such a model might be negotiated over time.

Mosbi Port Moresby, the national capital of Papua New Guinea, is an increasingly important place for laying down patterns of urban possibility for a predominantly rural, subsistence-oriented population.3 Little-studied by local or international social scientists who mostly prefer to focus on remote village life, when the city features in foreign media (mostly Australian) it is for its violent crime, serving as a flashpoint illustrating and magnifying the pressures facing communities across the country. Population estimates for Port Moresby vary somewhat, with most placing it around 400,000 with the population growing by 7 per cent annually, the city is rapidly becoming a significant urban centre in the south-western Pacific,

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and it is the commercial and political hub of the newly-booming resource extraction industry in the country.4

Research context As part of an RMIT University research team involved in an earlier national project conducted in partnership with the PNG Department for Community Development, I was able to consult with the Minister of the Department, herself the local member and a family resident of the Motuan village of Pari located in the city.5 In addition to her national concerns, her advocacy for the issues her own, very local community faces, made it clear that the city itself was an important and distinctive part of our national research on community sustainability. Much like the ethnographer of Mosbi, Michael Goddard, she lamented the near-universal tendency of researchers to ignore urban issues in PNG in favour of more isolated village communities in the highlands and islands particularly. Goddard describes this as a widely-repeated view in PNG since the 1990s that Port Moresby is not the ‘real PNG’ which is to be found in the villages where 87 per cent of the population live, where, ‘people gardened, hunted and conducted age-old rituals, untainted by the poisoned sociality of the post-colonial city.’6 Minister Kidu went so far as to imagine that as a ‘real’ place with real communities Mosbi expresses a hope for the beginnings of a distinctive, Melanesian urbanism to emerge and flourish in a less pressured, village-connected urban environment. Implicitly the starting point for this involves prioritizing a properly-grounded relationship with the customary owners of the land on which the city is built and rapidly growing.

Mosbi History Established in 1897 as the centre of the Australian colonial administration in what was then Papua, the town initially occupied the infertile Paga Hill overlooking a natural harbour, reportedly with the agreement of the local Motuan villagers at Hanuabada (the ‘big village’). Apart from those local villagers, until the end of the Second World War the town’s small population was strictly limited to

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Europeans, a few Asian merchants, and their servants. It wasn’t until independence that really significant migration into Port Moresby from surrounding and more distant regions gained pace. Port Morseby is built on and between Motu-Koitabu and Koiari peoples’ lands. Supposed waste land in the interstices of villages was alienated by the Australian colonial authorities for the growth of the National Capital District. Forty per cent of the NCD land is still customary title of the traditional owners, while 60 per cent of the land is alienated and either state or freehold land. Tensions between customary owners who continue to live in increasingly defensive villages in the city, squatter settlements with their own complex histories, government departments and politicians for whom they work, including the National Capital District Commission (NCDC), and large business interests with headquarters in the city remain unresolved. These complex tensions and the very visible inequalities they give rise to, are a crucial part of the social context that sees Port Moresby consistently ranked as one of the world’s least liveable (for multinational executives) and most dangerous cities, with a murder rate per resident three times that of Moscow and 23 times the rate in London, fuelled partly by 60-90 per cent unemployment across the city.7 The city is visibly, spatially and socially divided. It comprises long-established local indigenous villages along the coast, an enclave for national and expatriate elites on the fortified hill above Ela Beach, government, business, retail and industrial areas, scattered suburbs with other enclaves, 20 formal settlements, and 79 informal settlements accommodating people from across the country, and increasingly generations of city-born residents from these migrant settlements. About 45 per cent of Mosbi’s population live in these settlements, which often lack basic services such as power, running water, sewerage, rubbish collection, streets, lighting or policing, and are linked by often unsafe and irregular transport connections. These settlements are characteristically linked to the high rates of crime in the city, but Michael Goddard challenges this as too simplistic, as settlements vary enormously in their social character and their range of residents.8 Settlements can have various levels of legal and customary recognition, from squatter status to semi-formal suburbs.

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Most of the 39 settlements built on customary land are there by arrangement with the customary owners while the 40 built on state land are technically illegal and relatively unregulated. Some are known as unsafe no-go zones for police or any government official or other outsider. Some are strongly wontok (regional language group) based, and others multi-ethnic melting pots drawn from a national population of nearly seven million people characterized by remarkable cultural, physical and linguistic diversity (over 800 language groups) and youth (40 per cent under the age of fifteen). Interviews with residents of the largest Motu village, Hanuabada (big village) in 2010 described a number of these urban pressures in specific detail. Hanuabada is right in the heart of Port Moresby, directly over the road from the Motu Koita Assembly and the Sir Hubert Murray Stadium that is home ground to the nine active Hanuabada rugby teams. Like other traditional Motu villages Hanuabada is built right on, and much of it over the water. Through some intermarriage with Koita(bu) people and land pressures, more and more villagers are building on the slopes above the sea. It is wedged next to a shopping centre on one side and a road on alienated land above it. With a rapidly growing and youthful population of 20,000 people, housing and land pressures are becoming intense. I was told that with most young people unemployed and jobs harder and harder to get without more education, it was normal for them to live with their parents unless they could afford the 20-30,000 kina to build a new house in the village. They said everyone agrees life in the village is getting harder. In the small harbour town shopping area right next to the village, development recently commenced on filling in the small harbour, shallow reef and its remaining mangroves to reclaim land for office building—slated to be the new corporate headquarters for Exxon Mobil, and in the same cove a gated community is being developed by the yacht club on already-alienated land. This poignantly captures the new class politics of Mosbi. I was told this prime land had been sold for just 4 million kina, and it was now valued at 200 million kina, and that the people of Hanuabada now realize the mistake of selling their land, ‘if you do, someone else will make money from it’. Two young Motu men explained that previously they could always

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find fish to feed their families and sometimes enough to sell, on the reef directly off their village, which could be easily accessed by paddle canoe. They said that since the harbour development these fish are all gone, and they now have to travel out to deep water and the islands—over an hour, using petrol outboard motors—in order to get fish. In the same interview they explained the pressures of the main road leading to the commercial area of Mosbi which runs down a steep hill to a roundabout right at the village. They said there are regular accidents and have been many deaths; a few days previously it had been a school-age child trying to cross the street to get to the market to run a family errand. In addition to these external and infrastructure pressures, these men described problems of social violence and the breakdown of traditional forms of authority. They said there was a lot of drinking and wild behaviour by younger people now, as young as 14, being disrespectful to their parents and other elders in the community. They said there is also much more teenage pregnancy now. They could name one significant improvement of recent years. Previously there had been only one toilet for each clan group, while now there was one for each house; however the sewerage still runs directly into the sea. At the Motu village of Vabukori, also close to the city on the other side of the headland, there have been recent outbreaks of cholera due to waterborne pathogens resulting from similarly inadequate sewerage solutions for densely packed communities. As the anecdote about the sale of land belonging to Hanuabada indicates, customary owners face increasing commercial pressures to sell their land for development. As the population and business activity grow, there is a pressing shortage of available land for new developments and housing. The governing body of the city, the National Capital District Commission (NCDC) has been trying to wrest the power to distribute or acquire land in the capital from the Department of Lands and Physical Planning. Much like the NCDC itself, this department has a reputation for ineffectiveness, nepotism and corruption, but despite these failings it doesn’t have that much usable land left, adding even more pressure to customary lands. The Australian colonial authorities bequeathed the independent state of PNG with laws enabling them to compulsorily acquire (with

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compensation) customary land. This drastic step has so far been avoided in Port Moresby. In part due to widespread governance failures government lacks any great legitimacy or strength, and in a country where 95 per cent of the land is held in customary title, any move at compulsory acquisition could be cause for national outrage. Disputes and resentments persist over those lands previously alienated, and the failure to recognize or compensate for previous land losses or current settlement impositions on customary land. A group of Motu Koita councillors told me that their people would no longer sell any lands, but might be willing to enter into longterm lease arrangements to have an ongoing stake in any future developments. Since the election of the NCD Governor, civil rights lawyer Powes Parkop in 2010, there has been a renewed sense of confidence in the government of the city and its future. Parkop is an unusual PNG politician in that he is seen as administratively competent and clean from corruption. As Governor, he is the elected chair of the NCDC board of 12 mostly appointed councillors responsible for management of the city and the provision of basic services. Parkop has led an effort to extend services to settlement communities in recognition that they are a part of the city, and has initiated and adopted various community improvement and safety schemes. One of these is the Yumi Lukautim Mosbi project, a kind of neighbourhood watch programme, but with the problem of widespread distrust of a notoriously corrupt and indiscriminately violent police force. The city is working in partnership with the Australian City of Townsville in ‘Project Hetura’ to build capacity in city planning and management, but with more potential than many ‘capacity building’ projects as it is based on a deep, long-term, people-to-people relationship with a PNG diaspora living in Townsville. The Motu Koita Assembly, housed at the somewhat dilapidated colonial-era Sir Hubert Murray sport stadium, is a significant extra layer of governance in the city of Port Moresby. Established in an attempt to address the interests of Motu-Koita villagers in Mosbi, it consists of elected councillors, with two places reserved for women: one for the western district and one for the east. While Motu-Koita villages extend beyond the boundaries of the National Capital

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District the Assembly is mandated to represent those within it. However as the only resourced, representative body for Motu-Koita, in practice its influence and responsibility extends beyond those formal boundaries to deal with some of the concerns of villagers who technically reside outside the NCD boundaries. Ten per cent of the NCDC budget is legislatively set aside for the Motu-Koita Assembly to provide services to its constituents in villages in the NCD. Informants from Hanuabada complained that only about 2 per cent of this budget actually gets transferred, which leads to enormous resentment among the villagers. Without being able to verify this information, the circulation of the story indicates a local sentiment that sees the Assembly as a lesser and somewhat neglected entity within the NCD. This in turn reflects the sense of Motu-Koita people in the broader context of urban governance and development. Despite this, the Assembly is still expected to provide basic services to these villages, including waste disposal using its own rubbish trucks, subcontracting commercial operators to clear septic tanks, and other municipal services including a significant cultural responsibility. In 2008 the newly-elected Assembly took over responsibility for the annual Hiri Moale festival from the NCDC.

Hiri Moale Following the Globalism Research Centre ethos of ‘engaged’ research and a shared decision to focus on Port Moresby, I returned to Port Moresby in 2008 to initiate work on a new but not entirely unrelated research project examining the role of indigenous festivals in community life in Australia and the Pacific, and identified a festival in Port Moresby for investigation.9 The Hiri Moale festival is a celebration of Motu-Koita identity. It revolves around commemorating and preserving the memory of the historic Motuan hiri trade of epic voyages and their related cultural practices, and has become a major event in the life of Motu-Koita people living in and around Port Moresby, as well as a significant event for many other residents of the city. Held annually in Port Moresby, it has been timed to coincide with the PNG Independence Day celebrations in mid-September every year (except 2008). This timing is strategic, as

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it justifies and attracts NCDC and other funding for the festival, but it also links the festival to complex dynamics as a local-indigenous event embedded within the multi-ethnic, capital-city celebrations of national independence. The festival is a great vehicle for understanding some of the issues facing Port Moresby as an urban society, and its Motu-Koita traditional landowners in particular. In a programme extending over six days, the Hiri Moale festival has a number of key elements and events. Two key elements lie at its centre: the construction and sailing of two lagatoi (large multi-hulled Motu vessels specific to the hiri trade) and the Hiri Hanenamo, or ‘Hiri maiden’ selection. Structured as a competition, the Hiri Hanenamo panel of judges assess young women already selected by their community to represent each of the 16 Motu-Koita villages on the performance of traditional dance, a test of Motu cultural knowledge and language, and in the spirit of beauty contests, the ability to present and converse with dignity in formal Western evening wear. These signature events of the festival, and the most popular, are held at specially built elevated huts and shade shelters at Ela Beach. The lagatoi sail into Ela Beach crowded with singing villagers from the villages selected to build them from scratch over eight weeks. The singers on the lagatoi are answered by the crowd massed on the beach to greet them. After speeches and exchange of gifts by the lagatoi captains and Assembly and NCDC officials, the Hiri Hanenamo emerge from the huts in grass skirts and tattooed torsoes, calling out and swaying in time, under the watchful eye of the judges, and a large crowd bolstered partly by men motivated by the relative novelty of seeing ‘kustom’ (hence topless) female dancers in increasingly modern mosbi. Young Motu-Koita men are also there in numbers to support and participate in the hotly contested outrigger sailing canoe races, which take place at the beach as part of the festival. The crowds of families and young people are also drawn to Ela Beach in the knowledge that the festival events there will be well-policed and safe, an important attraction in a city where public space rarely has that reputation. As a result an informal festival market springs up on the beach promenade on independence day, with small, informal traders selling the ubiquitous betel nuts, soft drinks, food including locally

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caught and smoked fish, and some handicrafts in the shade of the foreshore trees. These beach events are one of the rare spaces where all members of Mosbi society have the opportunity to safely mix and promenade in a large crowd in public leisure. The festival culminates in a big cultural event that includes a street parade and performances by neighbouring and related cultural groups resident in Mosbi at the Hubert Murray Stadium (headquarters of the Motu-Koita Assembly), by extension an acknowledgement by those groups of the special status of Motu-Koita in the city. The event closes with more performances by the Hiri Hanenamo, speeches and the awarding of the Hiri Hanenamo title and sash to the winner. The winner has the benefit of a paid office position with the Assembly for a year, in addition to the personal, family and village prestige brought by her victory.

Hiri, Gas and Violence While all this annual activity reinforces the presence and a certain cultural authority of Motu-Koita in Mosbi, it is not universally supported. In 2006, a clan leader from Boera village (just outside the NCD area) applied for a court injunction to prevent the Hiri Moale festival from proceeding. Boera village has a special status as the origin site of the hiri legend, knowledge and tradition, being shared with other Motu villages from there. This legal action was motivated by a sense that the special status of the customary authorities in Boera were not being properly acknowledged by the NCDC who ran the festival at that time. While being unsuccessful, the court action reasserted Boera’s place in the hiri tradition. On a visit to Boera in 2008, it also became apparent that the imminent royalty payments expected from the huge gas processing plant soon to be built nearby was encouraging Muri and others in Boera to contemplate having the resources to stage a ‘tru’ hiri event on their own initiative at the site of its origin. Full of optimism, Muri and a fellow member of the association formed to manage royalty payments stood arm in arm describing the bright future of jobs and wealth for their community. The leaders of Boera were not alone in their optimism. The ExxonMobil-led consortium bringing gas from the Southern Highlands to

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a processing plant in Port Moresby and on to energy-hungry markets in Asia is the big, US$16.5 billion development story transforming PNG today. There are huge expectations that this 30-year project and its projected royalties, taxes and dividend stream of US$5.6 billion to the country over those years will lift PNG from its low ranking of 148 (out of 182 nations) in the UN Human Development Index; and bringing quality schools, healthcare and infrastructure to people across the country. Boera is poised to become a village on the edge of a major industrial site and related peri-urban development. The first indications of the consequences however were not good. At the national political level Sir Michael Somare, the longdominant figure of PNG politics, put his son Arthur in charge of the ministry responsible for managing resource deals, and subsequently there has been more than normal parliamentary political instability with Somare being ousted and reinstated in non-electoral semiconstitutional manoeuvres in parliament and court. In addition, landowner groups along the length of the pipeline are demanding transparency from the agency which reportedly distributes their royalties at whim, and provides no accounts or explanations of hefty ‘management fees’. At the local level, royalty disputes have already led to acrimonious community divisions with at least 15 reported shooting deaths and construction sabotage and stoppages at either end of the pipeline. Meanwhile the consortium issues glossy ‘social and environmental impact statements’ about the distribution of 14,000 anti-malarial mosquito nets to pipeline communities and washes its hands of the royalty distribution issue. By the time of my next visit to Boera in 2010, work had begun on the site of the processing plant. A steel mesh fence topped with razor wire stretched for kilometres around the vast site, and accommodation and building were being prepared for the infrastructure and labourers to follow. Villagers had been unsettled by the excavation of a ‘devil stone’ on the site, a pre-missionary secret-sacred object kept concealed in the earth, and possibly forgotten some time after the arrival of Christianity in 1886. The initial optimism in Boera had turned to rancour, and there was certainly no talk of staging an independent hiri event. Earlier that year disputes over royalty distributions and land boundaries had led to divisions within Boera,

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and with the neighbouring, inter-related and much larger village of Porebada. The consequences were a confrontation with the Porebada men who came angrily to protest at the house of the sister of a prominent Boera leader, also a former Deputy Prime Minister and chair of the royalties association. The house was burned down and in the confrontation four men from Porebada were shot and killed by men from Boera. The divisions in the landowner association over how royalties were being distributed among clans brought up old issues about the legitimacy of clans and clan leaders that had been complicated by the clan system being overlaid by a re-structured system of clan-based deacons in the village chapter of the Uniting Church. The consequences were continuing to reverberate in Boera itself, including death threats, house attacks and my main informant spending six months in exile from the village, staying in mosbi for safety. The impact of this and other resource projects is also having impacts on land use in the city itself. While the royalties stream to governments has the potential to increase their ability to deliver infrastructure and services to the population, the literature on the ‘resource curse’ indicates, such royalty inflows into government coffers can also free a relatively disconnected state apparatus and its elites from any sense of accountability to the people it is meant to serve. The wealth produced in this resources bonanza will attract more migrants to Mosbi and put unprecedented pressure on land use. The example cited earlier in this chapter of the multi-storey ExxonMobil headquarters being built right next to the urban village of Hanuabada is just one, very powerful illustration of this pressure. The challenge for government, planners, customary owners and residents of Mosbi is maintaining some kind of negotiated civil and social control over this development, to fulfill the aspirations cited at the start of this chapter for a positive, distinctly Melanesian urbanism. Hopes for this distinctively Melanesian urban cosmopolitanism are borne out by the nascent presence of such communities in Mosbi and elsewhere. These communities are both the relatively elite urban office workers who identify with the freedom, mobility and transnational cultural consumption of young urbanites across the

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region and the globe, and the urban village communities of ‘everyday cosmopolitanism’ described in this chapter, negotiating co-existence between traditional landowners and settlers on flexible local terms. The sustainability of these local resolutions is frequently undermined by their non-recognition by government agencies who (like governments everywhere) have a tendency to centrally-directed interventions that weaken and undermine local initiatives. This in turn fuels cycles of disempowerment, social dislocation and alienation and responses that include the violent criminality that both the PNG government and foreign aid agencies claim to be so concerned about. In the PNG context of an emergent but relatively weak civil society, unstable government, big money and big interests setting the development agenda, this sustainable Melanesian urbanism will be very difficult to achieve. If that proves to be the case, the prospects for Port Moresby will be greater inequality, marginalized and alienated Motu-Koita villagers and settlers, and increased violence between them and between migrant settler communities in the city.

Notes 1. ‘Pacific Beat’ Radio Australia, ‘Compensation dispute cuts power and water to Port Moresby’- interview with PNG correspondent Liam Fox, broadcast 27/4/11. 2. UN-HABITAT: Regional and Technical Cooperation Division, Papua New Guinea: Port Moresby Urban Profile, UN-HABITAT, 2010, p. 17. 3. 87 per cent of the population is rural, and of the 13 per cent living in cities, most of these people maintain strong ties to their family villages, sometimes even when themselves born in the city. 4. UN-HABITAT: Regional and Technical Cooperation Division, Papua New Guinea: Port Moresby Urban Profile, 2010. 5. Dame Carol Kidu (now retired) was for a time the only female member of the national parliament, and is in the distinctive position of being a Queensland-born Anglo-Australian who has spent her adult life enmeshed in the Motu community as result of her marriage to Sir Buri Kidu the first indigenous PNG Chief Justice, with whom she raised six children in his natal community of Pari, and who she posthumously followed into public life. 6. Michael Goddard, ‘About Moresby’, in Michael Goddard, ed., Villagers

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and the City: Melanesian Experiences of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, Wantage: Sean Kingston Publishers, 2010, p. 5. 7. Ranked 3rd least liveable capital city in the world (Economist Intelligence Unit’s ranking of 140 of the world’s capital cities 2011). 8. Goddard, ‘About Moresby’, p. 5. 9. Globalizing Indigeneity: Indigenous cultural festivals and wellbeing in Australia and the Asia-Pacific, ARC linkage grant with Telstra Foundation (2007-11) Phipps, James, Steger.

References Asian Development Bank (2010), Priorities of the Poor in Papua New Guinea, www.adb.org. Australian Government: AUSAID (2010), About Papua New Guinea, www. ausaid.gov.au. Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) (2010), Papua New Guinea Country Brief, www.dfat.gov.au. ——— (2010), Strongim Gavman Program (SGP), www.dfat.gov.au. Barber, Keith (2010), ‘Urban Households, Means of Livelihood, and Village Identity in Moresby’, in Michael Goddard (ed.), Villagers and the City: Melanesian Experiences of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, Wantage: Sean Kinston Press. Bauman, Zygmunt (2001), Community: Seeking Safety in an Insecure World, Cambridge: Polity Press. Chand, Satish and Charles Yala, ‘Informal Land Systems within Urban Settlements in Honiara and Port Moresby’, Making Land Work (Volume Two): Case Studies on Customary Land and Development in the Pacific, pp. 88. http://www.ausaid.gov.au/. Connell, John (2003), ‘Regulation of Space in the Contemporary Postcolonial Pacific City: Port Moresby and Suva’, Asia Pacific Viewpoint, vol. 44, no. 3. Crowdy, Denis (2010), ‘Live Music and Living as a Musician in Moresby,’ in Michael Goddard (ed.),Villagers and the City: Melanesian Experiences of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, Wantage: Sean Kinston Publishers. Economist Intelligence Unit’s ‘Livability Ranking’ of 140 of the world’s cities, 21 February 2011. www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2011/02/ liveability_ranking. Gewertz, Deborah and Frederick Errington (1999), Emerging Class in Papua New Guinea: The Telling of Difference, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Goddard, Michael (2010), ‘About Moresby’, in Michael Goddard (ed.), Villagers and the City: Melanesian Experiences of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, Wantage: Sean Kingston Publishers. ——— (2001), ‘From Rolling Thunder to Reggae: Imagining Squatter Settlements in Papua New Guinea’, The Contemporary Pacific, vol. 13, no. 1, Spring. ——— (2010), ‘Heat and History: Moresby and the Motu-Koita’, in Michael Goddard (ed.), Villagers and the City: Melanesian Experiences of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, Wantage: Sean Kingston Publishers. Paul, James, Yaso Nadarajah, Karen Haive and Victoria Stead with Elizabeth Kath (2012), Sustainable Communities, Sustainable Development: Other Paths for Papua New Guinea, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Kath, Elizabeth and Paul James (2011), ‘Port Moresby Social Profile’, in Global Cities Institute Annual Report 2010. RMIT. Phipps, Peter (2010), ‘Performances of Power: Indigenous Cultural Festivals as Globally Engaged Cultural Strategy’, Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, vol. 35, no. 3. Pitts, Maxine (2001), ‘Crime and Corruption: Does Papua New Guinea have the Capacity to Control it?’ Pacific Economic Bulletin, vol. 16, no. 2, November, Asia Pacific Press. PNG Government, Department of Petroleum and Energy (2010), The PNG Gas Project: Project Brief, www.petroleum.gov.pg. PNG Justice Advisory Group (2007), Yumi Lukautim Mosbi Impact Evaluation 2006, 22 January. http://www.lawandjustice.gov.pg/ resources/documents/YLM_IMPACT_EVALUATION_REPORT_ FINAL_2201071.pdf. Umezaki, Masahiro (2010), ‘Adaptive Strategies of Huli Migrant Settlers’, in Michael Goddard (ed.), Villagers and the City: Melanesian Experiences of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, Wantage: Sean Kingston Publishers. UN-HABITAT: Regional and Technical Cooperation Division (2010), Papua New Guinea: Port Moresby Urban Profile. United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN-ESCAP) and UN-HABITAT (2010), ‘Port Moresby Urban Sector Profile’, Urban Safety in Asia and the Pacific, www.asiapacificsafecity.org.

Chapter 8

Nation, Nationalism and the Multicultural Community Reflections on Race in Singapore Catherine Gomes

As a community, Singaporeans are incredibly proud of their nation’s status as successful multicultural and racially tolerant nation. In July 2013, however, a government body known as OnePeople.sg which is tasked with promoting community relations through communal organizations and the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) in Singapore released a report revealing that 1 in 2 Singaporeans had no close friends outside their race. Surveying 4131 Singaporeans, the report speculated this is because some sectors of the Singaporean community, such as the Chinese majority, lacked the opportunity to mix with and therefore develop close friendships with fellow citizens from other races.1 While I do not challenge the results or analysis of the report, it does bring to the surface questions on the status and significance of race in Singapore particularly since the government has spared no effort in creating what appears to be a unified multicultural Singaporean community. This essay thus asks the following interrelated questions: What role does race play in everyday community relations in Singapore? and How does race create both unity and division in community? To answer these questions I

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look at the pivotal role played by the Singapore government in its interconnected constructions of race, community, nationalism and belonging. Here I discuss how race has been purposefully constructed to create the desired effect of nationalism which takes the form of an almost immovable and unquestioning sense of belonging to the nation despite Singapore’s obvious cultural, linguistic, racial, ethnic and religious diversity.2 However I also discuss how these constructions of race—which are associated in various ways to the Chinese majority—have generated unease, anxiety and suspicion particularly with regard to cultural identity within the Singaporean multicultural community.

Reflecting on Race in the Homeland I am Singaporean born and bred, having spent all my childhood and some part of my early adult years living in the country of my birth. However, I have always felt a sense of dissonance in Singapore, particularly with regard to race.3 While Singapore prides itself as a multicultural nation with public policies in place that maintain racial harmony, there are strong yet subdued tensions simmering below the surface of Singaporean society.4 Paranoia and anxiety over race are part of the Singaporean cultural landscape. However, Singapore maintains a happy facade of peace and harmony amongst a culturally and racially disparate population by successfully instilling a strong sense of loyalty and allegiance to the nation. Nationalism in other words, is very much part of everyday life in the nation state. As a young adult, I found myself unable to fully understand Singaporean society’s cultural attitudes towards race, particularly since Singapore brands itself as multicultural. I could not see how multiculturalism defined Singaporean cultural identity yet Singaporeans’ everyday life and interpersonal relationships were determined by race. Here I could not comprehend why a country which upheld living harmoniously together also caused many Singaporeans to not have friends or acquaintances outside of their communal group.5 In other words, I saw that while multiculturalism both provided a sense of belonging and community for the disparate Singaporean population it also segregated them. As I suggest later in this essay, this could be

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because Singapore’s official multicultural policy is one that rejoices in people of different races living side by side with each other but also promotes confining them to their own communal groups and activities. My sensitivity to issues surrounding race in particular perhaps stems from my belonging to neither one of the major racial categories (Malay, Chinese and Indian) but to an essentially hybrid minority or biracial group born out of the European colonialism of Southeast Asia known as Eurasian. My concerns over race, in other words, became personal issues of belonging and identity to the homeland. Needless to say, my experiences and observations of race in Singapore have also helped foster my current research interests into race, ethnicity and migrancy. While as a researcher I am mindful about objectivity in academic writing, I also recognize the significance biography and identity play in guiding the ways in which I approach studies on community. Acknowledging personal experience and the self, and the influences they have on a researcher’s thinking, are perhaps critical and necessary as writings from cultural thinkers such as Ghasan Hage and Ien Ang on the interconnected issues of racism and place in multicultural Australia have shown.6 For me, my own biography and my different identities function as complementary and useful tools when thinking through issues of race, place, nationhood, community and globalization. Acknowledging my background and using my experiences in my work on Singapore have always helped me in gaining insight into community and cultural nuances I have encountered in various measures of familiarity. They also create much dissonance that researching and writing on Singapore becomes incredibly challenging as it is rewarding. This is especially so when writing about race. Here I seek to uncover why the Singaporean community is able to pride itself in its nation’s multicultural façade while at the same time take for granted the role race plays in determining their everyday life and interpersonal interactions. This essay thus draws on my dissonance regarding race and community in my homeland of Singapore. However, while I confront and question the uncomfortable place that I observe race occupies in Singaporean culture, I also admit that it is a highly complex, sensitive and political part of Singaporean society. By reflecting on

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race in the homeland, I present a picture of how it is a defining aspect of Singapore and its people even though the city-state is ruled by multicultural policies promoting racial harmony and strict laws prohibiting racial vilification. Here I observe that race paradoxically unites and segregates the Singaporean community in varying degrees and circumstances while acknowledging the pivotal role played by government in its management in Singapore. On one level race strengthens the Singaporean community by providing Singaporeans with a deep sense of nationalism and pride in the ways in which Singapore has managed to put aside ugly racial violent events of the past to create a harmonious society where different races live side by side with each other. However race also segregates because multiculturalism in Singapore highlights racial difference rather than promoting communal assimilation and integration. Moreover the flexibility of race to unify and to segregate the Singaporean community has taken interesting turns with the entry of new professional worker migrants into the country as part of the expansion and globalization of the Singaporean workforce.

Multiculturalism in Singapore: Building a Sense of Community and Place through Government Intervention Singapore has a complex multicultural identity that both unifies as well as divides ethnic communities. Multiculturalism takes pride of place in Singapore society. The country and its people are immensely proud of its achievements in establishing a seemingly peaceful and harmonious multiracial and multiethnic society. Singaporeans do revel in the products of multiculturalism which they strongly connect to and identify with such as an array of fabulous culinary delights and a unique hybridized local language known as ‘Singlish’ which boasts a combination of the different primary ethnic languages (Hokkien, Teowchew, Malay and Tamil) intermingled with English. At the same time, Singapore’s version of multiculturalism where people are classified into the Chinese-Malay-Indian-Other (CMIO) categories, as Chua Beng Huat argues, highlights difference rather


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than integration and is a way in which the state controls its disparate population.7 Singapore’s multicultural makeup stems from its history as a settler community. The island-state’s colonial history as a settler society consists of migrant pioneerss from different cultural backgrounds. British colonists in the early 1990s recognized Singapore’s advantageous geographical position at the tip of the Malaysian hinterland and between the East-West trading routes.8 The British involved traders and indentured labourers from the region and elsewhere to develop Singapore into an entrepôt trading hub that was highly cosmopolitan for its time. Traders from various regions of Asia and the Middle East visited Singapore and saw its potential for robust trade. The country attracted the attention of Western commerce eager for goods from the ‘Orient’ such as spices and silk. Indian and Chinese migrant labourers meanwhile had no trouble finding work in the thriving city in areas such as infrastructure development and as hired hands facilitating the movement of goods traded at the mouth of the Singapore River.9 Most often, the traders and labourers were temporary migrants whose stay in Singapore was transitional. However, there were many factors that caused them to leave their own home countries and make a new home in Singapore. They fled armed conflict, poverty and natural disasters to another place offering an abundance of work, and a safer environment for entrepreneurship. This encouraged many transitional migrants to become permanent settlers. While on one level Singapore is a multiracial nation that supports broad Chinese, Malay and Indian communities, on another level it is a country which expresses paranoia when it comes to race. The trepidation Singapore has with race is interconnected and expressed in three areas: (a) in government policies and practices, (b) the place race occupies in official remembering and (c) the entrenchment of race in daily Singapore discourse. As someone who is not a member of one of the major racial groups in Singapore, the discourses surrounding race become even more resounding. On the surface, the different races in Singapore live and work harmoniously with each other. This would be a consequence of Singapore’s multicultural policy and strict laws prohibiting racial

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vilification and unrest. In Singapore, racial harmony would be seen as the eradication of racially motivated outbreaks of violence and open displays of racial tension. The idea of racial harmony not only creates a peaceful space for citizens but national stability for the purpose of foreign investment. A nationally coherent workforce, after all, will be committed to building a wealthy and cosmopolitan Singapore, according to the government. There have not been any open communal conflicts or violent ethnic clashes in independent Singapore. The last racially charged incident took place on 21 July 1964, a year before Singapore’s independence, when racial tensions between Chinese and Malays exploded on what is known today as the Prophet Muhammad Birthday Riots. Since independence the Singapore government has spared no expense at making sure that there is racial harmony amongst its people. Racial harmony has endured in the independent nation in part because of the strict laws preventing racial incitement. Singapore Penal Code (Cap 224, 2008 Rev. Ed.), s. 298A states: Whoever— (a) by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise, knowingly promotes or attempts to promote, on grounds of religion or race, disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will between different religious or racial groups; or (b) commits any act which he knows is prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony between different religious or racial groups and which disturbs or is likely to disturb the public tranquility, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 3 years, or with fine, or with both.

While these laws prevent open communal conflict from taking place, Singapore also puts in place soft approaches committed to promoting and fostering racial harmony. Singapore does this through: a national pledge stating unity despite communal differences, quoted at the beginning of this chapter; the promotion of racial harmony as part of the country’s tourism campaigns; the establishment of official think tanks such as the Inter-Racial and Religious Confidence Circle (IRCC); and the establishment of racial harmony through the formal education system, in particular in social studies texts. In 2008, Singapore launched Racial Harmony Day, which is commemorated


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in schools on the anniversary of the 1964 Prophet Muhammad Birthday Riots, with children wearing traditional ethnic dress such as the Chinese cheongsam, the Malay baju kurong and the Indian sari to school. As Norman Vasu observes, this is because of the government’s management of multiculturalism in Singapore.10 Vasu explains: The management of Singapore’s multicultural composition displays a deeply entrenched belief in the importance of communal identity and the need for the state to both protect and preserve inter-group differences. Besides administrative enforcement of the racial categories, the state has also essentialized interracial cultural identities by tagging each race with ‘unique’ cultural traits. Races can be considered essentialized through Singaporean multiculturalism: each race is invested with cultural traits such as language and dress derived from the cultural hotchpotch of their group’s history and held to be unique to them and distinct from others. Moreover, these cultural traits are held to be permanent and passed down through the generations.11

Although Singapore supports a multicultural and multi-ethnic population, the government purposefully chooses elements of Chinese cultural values as the template for a common Singaporean national identity (Gomes, 2010: 299-301). This engineered national identity is arguably strategic, since Singapore’s biggest demographic are the ethnic Han Chinese whose ancestors migrated from southern China during British rule. The ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), fronted by Lee Kuan Yew, openly encourages and supports the strength of Confucian Chinese values as a model for Singapore and its people, since selected elements support unquestioning obedience to government, hard work and self-sacrifice—the very features Singapore has desired in its people to take it from developing to developed nation status. The template, at least on the surface, has the intended effect of maintaining a shared Singaporean identity amongst a population of people from different ethnic groups, however, this only appears to work because the Chinese dominate in terms of population and cultural influence. Below the surface, however, the ethnic Chinese also grapple with the changes their culture and identity have endured for the sake of the nation-state, which I note later in this essay has unintentionally resulted in

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Singaporean Chinese harbouring suspicions and intolerance towards their ethnic cousins from mainland China who enter the country as new migrants.12 While the government constantly reminds its people that Singapore supports a happy and tolerant multicultural society, the state also discourages cross-fertilization of ethnicities and cultures by advocating cultural pride through non-political displays of cultural signifiers, such as festivals and food as well as through communal self-support. Communal self-support takes the form of what is known in Singapore as community ‘self-help groups’. There are five self-help groups that exist in Singapore: Council for the Development of Singapore (CDC); Yayasan MENDAKI for the Muslim Malay community; Chinese Development Assistance Council (CDAC) for the Chinese community; Singapore Indian Development Association (SINDA) for the Indian community; and the Eurasian Association (EA) for the Eurasian community. Selfhelp groups have the responsibility of servicing their own ethnic community and for addressing any communal problems that may arise in the community. Self-help groups also provide social and education schemes, such as cooking classes and scholarships, for students in the Singapore education system from primary to university level. These groups also, within reason and along government-sanctioned lines, take on an advocacy role in terms of voicing the concerns of their respective communities. Advocacy here does not involve any issues that would incite racial tensions, such as criticism of other ethnicities or complaints regarding racial inequality. In other words, while providing the different racial communities with a voice to navigate their own communal destiny, these self-help groups also encourage and maintain a strong sense of nationalism that is supportive of the government. By throwing community responsibility to the major racial groups, the government does not overtax its coffers since these self-help groups tap on their respective racial communities for financial support. While membership to these self-help groups is not compulsory, for instance, civil servants’ pay are automatically docked and channelled to either one of these groups, depending on race. Singaporeans who wish to opt out of


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this scheme may do so but encounter bureaucracy. For example, Eurasians who want to opt out of this scheme must make their way to the Eurasian Association headquarters known as EA House in order to pick up a form for lodgement through their workplace human resource department. Contributions to these self-help groups vary as well. Since there are very few Eurasians in Singapore, their individual contributions to the association would be greater than that contributed by the demographically dominant Chinese.

The Chinese Race in Singapore Some public commentators such as the former Prime Minister of Australia Gough Whitlam have labelled Singapore a ‘Chinese rogue port city’.13 Looking at everyday life in Singapore, such comments may not be far from the truth. For instance, certain education practices in Singapore which are tied in with Chinese culture and language, blatantly favour the ethnic Chinese over and above the other races. Here, while Chinese cultures and identities are themselves diverse, the government nominates Confucian Chinese culture and identity as the umbrella cultural identity for all Singaporean-Chinese. So even though English is the language of choice in the civil service and the schooling system, Mandarin is held up as a significant and arguably superior language. Some of the most highly regarded elite secondary schools in Singapore, for instance, are part of an education scheme known as the Special Assistance Plan (SAP). Students who enter SAP schools have excellent results particularly in Mandarin. However, SAP schools are gated education institutions as only students who excel in Mandarin can enter. Almost always, these students are ethnic Chinese. This is because second language or mother tongue is a compulsory subject in the local school system and pupils are forced to stick with their chosen second language from primary school right up to high school. Moreover, pupils are ‘assigned’ with a second language based on their ethnic grouping. In other words, if a student is ethnic Chinese, then they are only allowed to take up Mandarin as their second language. Non-ethnic Chinese pupils such as Indians and Malays are encouraged to take up

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their mother tongue as their second language although they have the option of opting for Mandarin instead. Eurasian pupils however have a choice of languages, often preferring either Malay or Mandarin since their mother tongue is English. In Singapore, students who attend elite schools often are privileged when it comes to dispensing the highly prized and government-awarded Public Service Commission (PSC) university scholarships which would eventually lead to fasttrack government service jobs upon graduation.14 Singapore has also run a highly successful, if not controversial, government campaign known as the Speak Mandarin Campaign. This campaign which has seen various incarnations since the late 1970s stresses the use of language over and above the different Chinese dialects in particular. Entertainment and information outlets bore the brunt of this campaign as Mandarin was the only Chinese language allowed on television, radio and cinema. This campaign spawned an increase in illegal and pirated television serials and films from Hong Kong whose vernacular at the time was Cantonese. This campaign was also linked to a whitewashing of ethnic Chinese dialect, names in schools. In other words, students whose names were in dialect such as the surname ‘Tan’ immediately became the Mandarin incarnation ‘Chen’. It was not surprising that this aspect of the campaign survived for only a few years as many SingaporeanChinese were concerned that their identity and culture were being eroded. However, while the ethnic Chinese dominate Singapore society demographically, economically and culturally, Singaporean-Chinese have certain reservations with regard to Mainland Chinese people who have been entering Singapore to work, live and study. Even though most Singaporeans are ethnic Chinese, they seem to be anecdotally suspicious of Chinese people. Singaporeans, regardless of racial or ethnic background, express views both privately and publicly (such as online blogs and in forum pages in news dailies) to the effect that Chinese are pariahs who cause social and economic chaos in Singapore society. Since the 2000s, for example, Chinese women have been perceived as gold-diggers with the intent of preying on the vulnerable and lonely Singapore men who turn to China to find potential brides.15 Singaporeans also anecdotally accuse Chinese


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people of taking jobs away from Singaporeans even though Chinese people are primarily employed as labourers (e.g. construction) and in the service industry (bar hostesses). The dislike for Chinese people is part of a general fear and suspicion Singaporeans generally have of both skilled and unskilled migrant workers.16 Singapore government leaders, however, have attempted to quell the tensions between Singaporeans and foreign workers, particularly those who are granted permanent residence in Singapore, an issue I will address later in this chapter.17 While Singaporean-Chinese are unable to identify with China for similar reasons, they are encouraged to maintain an ethnic Chinese cultural identity that is formed and cultivated from a Singapore template. In other words, Singaporean-Chinese were encouraged by the government to take pride in their racial and ancestral cultural roots while demonizing the communist element in Chinese culture. Till today, Singapore uses the threat of communism as a tool for nationalism as seen in recent educational productions by the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, such as the documentary Riding the Tiger: The Chronicle of a Nation’s Battle Against Communism.18 While communism threatened the political stability of Singapore from 1948-60, the Singapore government still insists that communism is a destructive force that will destroy the fabric of Singapore society. Despite a majority ethnic Chinese presence, the government puts in place strict laws and policies aimed at promoting and maintaining peaceful and harmonious living in a society with different races. It is ever careful of not openly or formally favouring one racial or ethnic group over others. At the same time, however, it subliminally references Confucian Chinese values—the official version of Chinese culture the government adopts—in a set of national ideological statements known as the ‘Singapore Shared Values’ which are reproduced below: 1. Nation before community and society above self: Putting the interests of society ahead of the individual. 2. Family as the basic unit of society:

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The family is identified as the most stable fundamental building block of the nation. 3. Community support and respect for the individual: Recognizes that the individual has rights, which should be respected and not lightly encroached upon. Encourages the community to support and have compassion for the disadvantaged individual who may have been left behind by the free market system. 4. Consensus, not conflict: Resolving issues through consensus and not conflict stresses the importance of compromise and national unity. 5. Racial and religious harmony: Recognizes the need for different communities to live harmoniously with one another in order for all to prosper.19

The first three statements of this utopian ideal are rooted strongly in the Confucian Chinese ethical and philosophical system adopted by the government. Nation, community and family are stressed as important and significant. The first three values, like those in the Confucian Chinese tradition, encourage a strong work ethic and self-sacrifice. The final two ideals allude to local ethnic Chinese participation in communist activities and the race riots that occurred in the country during the period of political unrest in the 1950s and 1960s.

Everyday Nationalism In Singapore, the family is a basic tenet of the society’s nationalist culture and agenda and microcosm for the nation. The Singapore government has successfully managed to infuse the Chinese Confucian value of filial piety into the culture of Singapore through the Asian Values label. Loyalty to family in terms of structure and hierarchy becomes anecdotally interpreted as allegiance to the government and state and vice-versa. Throughout my childhood in Singapore I was constantly reminded of the significance of nation in my everyday life. Made-in-Singapore television shows other than government-sponsored documentaries such as fictional dramas and sitcoms often worked national values such as loyalty to the nation, hard work and sacrifice, community involvement and racial and


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religious tolerance into the narrative. Most often, these television shows instilled such values through the prominent image of the family. Two shows come to mind in this regard: the drama Growing Up and the sitcom Under One Roof.20 Both these English-language shows were incredibly popular in Singapore in the 1990s. Growing Up featured the Tay family over three decades (1950-1970) with Singapore’s development and specific historical events acting as the backdrop of the narrative. Under One Roof featured the exploits of the Tan family and their multiracial neighbours in contemporary Singapore. Singapore culture can thus be arguably interpreted as strongly rooted in nationalism. In a country which boasts a multicultural and multiethnic society, the common ground amongst citizens seems to be their allegiance to the state. Singaporean nationalism however is not incidental but the result of a conscious effort by the Singapore government at what it considers nation-building. Here, the Singapore government, as I have discussed earlier in this essay, has successfully instilled a strong sense of nationalism in its people as loyalty to the Singapore government and to the nation-state are important cultural tenets.21 Singapore thus undertakes elaborate measures to ensure that nationalism and nationhood are intrinsic values woven into cultural and community discourse. These values are instilled and maintained by the government through various avenues such as education (public and curriculum), national policy (conscription), the media (news and entertainment) and commemoration (events, festivals, monuments and exhibitions). Nationalism, in other words, is part of everyday life. While the active performance and consumption of propaganda material as part of the education curriculum in most countries is not surprising, Singaporeans willingly and actively display nationalism as part of everyday culture. In 2007 for instance, I went to Singapore to teach an intensive course at a local tertiary institution that was affiliated with my university. One of the lecture topics I presented examined advertisements of Singapore Airline’s famous ‘Singapore Girl’ brand. Drawing on Said’s theory of Orientalism, my lecture argued that the Singapore Girl advertisements were self-Orientalizing. I suggested to students that the women featured in those advertisements were

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disturbing in contemporary times of gender equality as they were sexually objectified and voiceless. Moreover, these advertisements never featured dark-skinned stewardesses. To back up my argument, I introduced students to ideas of power within a gender, class and race structure with the hope that they too would also see the troublingly submissive image of the Singapore Girl as I saw it. I explained that part of the problem I saw with the image of the Singapore Girl in advertisements meant for the international market was the equation global audiences would make about Singapore as a nation. The Singapore Girl, after all, is both a symbol and a representation of the nation state and its people. Their reaction to the lecture was something which I was quite unprepared for. At tutorials, students took offence and angrily responded to my analysis of the Singapore Girl. Many expressed the opinion that the Singapore Girl takes pride of place in the hearts of Singaporeans and that her service-oriented image is something they felt proud of. Explaining to students that I was not critiquing women who worked as air stewardesses in Singapore Airlines but rather the way the airline markets itself through advertising fell on deaf ears. They did not see anything wrong with the use of fair-skinned (panChinese) models for the advertisements. Students overwhelmingly felt that race was a non-issue when advertising the excellent service of the national carrier. From their perspective, I had not only trampled all over a much loved sacred cow of a national icon but I was also displaying some very unwelcome, anti-nationalist and anti-cultural traits which students felt they needed to address. On reflection, the hostile reaction I received to my Singapore Girl lecture is really not surprising on a variety of levels. First, perhaps my students’ reaction adds a complex dimension to the twin discussions of the forms and functions of Orientalism and nationalism as practised by wealthy, successful and more importantly, independent states such as Singapore. While the women in the Singapore Girl advertisements are no doubt voiceless, the metanarrative that can be read from both student responses as well as Singapore’s self-Orientalism is a kind of nation-based empowerment where Orientalist images are reclaimed by a former colonized Oriental.


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Second, their reaction is indicative of the deep extent to which Singapore has instilled nationalism in its people where self-censorship is performed whenever sacred cows are called into question. The Singapore government has often used the term OB (Out of Bounds) markers to justify areas of discussion Singaporeans are not allowed to go to or critique in public. Often, these OB markers have to do with questions relating to governance. However, these OB markers seem to have penetrated into the cultural core of Singapore society where censorship and national pride are in full force whenever Singapore brands are called into question. It is no wonder that my students felt unsettled when I raised the issue of the lack of multicultural Singapore Girl faces in the advertisements since in their eyes I was not only crossing OB markers but inciting racial vilification by questioning accepted and celebrated (lack of ) portrayals of race. Years of education campaigns on racial harmony seems to have worked in unifying racially diverse Singaporeans through certain cultural yet non-political focal points. However the incidental issue that has had the greatest success in uniting Singaporeans across the official CMIO racial divide and dominates popular discourse is the presence of new migrants who enter Singapore as professional workers. Singaporeans have expressed a deep sense of loathing for the new migrants and this incredible dislike for them has unified Singaporeans like no other issue has done. The presence of these new migrants and the Singaporean dislike for them thus presents a paradox in the city-state since the majority of them come from regional countries Singaporeans trace their lineage to.

A Paradox: Uniting Against their Ethnic Cousins Since the 2000s Singaporeans have been incredibly critical of ‘new’ migrants—the overwhelming majority of whom come as workers— entering their country and have been expressing their anger through xenophobic comments online. Despite strict laws against racial vilification, these comments can be seen in some of the more popular online forums such as those in Asiaone.com (http://www.asiaone. com/A1Home/A1Home.html), The Online Citizen: A Community of Singaporeans (http://theonlinecitizen.com/), Sam’s Alfresco Haven:

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Celebrating Singapore’s Golden Period! (www.sammyboy.com) and The TR Emeritus (http://www.tremeritus.com/) formerly known as The Temasek Review, in personal weblog entries and on social media platforms. Known as ‘foreign talent’, these migrants are professional arrivals from Mainland China, South Asia, the Philippines and beyond who have been entering Singapore by the multitudes since the mid-1990s. Unlike the transitional foreign domestic workers and unskilled labourers who have been flocking to Singapore since the 1980s, foreign talent migrants are educated professionals who often take up permanent residence in their adopted country. The Singapore government sees foreign talent migrants as an investment into Singapore’s economic future and argues that it has to open the country’s doors to new migrants for 2 fundamental reasons: (a) Singaporeans are not reproducing enough in order to replenish the workforce and (b) new migrants will help take care of the ageing Singapore population. With these reasons in mind, the Singapore parliament endorsed Population White Paper: A Sustainable Population for a Dynamic Singapore which would see the nation’s population increase to 6.9 million by 2030 through migration in February 2013. Singapore has also been attracting large numbers of international students into the country as part of its plan to become a global education hub. In 2010 there were over 91,500 foreign students in Singapore with plans to increase numbers to 150,000 by 2015.22 The government has been making it attractive for these students to study in Singapore by providing them with government scholarships to study in public funded institutions as well as making permanent residence easy for them. Some foreign talent migrants might have been previously foreign students studying in Singapore who gained local employment. The online xenophobic comments reveal that Singaporeans view foreign talent migrants with great suspicion as they anecdotally feel that they are threatening their livelihood and way of life. Moreover, the comments expose Singaporean displeasure at the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) whom they hold responsible for the influx of the foreign talent migrants as revealed by any online discussion by Singaporeans on the matter. Here Singaporeans note that they are no longer able to identify with Singapore due to the increasingly


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overcrowded and changing ethnographic landscape which they blame on government policies. While Singaporeans have always grumbled about the PAP government and its policies in private, the rise of online forms of communication have allowed them to express their dissatisfaction with the government more prolifically and loudly. Doing so has created a space for Singaporeans to identify with each other on issues that they are concerned about which, most often, are caused by government policies: the cost of living, widening income gap and elitism of PAP members of parliament. However it is the presence of new migrants—transitional and permanent—that has dominated Singaporean online discourse like no other issue; uniting Singaporeans and functioning as a catalyst to push locals into greater political awareness. Singaporeans, fed up with the influx of these new migrants—whom they call ‘foreigners’ despite many overseasborn professionals taking up permanent residence and citizenship— have progressed from being apathetic to becoming politically aware as demonstrated by the greatest withdrawal of electoral support the PAP has ever encountered at both the General Elections and Presidential Elections in 2011.23

Conclusion Singapore has sometimes been written off in intellectual circles as bland and one-dimensional due to the restrictive and authoritarian government policies that shape Singaporean society and culture. I have suggested here that Singapore is neither particularly bland nor singularly dimensional but host to an incredibly complex and layered society where race permeates community interactions. Race in multicultural and multiethnic Singapore is an instrument that segregates as it unifies. The liminal space I now occupy as a Singaporean diaspora in Australia has allowed me time and space to reflect on my homeland. While I am now developing an understanding of the complex Singaporean societal and cultural attitudes towards race from another critical perspective, I do so by confronting and questioning my own racial, cultural and national

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identity. On a metanarrative level that examines self in relation to place. While I do not think that I will ever feel ‘at home’ in my homeland, I am beginning to unravel the complexities that affect the ways in which I (do not) identify with my homeland while understanding the reasons and the processes that create present-day Singapore.

Notes 1 OnePeople.sg and Institute of Policy Studies, Baseline Study on Indicators of Racial & Religious Harmony Unveiled, 18 July 2013, http:// www.onepeople.sg/images/Indicators%20of%20Racial%20and%20 Religious%20Harmony.pdf. 2. I have purposefully left out a discussion on the interconnections on religion and race primarily because that should be a separate study on its own. 3. I use the term ‘race’ rather than ‘ethnicity’ in this essay because Singapore tends to group different ethnic groups into big racial categories. However, in recent years, there have been some subtle amendments to big racial groupings with ancestral origins of Malays (for example, Bugis) documented in their identity cards. 4. Any public critical discussion of race is considered not only racist but criminal under the Sedition Act (Cap. 290, 1985 rev. edn.). 5. In his work on the representation of ethnicity in the Singapore media, Kenneth Paul Tan notes that Singaporeans generally do not have sustained face-to-face interactions with their ‘ethnic Other’. In other words, many Singaporeans do not have much contact or socialize with people outside their own immediate communal group. Kenneth Paul Tan, ‘Racial Stereotypes in Singapore Films: Commercial Value and Critical Possibilities’, in Race and Multiculturalism in Malaysia and Singapore, ed. Daniel P.S. Goh, Matilda Gabrielpillai, Philip Holden and Gaik Cheng Khoo, London: Routledge, 2009, pp. 124-40. 6. Ghassan Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society, Australia: Pluto Press and Commerford & Miller, 1986 and Ien Ang, On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asia and the West, London & New York: Routledge, 2001. 7. Beng Huat Chua, ‘Multiculturalism in Singapore: An Instrument of Social Control’, Race and Class, vol. 44, no. 3, 2003, pp. 58-77. 8. Ghassan Hage, White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a


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Multicultural Society, Australia: Pluto Press and Commerford & Miller, 1986 and Ien Ang, On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asia and the West, London & New York: Routledge, 2001. 9. Owen, op. cit. pp. 312-13. 10. Norman Vasu, ‘Governance through Difference in Singapore: Corporatism’s Composition, Characteristics, and Complications’, Asian Survey, vol. 52, no. 4, 2012, pp. 734-53. 11. Ibid, p. 738. 12. Beng Huat Chua, ‘Being Chinese under official multiculturalism in Singapore’, Asian Ethnicity, vol. 10, no. 3, 2009, 239-50. 13. Michelle Grattan, Michael Gordon and James Button, ‘Whitlam hits out at “Chinese rogue port city”’, The Age, 25 November 2005, http:// www.theage.com.au/news/national/whitlam-blasts-singapore-overnguven/2005/11/24/1132703316481.html. 14. Michael D. Barr and Ziatko Skrbis, Constructing Singapore: Elitism, Ethnicity and the Nation Building Project, Copenhagen: Nias Press, 2008. 15. Chiang Nee Seah, ‘Vice and Heartbreak: Seductive, money-minded ones are turning lives upside down, but blame also lies with naive Singaporean males’, Little Speck, 2 July 2006, http://www.littlespeck. com/content/people/CTrendsPeople-0607Q2.htm. 16. Selvaraj Velayutham, ‘Everyday Racism in Singapore’, Everyday Multiculturalism, ed. Amanda Wise and Selvaraj Velayutham, England and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, pp. 255-73. 17. Chok Tong Goh, ‘Speech by Mr Goh Chok Tong, Senior Minister at the Singapore Human Capital Summi’, The Straits Times Interactive, 22 October 2008, http://www.straitstimes.com/STI/STIMEDIA/ pdf/20081Q22/SPEECH.pdf. 18. Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, Singapore, Riding the Tiger: The Chronicle of a Nation’s Battle Against Communism, Singapore: Market Asia Distributors, 2003. 19. Ministry of Education, Singapore, The National Symbols, n.d., http:// vs.moe.edu.sg/national symbol.htm. 20. Growing Up, Singapore: Mediacorp, (1996-2001) and Under One Roof, Singapore: Mediacorp (1995-2003). 21. Barr and Skrbis, op. cit. 22. Brenda S.A. Yeoh and Weiqiang Lin, ‘Rapid Growth in Singapore’s Immigrant Population Brings Policy Challenges’, Migration Information Source: Fresh Thought, Authoritative Data, Global Reach, 2012, http:// www.migrationinformation.org/feature/print.cfm7UIN887 and

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Sandra Davie, ‘Foreign student numbers drop sharply after climbing steadily’, Asiaone, 10 October 2012, http://www.asiaone.com/News/ Latest+News/Edvantage/Storv/A 1 Story20121009- 376559.html. 23. Despite the PAP still retaining power in the General Elections, they lost almost 40% of the popular vote and 6 out of 87 parliamentary seats while their candidate for the Presidential elections — Tony Tan — only won by less than 1% of the final vote (Catherine Lim, ‘How GE 2011 proved me—oh, so wonderfully!—wrong’, Catherinelim. Sg: Political Commentaries on Singapore, 5 August 2011, http:// catherinelim.sg/2011/05/09/how-ge-2011-proved-me-oh-sowonderfullv- wrong/#more-999.

References Ang, I. (2001), On Not Speaking Chinese: Living Between Asia and the West, London & New York: Routledge. Barr, M.D. and Z. Skrbiš (2008), Constructing Singapore: Elitism, Ethnicity and the Nation Building Project, Copenhagen: Nias Press. Chua, B.H. (2003), ‘Multiculturalism in Singapore: An Instrument of Social Control’, Race and Class, vol. 44, no. 3, pp. 58-77. ______ (2009), ‘Being Chinese under Official Multiculturalism in Singapore’, Asian Ethnicity, vol. 10, no. 3, pp. 239-50. Davie, S. (2012), ‘Foreign Student Numbers Drop Sharply after Climbing Steadily’, Asiaone, 10 October, Retrieved from http://www.asiaone. com/News/Latest+News/Edvantage/Story/A1Story20121009376559.html. Goh, C.T. (2008), Speech by Mr Goh Chock Tong, Senior Minister, at the Singapore Human Capital Summit’. The Straits Times Interactive, 22 October. Retrieved from http://www.straitstimes.com/STI/ STIMEDIA/pdf/20081022/SPEECH.pdf. Grattan, Michelle, Michael Gordon and James Button (2005), ‘Whitlam hits out at “Chinese rogue port city”’, The Age, 25 November, http:// www.theage.com.au/news/national/whitlam-blasts-singapore-overnguyen/2005/11/24/1132703316481.html Growing Up (1996-2001), Singapore: Mediacorp. Hage, G. (1998), White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society. Australia: Pluto Press and Commerford & Miller. Lim, Catherine (2011), ‘How GE 2011 proved me—oh, so wonderfully!— wrong’, Catherinelim.Sg: Political Commentaries on Singapore,


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5 August. http://catherinelim.sg/2011/05/09/how-ge-2011-provedme-oh-so-wonderfully-wrong/#more-999. Ministry of Education, Singapore. The National Symbols. n.d., http:// vs.moe.edu.sg/national_symbol.htm. Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts, Singapore (2003), Riding the Tiger: The Chronicle of a Nation’s Battle Against Communism. Singapore: Market Asia Distributors. OnePeople.sg and Institute of Policy Studies (2013), Baseline Study on Indicators of Racial & Religious Harmony Unveiled, 18 July, http:// www.onepeople.sg/images/Indicators%20of%20Racial%20and%20 Religious%20Harmony.pdf. Owen, N. (2005), The Emergence of Modern Southeast Asia, Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Porteous, C. (2005), ‘Threats Won’t Save Nguyen: Costello’. ABC Online, 5 November. Retrieved from http://www.abc.net.au/news/ stories/2005/11/25/1516771.htm. Ryan, P. (2005), ‘Apologise to Blainey’. The Australian, 15 December. Retrieved from http://www.superflumina.org/PDF_files/Peter_ Ryan.pdf. Seah, C.N. (2006), ‘Vice and Heartbreak: Seductive, Money-minded Ones are Turning Lives Upside Down, but Blame Also Lies with Naive Singaporean Males’. Little Speck, 2 July. http://www.littlespeck.com/ content/people/CTrendsPeople-060702.htm. Singapore Penal Code (Cap 224, 2008 Rev. edn.), s. 298A. Tan, Kenneth Paul (2009), ‘Racial Stereotypes in Singapore Films: Commercial Value and Critical Possibilities’, in Race and Multiculturalism in Malaysia and Singapore, ed. Daniel P.S. Goh, Matilda Gabrielpillai, Philip Holden and Gaik Cheng Khoo, London: Routledge. Vasu, N. (2012), ‘Governance Through Difference in Singapore: Corporatism’s Composition, Characteristics, and Complications’. Asian Survey, vol. 52, no. 4, pp. 734-53. Under One Roof, Signapore: Mediacorp (1995-2003). Velayutham, Selvaraj (2009), ‘Everyday Racism in Singapore’, Everyday Multiculturalism, eds. Amanda Wise amd Selvaraj Velayutham, England and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Yeah, B.S.A. Yeoh and Weiqiang Lin (2012), ‘Rapid Growth in Singapore’s Immigrant Population Brings Policy Challenges’, Migration Information Source: Fresh Thought, Authoritative Data, Global Reach. http://www.migrationinformation.org/feature/print.cfm?ID=887.

Chapter 9

Privileged and Detached? Mobility and Community in (Sub)urban Melbourne Val Colic-Peisker

Introduction Since the mid-twentieth century, when sociologist Robert Merton (1957) introduced the famous dichotomy of ‘cosmopolitans and locals’, intense mobility has become an increasingly prominent characteristic of the Western, and especially English-speaking societies.1 Dynamism is imperative in global capitalism which relies on competitive individualism to provide motivation and impetus for mobility; given that the latter requires considerable effort, it must also offer rewards. This ideological set-up seems to be particularly pronounced in English-speaking societies, and in the countries of immigration such as Australia it has an additional dimension. One of the greatest historians of the past century, Eric Hobsbawm, described Anglophone societies as the ‘ultra-free-market states’, implying high mobility.2 This is not just the matter of economic development but also of history and culture; in equally developed countries of continental Europe for example, people seem more attached to place and place-based histories, traditions, communities and identities, and less eager to move to another job, address, city or country. It

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seems that European cities have historically been characterized by greater social integration than found in the overseas English-speaking societies such as US and Australia.3 Zigmunt Bauman conceptualized hypermobile, dynamic capitalist societies as ‘liquid modernity’ where ‘a pool of choices’ at the same time represents a ‘hotbed of uncertainties’. In this context, according to Bauman, ‘community’ [...] sounds increasingly hollow because inter-human bonds that require a ‘large and continuous investment of time and effort’, and are worth the sacrifice of immediate individual interest, are increasingly frail and temporary.4 Sennett echoes this sentiment when he talks about deeper ‘social bonds [that] take time to develop, slowly rooting into the cracks and crevices of institutions’—for which there is not enough time in the twenty-first century’s rapidly changing society.5 The latter, according to Bauman leaves no room for long durée projects: political history as well as individual lives are a series of short-term projects and episodes.6 Sennett asked, ‘how can long-term goals be pursued in an economy devoted to the short-term’ and ‘how can mutual loyalties and commitments be sustained in institutions which are constantly breaking apart or continually being redesigned?’7 Have community bonds in the highly urbanized and global society really fallen victims to ‘short-termism’ and hyper-mobility? The critical investigation of late-capitalist mobility and its impact on community life in Australia needs to be placed in a context. Australia is an affluent nation with socio-economic indicators close to the top of the OECD group of developed countries. Life expectancy of Australians is 82 years, the tenth highest in the world. The literacy rate stands at 99 per cent. Unemployment and inflation have been low for many years (about 5 and 2 per cent respectively) and GDP per capita among the highest. On the Human Development Index (a composite index that takes into account life expectancy, education, income and inequality, published annually by the United Nations Development Programme) Australia has taken the second place in the world since 2009. Melbourne, the city this chapter focuses on, has been declared the ‘most liveable city in the world’ in 2011-12 by the Economist Intelligence Unit. In spite of the fact that macro-

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statistics and various ranking lists cannot present the full picture of any nation, and the fact that international comparisons need to be approached with caution, Australia is by many considered a ‘lucky country’ which attracts, and receives, about half a million permanent and temporary migrants annually. Australia is a dynamic nation: its spatial, residential and employment mobility are among the highest in the world. Mobility and ‘flexibility’ are considered ‘good for the economy’, and this directly implicates the mutually interconnected employment and residential mobility. The high level of mobility is a function of, and a contributing factor towards, Australia’s economic development and growth.8 In terms of travel, internal and international, as well as long stays overseas, the affluent nation successfully beats the ‘tyranny of distance’: in spite of its geographical isolation, it is highly ‘global’ and connected with the rest of the world, not least because of its multicultural population that originates from every corner of the globe. On the individual level, intense mobility is usually seen as an advantage, privilege and a mark of success—a status symbol. The downsides of mobility rarely get a mention: excessive consumption, high ‘environmental footprint’ and erosion of community connectedness. This chapter looks at contexts, causes and examples of Australian hypermobility and detachment from ‘communities of place’ as well as its social effects. In order to illustrate the theoretical points, it briefly presents two case studies from suburban Melbourne, based on recent ethnographic research.

Patterns of Mobility in Australia There are distinct mobility patterns for different Australian demographic groups. For example, the young cohort (aged 15-24 years) is characterized by the consistent movement into metropolitan areas, attracted by educational opportunities, especially tertiary education, while the retiring population of ‘sea-changers’ tend to move out of large cities and into coastal areas. Low-skilled and lowincome people are also very mobile, typically within their state.9

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There are indications from Australian housing research that this may be due to short-term rental leases in the context of dynamic housing market, and resulting enforced mobility and instability of renters on low incomes, often due to rising rents.10 Interstate mobility is dominated by middle classes—tertiary educated people on above-average incomes—and recent migrants from non-Englishspeaking background. Immigration from overseas remains the main driver of population growth and mobility in Australia, as well as the nation’s economic growth. One noticeable and consistent pattern is that international migrants tend to settle in main gateway cities (Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth) at least initially; at the same time there is large out-migration from the two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne (Hugo and Harris, 2011). This is not surprising, given the extraordinarily high housing costs in the two cities. All these mobilities put together make the Australian population ‘perhaps the most mobile in the world’.11 At the time of the 2011 census, 28 per cent of Australians were born overseas. In large cities this percentage is even higher—for example Melbourne has a higher proportion of overseas born than London (37 and 36.7 per cent respectively in 2011). A large majority of immigrants to Australia have close friends and family overseas. Due to Australian immigration preferences and quotas, only a small minority of settlers are able to bring their ageing parents to Australia, and this may trouble many who are not able to provide culturally appropriate type and level of care to their aged family members. Nowadays there are ample communication possibilities— (increasingly cheaper) telephone calls, emails, internet-based social media, Skype—but nothing can replace visits and face-to-face time with one’s close friends and extended families. This represents another driver to overseas travel and mobility of Australians. According to Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australians make a record 8.4 million short trips overseas over the financial year 2012-13, 90 per cent of which was for holiday, including visiting relatives and friends.12 Australia is also one of the most urbanized nations: this chapter explores the issues of mobility and community in large Australian cities, where about 85 per cent of Australians live,13 focusing specifically on the example of Melbourne, the second largest Australian


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city. Australia is a typical example of a Western late-capitalist nation, where, during the most recent wave of globalization,14 a host of neoliberal, free-market-oriented policies have been introduced under the name of ‘economic rationalism’, emphasizing and rewarding the virtues of flexibility and mobility, especially with regards to employment and the labour force.15 Capitalist economy needs a workforce concentrated in the cities, but flexible (easily hired and fired) and ready to pursue work and housing careers. In such a system, it is taken for granted that economic rewards and increased consumption are the ultimate rewards. Flexible labour force implies high residential and employment mobility—voluntary for the top layer of the workforce willing to move residence, change jobs and travel for the purpose of furthering their careers; and involuntary for those who work casually and can be easily fired and hired. The rewards of (voluntary) flexibility and mobility—money and status— reflect the established social norm of competitive individualism. The latter is said to be indispensable for economic success, individual and collective, based on work ethic, productivity, entrepreneurship and innovation. Another aspect of Australia’s economic success is that it is a highly ‘globalized’ and globally connected nation. It has intensive trade relations with the key global players in the Asia-Pacific (especially through mineral exports to China that has been driving Australian prosperity for several decades; also to Japan and India; and imports of manufactured goods from Asia) and also with its more traditional trade and economic partners in Europe and North America. Historically, Australia has close economic, political, military and cultural ties with UK and US at a macro-institutional level. At a microlevel these ties are complemented through transnational connections of its diverse population of immigrants originating from all over the world. Australian immigrants have been instrumental in forging transnational business and cultural ties, especially since the time (the 1980s) the Australian immigration policy strongly preferenced skilled and business migrants. Over the past 2-3 decades, intense business and work-related ‘international traffic’ with neighbouring Asia and further afield contribute to Australian population mobility. The same can be said for the temporary immigration which has

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been growing exponentially over the past fifteen years, especially the immigration of international students (most of them coming from India and China), the long-stay ‘457’ work visa and ‘workingholiday makers’. By seemingly offering limitless opportunities, globalization is a context that intensifies people’s desire for unrestrained mobility. Among the Australian middle classes, mobility has become a sign of success and a marker of social status. Successful people regularly travel overseas for business and pleasure. Australians traverse their vast country-continent by road and air, and expose themselves to the high cost and inconvenience of long flights when travelling overseas. However, overseas trips are a prominent social talking point and they are likely to secure career and social status rewards. Longer journeys and stays overseas, often for study, work and tourism combined, have been a rite of passage for young (middle-class) Australians for several decades. A ‘gap year’ which includes overseas travel, either between high school and university or during or after tertiary education, has developed into a normative cultural practice. In many cases, the gap year induces a life-long wanderlust and primes young people for further overseas travel and work experiences. More than a million Australians live overseas, and while most of them have the intention to return to Australia, their overseas stays sometimes extend much longer than planned.16 This ‘Australian diaspora’ is more an expression of an appetite for mobility than of any pressing need. While most people migrate for work, unlike in the case of many other countries this is not a necessity or even a pressing need, given that Australia has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the OECD group of countries; this international labour mobility in most cases has a purpose of career development.17 Among the mutually interlinked ‘mobilities’: spatial (short-term travel and long stays), employment, residential and social, the latter— social mobility—is considerably more difficult to define and measure than the other ‘mobilities’. All types of mobility are seen as desirable, but social mobility is the ultimate achievement: it can be considered the end for which other mobilities serve as a means. In any case, mobility is valued and considered a privilege, while staying put is often seen as a predicament. Living at the same location or working


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in the same job for many years may make one suspect of inertia and lack of entrepreneurial spirit. Intense mobility—Australians perhaps deserve the attribute of hypermobility—is often seen as an aspect of the life of ‘cosmopolitans’: the privileged people able to travel and move across the globe at will and also across cultures, as opposed to ‘locals’ who may be seen as ‘stuck’ and left behind. However, not all mobility is a sign of worldly success. Residential mobility can mean moving up on the residential property ladder, but it can also signify the involuntary mobility of renters in precarious housing circumstances. Employment mobility does not always mean moving to a better job; it may also mean the unwanted job mobility of people in insecure casual jobs, usually the young and those without educational credentials. In addition, hypermobility inevitably weakens place-based social cohesion of neighbourhoods and local communities. A high level of mobility is likely to be implicated in detachment—spatial, social and emotional—from other people, and this, according to psychologists and sociologists, is damaging to the individual’s quality of life and lead to psychological and mental disorders. Such disorders have consistently risen over the past decades and are often attributed to a lack of human connectedness, anxieties and insecurities brought about by the competitive society, stressful work requirements, and anonymous urban living.18 Large national and international social surveys have shown that social connectedness is the most important aspect of life satisfaction— more important than economic success, work satisfaction, and even health.19 The Guardian reported that Britons who are ‘satisfied with their lives’ are more likely to have children, see family and friends often, take part in religious activities, belong to community groups, have a higher level of education, good physical and mental health, medium working hours, and a short time commuting to work or providing informal care.20 It is notable that engaging with other people in its various forms took precedence in this list. In the following sections two contemporary modes of hypermobility are investigated: residential and employment mobility, as manifestations of more abstract notions of spatial and social mobility, and their impact on community connectedness.

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The ‘Suburban Dream’ and Residential Mobility in Australia Among many nicknames Australia has acquired over time, there is one describing it as a ‘suburban nation’. Detached owner-occupied housing on a quarter-acre block in a low-density suburb, the typical Australian way of life, has been praised and criticized, loved and hated by social commentators. It has been described as the ‘great Australian dream’ (usually with a hint of self-deprecating irony) but also as the ‘great Australian nightmare’.21 The sprawling suburban ‘garden city’ has been praised as the residential ideal, but also described as the ‘great Australian ugliness’.22 Planning policies encouraging densification of cities have been attempted since the 1980s, in order to reduce car dependency and environmental impact of sprawling low-density suburbs, but the detached housing is still prevalent. For example, the Greater Melbourne’s 4 million residents are spread over 9,990.5 sq km creating a low density environment of 400 people per sq km, 75 per cent of whom live in detached suburban houses. Figures 9.2 and 9.3 below show the two central material symbols, the ‘icons’ of the ‘Australian dream’ of idyllic suburban living that was the most prevalent in the 1950s-60s—the rotating clothes drying contrivance know as ‘Hills Hoist’23 and the lawn mower. Both have

Figure 9.1. An aerial photo of Melbourne suburbia.

Figure 9.2: ‘Hills Hoist’

Source: A 2008 exhibition titled ‘Suburbia’ at the National Museum of Australia, Canberra.

Figure 9.3: A Lawn Mower

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connotations of spaciousness (every family has a backyard), middleclass affluence (homeownership of a suburban quarter-acre block), Britishness (most of the backyard is taken by lawn, unsuited in the dry Australian climate), and nuclear family life with its traditional gender roles (e.g. father of the family in charge of lawn-mowing). The Australian dream has encountered increasing challenges in recent times. Housing affordability (income/house price ratio) has been falling steadily since the 1970s. Changes in the household composition and size made a large suburban house with a backyard a less ideal set-up: people marry later and have fewer children than in the 1950-60s ‘baby boom’; divorce has become widespread; singleperson household is the fastest growing type and increasingly this is an older-person household; growing population pushes the cities’ growth boundary to unsustainable distances. Although there are strong environmental and economic arguments against the suburban sprawl and the lifestyle aspirations of younger, better-educated generations are often associated with medium-density inner city living, the Australian suburban imaginary seems persistent. An important reason for this is its association with home ownership, the main wealth accumulation method of the majority of Australians: the 70 per cent who are owner-occupiers. Australians move houses on average every five years, thus being one of the residentially most mobile nations.24 In the working-age population, residential mobility often follows from employment mobility. Residential mobility and strong housing market are two sides of the same coin, which is a significant element of the national economy and its continual prosperity. The growth of housing prices reflects the quantity of housing transactions, sales and purchases. The dynamism of the housing market is plainly visible on suburban streets of Australian cities: the amount of ‘for sale’ signs readily impresses overseas arrivals. Through high residential mobility, Australians hope to further their ‘housing careers’.25 Economists define housing as a ‘normal good’— the more one earns, the more one spends on housing. By moving, homeowners hope to increase their housing wealth, contribute to their social standing by acquiring a more prestigious address, and


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improve their quality of life through living in well-located which often includes services-rich suburbs. Moving, and buying and selling properties, keeps many other industries prosperous: building and construction, real-estate agents, removalists, trades involved in renovations, finance institutions—and also contributes to the local and state government coffers through various fees and levies. Rising housing prices encourage consumer spending by the home-owning majority, therefore, residential mobility is a sign, and a condition, of a blooming capitalist economy. Not everyone profits from residential mobility, however. Rising housing prices make housing unaffordable for first-time buyers. Rising housing costs, in the context of casualization of work, polarization of incomes and low age pensions, mean that an increasing number of people have to move involuntarily and some are in danger of homelessness.26 The involuntary mobility affects private and public renters and other people in precarious housing circumstances— those on low incomes and welfare, the elderly and women reaching retirement age without homeownership and significant savings.27 Even for the housing-wealth-building homeowners, residential mobility has some downsides. In the hyper-mobile residential context, the existence of place-based community is getting more tenuous. High turnover in the neighbourhoods means there is little chance of developing deeper local roots and identities, and a lasting attachment to one’s local community. A sense of place and local belonging is shown to be related to people’s health outcomes, to their wellbeing and the quality of life—even to weight gain, according to research done in areas of health geography, environmental health, environmental psychology and life satisfaction studies.28 Hypermobility therefore jeopardizes the cohesion of local communities. High residential turnover and the feeling of detachment especially hurt those who may be in need of local solidarity and support: the unemployed, people on welfare and low incomes, single parents and a rising number of elderly citizens and single-person households. Rather than relying on their neighbourhoods for social support or a sense of community and belonging, Australians increasingly look elsewhere. We return to this point in the concluding section.

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Employment Mobility Flexible labour force is a great imperative of global capitalism, often justified by ‘competitive pressures’ of globalization and its impact on local and national economies. Australia has one of the highest job mobilities in the OECD group of countries, which is closely associated with high residential mobility. Being generally good for the economy, is employment mobility good for people? It is good for employers and business profitability if workers can be hired and fired relatively easily. For highly skilled and well-paid employees who advance their careers through employment mobility, this environment may be challenging but also rewarding. After all, employment mobility is the main means of social mobility: a better job is ideally one that combines job prestige and a higher income, thus enabling its holder to move up the social ladder. Over the past few decades, a growing number of highly skilled Australians further their careers as ‘transnational knowledge workers’.29 For the privileged section of the workforce, job mobility may mean more than just pragmatic career building and moving up the social ladder; it can also be an expression of the highest-level needs for self-expression and ‘self-actualization’ through creative and satisfying work.30 These mobile global professional elites are likely to forge lasting professional networks and communities far beyond their neighbourhoods and cities, enabled by internet-based communication technologies. For many others who are at the ‘wrong end’ of the labour market —the less skilled casual employees—employment mobility may be a curse rather than a blessing. They may have to move on as they become redundant, ‘last hired and first fired’. Short-term jobs, often part time and holding multiple jobs in order to make ends meet, make for a stressful existence. ‘Flexible workforce’ also means that an increasing proportion of the workforce occupies the casual job market, where high turnover creates a sense of job insecurity and an uncertain future. A sense of ontological security may be seriously jeopardized by such job mobility. In Australia, some categories of temporary migrants that represent the most mobile and flexible section of the workforce have increased exponentially over the past 15 years or so. The two main migrant categories that take short-


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term low-skilled casual jobs are young people who come to Australia as international students or ‘working holiday makers’. The latter visa category stipulates that such workers don’t work for the same employer for more than six months.31 There is also a substantive problem with employment mobility: in most jobs, and more so in jobs requiring complex skills, people become better at what they do over time. High employment mobility does not allow people to reach their peak performance and therefore impacts on the quality of their work and the services they provide; if this becomes too obvious, it may also jeopardize business profits. In terms of social connectedness, high job turnover prevents forming meaningful bonds with work colleagues. Given that Australians work long hours on average and have a poor record in work-life balance, workplace collegiality may be, for many people, the main site where they actually fulfil their intrinsic human need for connectedness with others.

City, Mobility and Community In contrast to traditional rural communities where life followed natural rhythms and unfolded largely unchanged for generations, modern cities are crucibles of dynamism and change. Contemporary city dwellers values its freedom and individual choice which go hand in hand with mobility inherent in urban living. Throughout history, cities, the concentrations of people and activity, have been engines of material progress and cultural development. When massive urbanization started in the West in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, sociologists were intrigued by its effects on people. Some argued that modernity and urban life were potentially damaging to people.32 In large cities, people not only lose touch with the natural environment and are exposed to crowding, noise and pollution, they also live anonymously among strangers, competing with them for housing, jobs and other scarce resources. Such a view has led to the temptation of romanticizing rural and small-town life. A solution to the ills of living in large cities was sought in the idea of ‘garden city’. The ‘garden city movement’ started in England at the end of the nineteenth century as a reaction to the polluted and

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slum-ridden English industrial cities, including London. Garden city was to be a small largely self-sufficient urban area housing 32,000 people and combining residential, industrial and parkland areas.33 Several garden cities would be satellites of a central city. However, the development of cities of the period did not follow this plan. The progress of transportation, first of railway and then private car, allowed those who could afford it to flee crowded and polluted cities and settle in peaceful low-density ‘dormitory suburbs’. This model, particularly prevalent and persistent in English-speaking societies, has been criticized for its environmental footprint, car dependency and long commuting times. In Australia, suburbia of large cities have an enduring appeal, mainly through the promise of generous residential standard, but have been criticized as materially rich but culturally and socially poor. In terms of its effect on community and civic life, it has been criticized as overly privatized and ‘detached’ way of life, physically and socially, where shopping may be the only pursuit that regularly brings locals into the same space, typically in a large suburban shopping centre. Consumption thus becomes a proxy for community life. Economic efficiency, modernity and sociality clash in contemporary cities at various levels. The post-War slum clearance and urban renewal policies in large cities of English-speaking countries, including Melbourne, often destroyed functioning, vibrant communities in the name of order and efficiency. Jane Jacobs argued that cities need to be planned with regard to human needs, social connectedness being central among them—not only vital for our health and happiness but constitutive for what it means to be human. Suburbs and neighbourhoods are likely to foster sociality and community if they are diverse, walkable and planned for mixed use (residential and commercial), rather than separating these functions.34 The search for community takes many forms but in its essence it is universal. The type of connectedness people value, desire and practice vary alongside many variables: cultural and socio-economic background, gender, age, the stage of life, family and household composition. Large cities have always been suspect as settings which jeopardize the notion of community. Community is a complex


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notion this chapter cannot engage with (see Mulligan’s chapter in this volume) beyond stating that community is, for the purpose of this chapter, understood as largely synonymous with human connectedness: enjoying and reciprocating other people’s company, care and support, which also creates a sense of identity, belonging and meaning. In this chapter I argue that the community connectedness in large Australian cities may be fractured and compartmentalized. The city life, urging us to move on in search of status and success, makes it difficult to sustain cohesive groups of people connected by multiple ties. Instead, we mix with different people in different settings—work, neighbourhood, church, mosque or temple, sports club, children’s school, restaurants we may attend regularly—but the speed and short-termism of the ‘liquid life’ rarely allows for more than superficial encounters. Where does this leave over 85 per cent of Australians inhabiting large cities? A 2012 Grattan Institute Report titled Social Cities found that people’s friendships and neighbourhood connections had diminished over the past 20 years in Australia.35 We are told that ‘time is money’, which means we should use it to advance our conventionally defined material success. This leaves little time for non-pragmatic social pursuit. Even the essential care for family members and sustaining intimate relationships can fall victims to speed, mobility and pursuit of social status. The much discussed issue of work-life balance comes from the fact that for many people ‘work’, paradoxically, does not leave much time for ‘life’, not even for its closest reaches such as family. People’s time can be readily exchanged for money and in a consumption-oriented neoliberal capitalism there is a cultural expectation that they will do just that— leading to the vicious cycle of overwork and over-consumption. In the atomized and privatized world, self-responsibility increasingly substitutes for social solidarity, epitomized not only in informal communities but also in the welfare state, whose care has been reduced over the past decades.36 In the highly mobile competitive society such as Australia’s community care, civic responsibility and common good have become secondary considerations. Shaun Best argues that altruistic actions are perceived to be irrational, outrageous and repellent in a society sustained by consumer interests that promise

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instantaneous gratification and happiness.37 Community benefit has low priority in a competitive consumer society, the issue known as ‘the tragedy of commons’. In his classic The Affluent Society, J.K. Galbraith wrote: ‘Presumably a community can be as well rewarded by buying better schools or better parks as by buying bigger automobiles. By concentrating on the latter rather than the former, it is failing to maximize its satisfaction’. Satisfying ‘community needs’, however, would lead to more public spending, which requires higher taxes—a development met with general antipathy in Anglophone societies.38 The dynamism and mobility associated with large Western cities of the twenty-first century, individualism and (monetary) and goal-orientation inevitably dismantles close-knit spatially defined communities. Mobility has potential to give rise to transient, mobile, pluri-local or even ex-territorial (e.g. virtual) communities, and dynamic and flexible networks indifferent to national boundaries. Intense transnational mobility often associated with an ‘expatriate lifestyle’, may lead to ‘dissolution of local ties and an increased commitment to the international organizational channels’.39 It may thus be creating ‘professional diasporas’ and profoundly changing the role of ‘communities of place’ (including nations as their ‘imagined’ extensions) in determining values and defining identity and belonging. However, is it conceivable that mobility transforms rather than endangers the community.40 Still, even for urban hyper-mobile Australians, the sense of security, belonging, ease and peace is dependent on a feeling of connectedness with other people: neighbours, friends, acquaintances, work colleagues, and even strangers we encounter on a daily basis. Contemporary weakening of community life in the West and the growth of competitive consumerism are interconnected, and both are related to a rise in inequality, which has been a well diagnosed feature of the globally dominant neo-liberalism since the late-1970s. Putnam argued that over the past third of the twentieth century, Americans have been ‘pulled apart from one another’ in the process of community decline.41 It may be the case that that community life has weakened under the impact of growing geographical and social mobility.42 Australian suburbs are certainly not tightly knit


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anymore, if they ever were: we rarely even know our neighbours. In contemporary urban Australia people are more likely to find a ‘nucleus of friendships’ at work, and the workplace is where they can feel valued and supported—although they can also feel insecure, bullied, isolated and under heavy competitive pressure to perform and outperform others. Even if one is fortunate enough to be able to rely on one’s ‘colleagues’ for emotional support, the work friendships are usually doomed by job mobility and often lost in career moves. In (sub)urban Australia, people are spatially and emotionally detached, but highly connected and ‘networked’ via the internet— close to 80 per cent of Australians are ‘online’. We do not care who lives around us—as long as they do not disturb us—given that we can access our remote social networks any time via fast multiplying ‘social media’. Our identities do not need to be local anymore. Does a lack of local attachment matter under these circumstances? Are we romanticizing spatial communities and identities? Does it take a theorist who grew up and was intellectually formed in a different era, such as Zigmunt Bauman, to diagnose a ‘disintegration of locally grounded, shared community living’ and argue that community has been largely replaced by ‘network: a matrix of random connections and disconnections’?43 And should we heed the concerns of the nineteenth century theorists, who clearly lived in a vastly different world, about disillusionment and hopelessness of the big city? Should we instead celebrate the individual liberated from the constraints imposed by community control and community obligations that dense social bonds inevitably imply? Isn’t the individual free to choose the ingredients of his/her life like never before a definite sign of social progress? In 2009, the French government commissioned a report, Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress. The investigation was entrusted to leading contemporary thinkers, Joseph Stiglitz (an economist) and A. Sen (a sociologist). Its section titled ‘Social Connections’ is worth citing at some length: Social connections improve quality of life in a variety of ways. People with more social connections report higher life-evaluations, as many of the most pleasurable personal activities involve socializing. The benefits of social

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connections extend to people’s health and to the probability of finding a job, as well as to several characteristics of the neighbourhood where people live (e.g. the prevalence of crime and the performance of local schools). These social connections are sometimes described as ‘social capital’ to highlight the benefits (direct and indirect) that they bring. As with other types of capital, the externalities stemming from social capital can sometimes be negative: for example, belonging to a group may strengthen a sense of unique personal identity that fuels a climate of violence and confrontation with other groups. This, however, underscores the importance of better analysing the nature of these social connections and the breadth of their effects, rather than underestimating their significance. . . . ‘The drivers of change in people’s social connections are not always well understood. Social connections provide services to people (e.g. insurance, security), and the development of both markets and government programmes may have reduced the ties of individuals with their community thanks to the provision of alternative arrangements. What is clear is that a decline in these ties may negatively affect people’s lives, even when their functions are taken up by market or government alternatives that increase the level of economic activity (such as when the informal surveillance of neighbours is replaced by salaried security guards). To avoid a biased assessment of human well-being, measures of these social connections are therefore needed.44

From ‘community’ to ‘social capital’ In the 1980s, the concept of ‘social capital’ started to colonize the imagination of social scientists. A shift in emphasis in social scientific research from the notoriously difficult to define concept of ‘community’ (see Mulligan, this volume), to the slick and modern sounding ‘social capital’, was prompted by a number of prominent theorists advancing its currency: Bourdieu (1986), Coleman (1988), Portes (1998), Putnam (2000; 2007), to mention just the best known. The concepts of ‘human capital’ and ‘cultural capital’ also gained currency at this time and were related to the concept of ‘social capital’. It may be symptomatic that this shift coincided with the dawn of the neoliberal era, where the concept of ‘social capital’, with its ‘capitalistic’ and economic undertone of calculability and precision may be seen as more convincing and acceptable than the concept of community with its complex ingredients of belonging,


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care, identity and social control. Embracing the concept of social capital may have also been an attempt to draw attention to the value of social ‘intangibles’ in the society obsessed by the economic ‘bottom line’. This attempt was successful, as much as policy makers took interest in the concept that seemed to reflect the spirit of the times: social capital is something that can be ‘accumulated’ and ‘invested’ and it therefore seems more instrumental, pragmatic and policy-related. Reflecting the policymakers’ interest, Australian Productivity Commission produced a research paper on social capital where it was, through a thorough literature review, defined as a combination of networks (‘strong’ and ‘weak’ ties; ‘bonding’ and ‘bridging’ networks) and trust (generalized civic trust in strangers and institutions).45 Having said that, it is important to acknowledge that ‘community building’ remains an important area of social policy in the Anglo-Saxon world—which is probably indicative of the loss of spontaneous social connectedness—and that community continues to be over-used in public language to the point of meaninglessness, e.g. ‘legal community’, ‘international investment community’, ‘winemaking community’.

Social Change, Mobility and Community: Two Case Studies from Suburban Melbourne In order to illustrate the issues and concepts discussed above, this section features short summaries of recent (2012-13) case studies of neighbourhood sociality in Melbourne’s north. We conducted ethnographic research in two socio-economically and demographically different, although geographically close, suburbs of Melbourne: Coburg and Fawkner, both in the same local government area, the City of Moreland.46 The insights presented below are based on interviews, focus groups and participant observation. Coburg is an inner suburb in Melbourne’s north (10 km from Melbourne’s CBD) currently undergoing rapid gentrification—a transformation from a typical industrial suburb populated by working-class south Europeans who arrived in the 1950s-60s to take manufacturing jobs, to a typical middle-class suburb. Coburg is still not quite services-rich (e.g. missing a public high school in spite of the population of 25,000)

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but it is an ethnically diverse and colourful ‘multicultural precinct’ in the process of residential densification and well connected by public transport, which attracts young professionals. Fawkner is a typical low-density and low-socio-economic profile suburb languishing in a rather isolated ‘corner’ of the City of Moreland (15 kms from the CBD), poorly connected by public transport and car-dependent, and relatively services-poor. Its two main population groups are ageing working-class residents (Fawkner has above-average population of retirees) mainly of Mediterranean origin (Italian, Greek, Turkish, Lebanese), and recent immigrants from Muslim backgrounds (mainly from India and Pakistan), attracted by relatively affordable housing and the local Islamic college and mosque. The case studies presented below focus on people’s experiences and perception of their suburban community and close neighbourhoods, and on ways people speak about and practice community in the dynamic and changing city. They show that while a sense of community may indeed be an inherent human need, this need is being imagined and fulfilled in different forms. In addition, the forms that real-existing communities, as well as ‘community imaginary’, take, change alongside many other aspects of social transformation. Based on input from about 100 locals through focus groups, interviews and ‘transect walks’ (participant observation guided by local residents), the insights of this ethnographic study presented below are illustrative but not necessarily generalizable.

Coburg’s Gentrification: Consumption Replacing Neighbourliness? Until recently, Coburg’s population consisted mainly of nonAnglophone immigrants from the south of Europe and the Middle East—Italians, Greeks, Maltese, Turks and the Lebanese. Since the late 1990s, new ‘trendy people’, we were told, started settling in welllocated Coburg in larger numbers, attracted by then still relatively affordable housing. Housing costs have increased steeply since then and some long-term residents, especially renters, are worried about being ‘priced out’ of the area. Second-generation migrants (the children of southern Europeans, many already middle-aged) told us


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how the suburb changed a lot since they were schoolchildren enjoying their tight-knit neighbourhoods. A middle-aged woman of Italian origin told us she ‘felt somewhat out of place and not always as if she belonged there’ although she still ‘liked Coburg, and especially its friendly and affordable Middle-eastern restaurants’. Many older migrant who owned their homes sold them and moved elsewhere, including a Turkish man, now retired, who lived in Coburg for 37 years. He told us the Turkish community used to gather around the barbecue at the Coburg Lake Park every weekend. His three children also live elsewhere and he said that his grandchildren ‘could not afford to live in Coburg where a two-bedroom flat now costs half a million dollars’. Anglo-Australians, the main clients of local pubs, are pleased with gentrification which made the pubs more ‘up-market’ and ‘cleared the streets of the homeless people and drug addicts’. While men considered the streets of Coburg safe, Anglo-Australian women expressed some concerns.

Source: A. Jakubowicz, ‘Making Multicultural Australia’, 2009, at http:// www.multiculturalaustralia.edu.au/library/media/Image/ id/1207.Emilio-Russos-house-in-Coburg

Figure 9.4: A suburban house in Coburg belonging to an Italian migrant family (the 1980s).

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the gentrification and demographic change is rapid and visible to locals through changing housing stock and commercial establishments along the main suburb’s artery, Sydney road. the previously high-security Pentrige Prison is being redeveloped into high-density housing. coburg’s population seems to be polarizing into two groups: long-term residents, many of them ageing workingclass post-war immigrants and low to medium-income australianborn; and new arrivals, either recent international migrants or australian-born middle-class gentrifiers. the recent overseas arrivals are mainly highly skilled, including international students and other temporary arrivals, and highly mobile in their early years in australia. australian-born gentrifiers more consciously chose coburg as their foothold into the overpriced melbourne housing market. older residents described new arrivals as ‘more individualistic people’—many of them young professional, singles or couples—who are focused on their work and increasingly attractive ‘cosmopolitan’ consumption opportunities in their neighbourhoods, especially a

figure 9.5. Diversity along coburg’s main artery, Sydney road.


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Figure 9.6. Pentridge prison, Coburg (1851-1997): The Outer Walls

Figure 9.7. Pentridge Prison Redevelopment (November 2012)

variety of ‘ethnic’ restaurants. The old working class ‘ethnic’ neighbourhoods where people exchanged their garden produce and collected each other’s children from school are retreating fast. Despite the satisfaction of local politicians and many local homeowners with the process of gentrification as rising of the key economic indicators, we found that many local residents had mixed feeling towards the

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social change in their suburb. Residential densification was criticized especially by our Anglo-Australian respondents. In a nutshell, the sociality of relatively transparent and close-knit (although lowdensity) working-class local neighbourhoods, with many neighbours also working together in local (now extinct) factories, is being replaced by cosmopolitan consumption-based sociality of gentrifiers with money to spend and careers to pursue, many of who work in the CBD and find their communities elsewhere and not in their neighbourhoods. There is not much mixing between the long-term residents and new arrivals. While the suburb of Coburg has always been ethnically diverse, in the gentrifying ‘multicultural precinct’ the main axis of diversity is not ethnicity but class: middle-class consumers and those struggling to keep up with rising rents and not being able to enjoy the increasing commercial offer along Sydney Road.

Fawkner: Immigration and Local Community Fragmentation Only several kilometres upstream from Coburg, Fawkner’s key economic indicators are considerably lower. The suburb occupies the bottom rungs of the Australian Bureau of Statistic’s Socioeconomic Index for Areas (SEIFA). While Coburg’s economic and demographic indicators are very close to the Greater Melbourne values, Fawkner is well below them. According to the 2011 Census, a high proportion of Fawkner residents were outside the labour force, partly due to a considerably higher proportion of older people, and significantly lower labour market participation of women. Fawkner also had an above-average unemployment rate of 9 per cent (5.5 per cent in Greater Melbourne). After the War, Fawkner transitioned from agricultural land to a residential area, receiving workingclass immigrants from Europe, many of who lived in ‘commission housing’ (affordable public housing). The public housing, as well as manufacturing employment in the area, are now a distant memory. Many post-War migrants, now retired, cling to their houses, gardens and familiar neighbourhoods—although, as we have heard, the suburb around them changed considerably. In the 1990s, the ethnic composition of the suburb has started to shift with a significant


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Figure 9.8: Merri Creek nature’s Reserve at the Eastern Edge of Fawkner

intake of Muslim migrants attracted by the Islamic college and mosque built in 1997. Many new arrivals are skilled and professional people, so this could be seen as gentrification, if it was not for the fact that many cannot secure appropriate jobs and move from one to another low-skilled casual job. In some cases cultural differences, and potentially also employment discrimination against Muslims as the current ‘anathema minority’, interfere with job prospects. While many Muslim men encounter difficulties with labour market integration they were hoping for, Muslim women encounter much hostility outside their immediate neighbourhoods, we were told by a local community worker. Due to real or perceived cultural difference, the settlement of Muslims in Fawkner is seen as an ‘ethnic enclave’ formation in progress. Although not an area of Melbourne with record immigration numbers, either absolute or relative, Fawkner’s recent intakes are distinguished by their ‘visibility’, because a majority of recent arrivals are traditional Muslims. They come from different source countries, speak different languages and even belong to different strands of Islam, but are usually homogenized in local and wider popular perception. Due to traditional Islamic dress worn

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Figure 9.9: Darul Ulum Islamic College in Fawkner

by many Muslim residents of both genders, they are also perceived as ‘fundamentalist’ Muslims in the popular imagination associated with segregation, hostility towards ‘the West’ and terrorism. While conducting focus groups and speaking to local residents and community workers, our distinct impression was that Fawkner was a fragmented community, consisting of at least three different groups that may have little connection with each other: a minority of AngloAustralian residents (only 32 per cent of Fawkner residents spoke ‘English-only’ at home in 2011); older south-European migrants; and more recent Muslim arrivals. According to local community workers and our own observations, there is a degree of separation verging on segregation, but no visible signs of hostility. On the other hand, the intra-group cohesion of two migrant groups (broadly conceived, being in themselves heterogeneous and containing many identifiable sub-groups) seems to be considerable, featuring everyday neighbourly assistance, pastimes associated with the local pro-active (government funded) ‘community house’ and common religious and other celebrations. Therefore, the ‘bonding social capital’ in separate communities seemed considerable but the ‘bridging social capital’ between them seemed lacking. Unlike Coburg’s ‘consumption-


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Figure 9.10: Fawkner Tyre Mart

oriented sociality’ increasingly shaped by incoming gentrifiers, the sociality we found in Fawkner was decidedly working-class style: people-oriented, close-knit within kinship and ethnic ties, and centred around people’s homes and public community outlets rather than commercial establishments. Apart from the fact that most of Fawkner’s residents lived on low incomes, migrants’ culturallyspecific practices of community living may have contributed to this ‘non-commercial’ style of socializing.

Conclusion In Australia and other English-speaking Western countries the processes of community erosion—often conceptualized as diminishing of ‘social capital’—have been detected. In societies where community connectedness and the welfare state have been on the wane for several decades, individuals have a primary duty of selfinterest and self-care through the pursuit of conventionally defined material success and this may leave little time for nurturing local communities. It is often argued that ‘virtual’ connectedness, enjoyed in solitary sessions in front of one’s computer, are a new manifestation of community, but it is yet to be seen whether this new

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internet-mediated connectedness, social media and instrumental networking are sufficient to replace deep personal and face-to-face community bonds. Unlike the social media ‘friendships’ that are formed and terminated in a click, the face-to-face community bonds require time and therefore a certain level of sedentarism, as opposed to intense mobility, physical and virtual, in order to develop and endure. It is also questionable whether ‘global consciousness’ and a rather abstract or consumption-oriented cosmopolitanism can compensate for the gradual transformation of long-term friendships, cohesive extended families, transparent urban neighbourhoods and community-mindedness into quaint relics of the past. Mobility has potential to give rise to pluri-local and even ‘ex-territorial’ (e.g. virtual) communities, and dynamic and flexible networks indifferent to national boundaries, but the local component of our ‘globally connected’ lives can hardly be discounted as irrelevant. While deploring the dwindling local community connectedness, especially in large Western cities, we must be cautious not to fall victims of the ‘golden past’ syndrome, and try to understand the process of community change, and perhaps erosion, through its temporal (fast social change and fragmentation) and spatial (mobility) aspects. This chapter provides some pointers for such an analysis but it asks more questions than it answers. Firm conclusions about social processes in a fast and constant flux are hardly possible anyway but observations and debates are useful if the processes are to be understood. Further research is needed to analyse these processes in their wider socioeconomic and political context and stipulate whether alternative processes of strengthening local communities are possible and under what conditions. The forces that may counter hypermobility and erosion of community may be found in unlikely places: for example in the need to adjust our lifestyle to global environmental challenges; also in global rise to prominence of non-Western cultures that may offer different ways of understanding and practising urban sociality. While analysing processes of community and mobility in the urban context rather broadly, this chapter has used suburban Melbourne as a case study. Globalization, immigration, de-industrialization, spatial and employment mobility and gentrification are some of the processes that have marked and shaped Melbourne over the past


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several decades. It is a specific metropolitan environment, marked by general affluence, ethno-cultural diversity and the absence of severe social and political upheavals. Many other large global cities have not been as ‘lucky’ and ‘liveable’ as Melbourne. Yet, it is a large city consisting of a mosaic of (sub)urban communities, and in some of the more disadvantaged ones, as illustrated by the case of Fawkner, fault lines of ethnicity and class can open up under stress. This stress can sometimes build up for a long time and explode taking governments and residents by surprise, as experienced repeatedly in urban rioting in comparable countries such as the UK and US. Largely due to economic prosperity and political stability, urban communities in Australia have been developing and transforming peacefully, but not necessarily in a progressive direction, as rising xenophobia and anxiety around small numbers of asylum seekers’ arrivals indicate. The undertaking of social scientists is to observe, ask questions and suggest associations among complex processes, if not to give definitive answers. This chapter has hopefully contributed to this undertaking.

Notes 1. R.K. Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1957. 2. E. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 19141991, London: Michael Joseph, 1994, p. 342. 3. A. Andreotti and P. Le Gales, ‘Middle Class Neighbourhood Attachment in Paris and Milan: Partial Exit and Profound Rootedness’, in T. Blokland and M. Savage, Networked Urbanism: Social Capital in the City, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008, pp. 127-43. 4. Z. Bauman, Liquid times, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007, pp. 1-2. 5. R. Sennett, The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, New York, London: W.W. Norton and Company, 1998, p. 24. 6. Bauman, 2007, p. 3. 7. Sennett, 1998, p. 10. 8. G. Hugo and K. Harris, Population Distribution Effects of Migration in Australia, Research Report for Department of Immigration and

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Citizenship, March 2011, p. 15, at http://www.immi.gov.au/media/ publications/research/migration-in-australia/. 9. Hugo and Harris, 2011. 10. G. Wood, V. Colic-Peisker, M. Berry and R. Ong, Asset-poverty and older Australians’ transitions onto housing assistance programs, AHURI Final Report No. 156, Nov. 2010, at www.ahuri.edu.au. 11. Hugo and K. Harris, 2011, p. 15. 12. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Overseas Arrivals and Departures, Australia, Cat. 3401.0, June 2013. 13. Over 89 per cent of Australians live in urban areas, making it one of the most urbanized countries in the world (CIA 2013, at https://www.cia. gov/librarv/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/as.htmlref ). 14. In this paper this means the last wave of globalization over the past 3-4 decades—the era distinguished by the increasingly affordable longdistance travel and global communication via the internet. 15. R. Gittins, ‘IR revolutions have spun out enough change’, The Age, 27 July 2013, http://www.theage.com.au/business/ir-revolutions-havespun-out-enough-change-20130726-2qppe.html. 16. M. Fullilove and C. Flutter, Diaspora: the world -wide web of Australians, Lowy Institute Paper 04, 2004. 17. Ibid. 18. J-A Davies, ‘High Anxiety’, ‘Good Weekend’ (The Saturday Age), 14 July 2012, pp. 12-15. 19. R.A. Cummins, ‘The domains of life satisfaction: an attempt to order chaos’, Social Indicators Research 38: 303-28, 1996. 20. The Guardian, ‘Is There a Proven Link Between Housing and Happiness?’ Guardian Professional, by B. Tunstall, 6 June 2012, at http://www.guardian.co.uk/housing-network/2012/iun/06/linkbetween-housing-and-happiness 21. J. Kemeny, The Great Australian Nightmare: A Critique of the Homeownership, Melbourne: Georgian House, 1983. 22. R. Boyd, The Australian Ugliness, Melbourne: Penguin Books, 1960. 23. Manufactured in Adelaide by Lance Hills since 1945. 24. Long, L. (1991) ‘Residential Mobility Differences among Developed Countries’ International Regional Science Review 14: 133-47; ABS, Residential and Workplace Mobility, and Implications for Travel: NSW and Vic., Cat. 3240.0, October 2008. 25. The concept of housing career does not make much sense in continental Europe where people, in spite of comparative affluence, are less mobile and more attached to their properties, cities and regions than


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the inhabitants of the ‘New World’ (Andreotti and Le Gales 2008). In addition, rental leases in continental European countries typically extend into decades, in contrast to Australia’s 6 or 12 months leases. 26. ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) (2013), Background Briefing, Radio National, at http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/ programs/backgroundbriefmg/2013-08-18/4884162. 18 Aug 2013. 27. V. Colic-Peisker and G. Johnson, ‘Security and Anxiety of Homeownership: Perceptions of Middle-class Australians’, Housing Theory and Society, 27(4): 351-71, 2010; ABC 2013. 28. R. Wilkinson and K. Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, London: Penguin, 2010; see also J. Eyles and A. Williams, eds. (2008), Sense of Place, Health and Quality of Life, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. 29. V. Colic-Peisker, ‘Free Floating in the Cosmopolis? Identity-belonging of Transnational Knowledge Workers’, Global Networks 10(4): 467-88, 2010. 30. A. Maslow, Motivation and Personality, New York: Harper and Row, 1970. 31. DIAC (Department of Immigration and Citizenship), Working Holiday Maker visa Program Report, 2003, at http://www.immi.gov.au/media/ statistics/ 32. G. Simmel, G, ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’, in D. Levine (ed.) Georg Simmel, Chicago: Chicago University Press, pp. 324-39, 1903/71. 33. B. Goodall, Dictionary of Human Geography, London: Penguin, 1987. 34. Jacobs 1961; J-F. Kelly, P. Breadon, C. Davis, A. Hunter, P. Mares, D. Mullerworth, B. Weidmann, Social Cities, Report, Melbourne: Grattan Institute, March 2012. 35. Kelly et al. 2012. 36. Bauman 2007; Sennett 1998. 37. S. Best, ‘Liquid Terrorism: Altruistic Fundamentalism in the Context of Liquid Modernity’, Sociology 44: 678, 2010. 38. J. K. Galbraith The Affluent Society (3rd revd. edn.), London: Deutsch, p. 197, 1975. 39. According to J. Piexoto, ‘The international mobility of highly skilled workers in transnational corporations: The Macro and Micro factors of the organizational migration of cadres’, International Migration Review, 35(4): 1030-54, 2001, p. 1039. 40. Z. Gille and S.O. Riain, ‘Global ethnography’, Annual Review of Sociology, p. 296, 2002.

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41. R. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York, Simon and Schuster, 2000, p. 27. 42. Wilkinson and Pickett 2010. 43. Z. Bauman, Z., Liquid Life, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005, p. 78. 44. J.E. Stiglitz, A. Sen, and J.P. Fitoussi, Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, a report commissioned by the French government, at http ://www. sti glitz-senfitoussi.fr/documents/rapport anglais.pdf 2009, p. 51. 45. Australian Productivity Commission, Social Capital: Reviewing the Concept and its Policy Implications, Research Paper, Canberra: AusInfo, 2003. 46. The study was funded by Scanlon Foundation, Melbourne, a charitable foundation focused on funding research and community initiatives supporting diversity and social cohesion. The study was conducted by RMIT University researchers in collaboration with the City of Moreland. Full info and report can be accessed at http://www.rmit. edu.au/globalism/publications/reports

References ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) (2013), Background Briefing, Radio National, 18 August, at http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/ programs/backgroundbriefing/2013-08-18/4884162. ——— (2008), Residential and Workplace Mobility, and Implications for Travel: NSW and Vic., Cat. 3240.0, October. Australian Bureau of Statistics (2013), Overseas Arrivals and Departures, Australia, Cat. 3401.0, June, Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics. Andreotti, A. and P. Le Galès (2008), ‘Middle Class Neighbourhood Attachment in Paris and Milan: Partial Exit and Profound Rootedness’, in T. Blokland and M. Savage, Networked Urbanism: Social Capital in the City, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 127-43. Australian Productivity Commission (2003), Social Capital: Reviewing the Concept and its Policy Implications, Research Paper, Canberra: AusInfo. Bauman, Z. (2005), Liquid Life, Cambridge: Polity Press. ——— (2007), Liquid Times, Cambridge: Polity Press. Best, S. (2010), ‘Liquid Terrorism: Altruistic Fundamentalism in the Context of Liquid Modernity’, Sociology, 44: 678 Bourdieu, P. (1986), ‘The Forms of Capital’, in Social Capital: Critical Perspectives, eds. S. Baron, J. Field and T. Schuller, Oxford: Oxford University Press.


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Boyd, R. (1960), The Australian Ugliness, Melbourne: Penguin Books. Coleman, J.S. (1988), ‘Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital’, American Journal of Sociology, 94: 95-121. Colic-Peisker, V. (2010), ‘Free Floating in the Cosmopolis? Identitybelonging of Transnational Knowledge Workers’, Global Networks 10(4): 467-88. Colic-Peisker, V. and G. Johnson (2010), ‘Security and Anxiety of Homeownership: Perceptions of Middle-class Australians’, Housing Theory and Society, 27(4): 351–71. Cummins, R.A. (1996), ‘The Domains of Life Satisfaction: An Attempt to Order Chaos’, Social Indicators Research, 38: pp. 303-28. Davies, J.A. (2012), ‘High Anxiety’, ‘Good Weekend’ (The Saturday Age), 14 July, pp. 12-15. DIAC (Department of Immigration and Citizenship) (2013), Working Holiday Maker Visa Program Report, at http://www.immi.gov.au/ media/statistics/. Eyles, J. and A. Williams, (eds.) (2008), Sense of Place, Health and Quality of Life, Aldershot: Ashgate. Fullilove, M. and C. Flutter (2004), Diaspora: The World Wide Web of Australians, Lowy Institute Paper 04, Double Bay, NSW: Longueville Media. Galbraith, J.K. (1975), The Affluent Society (3rd revised edition), London: Deutsch. Gille, Z. and S.O. Riain (2002), ‘Global Ethnography’, Annual Review of Sociology, 271-96. Gittins, R. (2013), ‘IR Revolutions have Spun Out Enough Change’, The Age, 27 July, at http://www.theage.com.au/business/ir-revolutionshave-spun-out-enough-change-20130726-2qppe.html Goodall, B. (1987), Dictionary of Human Geography, London: Penguin. Guardian (2012), ‘Is there a proven link between housing and happiness?’, Guardian Professional, B. Tunstall, 6 June, at http://www.guardian. co.uk/housing-network/2012/jun/06/link-between-hosuing-andhappiness Hobsbawm, E. (1994), The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-1991, London: Michael Joseph. Hugo, G. (2006), ‘An Australian Diaspora?’ International Migration 44(1): 105-33. Hugo, G. and K. Harris (2011), Population Distribution Effects of Migration in Australia, Research Report for Department of Immigration and

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Citizenship, March 2001, at http://www.immi.gov.au/media/ publications/research/migration-in-australia/ Jacobs, J. (1961), The Death and Life of Great American Cities, New York: Random House. Kelly, J.F., P. Breadon, C. Davis, A. Hunter, P. Mares, D. Mullerworth, B. Weidmann (2012), Social Cities, Report, March 2012, Melbourne: Grattan Institute. Kemeny, J. (1983), The Great Australian nightmare: A Critique of the HomeOwnership, Melbourne: Georgian House. Long, L. (1991), ‘Residential Mobility Differences among Developed Countries’ International Regional Science Review 14: 133-47. Maslow, A.H. (1970), Motivation and Personality, New York: Harper and Row. Merton, R.K. (1957), Social Theory and Social Structure, Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press. Piexoto, J. (2001), ‘The International Mobility of Highly Skilled Workers in Transnational Corporations: The Macro and Micro Factors of the Organizational Migration of Cadres’, International Migration Review, 35(4): 1030-54. Portes, A. (1998), ‘Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology’, Annual Review of Sociology 24(1): 1-14. Putnam, R. (2000), Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York, Simon and Schuster. Putnam, R.D. (2007), E pluribus unum: Diversity and Community in the 21st Century’, The 2006 Johan Skytte prize lecture, Scandinavian Political Studies 30(2): 137-74. Sennett, R. (1998), The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, New York, London: W.W. Norton and Company. Simmel, G. (1903-71), ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’, in D. Levine (ed.), Georg Simmel, Chicago: Chicago University Press, pp. 324-39. Stiglitz, J.E., A. Sen, and J.P. Fitoussi (2009), Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, a report commissioned by the French government, at http://www.stiglitz-senfitoussi.fr/documents/rapport_anglais.pdf Tunstall, B. (2012), ‘Is There a Proven Link Between Housing and Happiness?’ Guardian Professional, 6 June, at http://www.guardian. co.uk/housing-network/jun/06/link-between-housing-andhappiness


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Wilkinson, Richard and Kate Pickett (2010), The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone, London: Penguin. Wood, G., V. Colic-Peisker, M. Berry and R. Ong (2010), Asset-Poverty and Older Australians’ Transitions onto Housing Assistance Programs, AHURI Final Report No. 156, November at www.ahuri.edu.au. Zukin, S. (1998), ‘Urban Lifestyles: Diversity and Standardization in Spaces of Consumption’, Urban Studies 35(5-6): 825-39.

C h a p t e r 10

Melbourne: The Stigma of Homelessness and the Search for Community1 Chris Chamberlain and Guy Johnson

Introduction In 2012, Melbourne was ranked as the world’s most liveable city in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s survey of 140 cities around the world.2 This was the second year in a row that Melbourne had won first place, ahead of Vienna in second place, and Vancouver in third. Cities are judged on thirty factors across five categories: stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure. Melbourne rated perfect scores for infrastructure, healthcare and education, only losing marks for climate, petty crime and culture. With a population of four million, Melbourne is a liveable city and a prosperous one where most people are home owners. The aspiration to own your own home is part of the ‘Great Australian Dream’. Around 70 per cent of Melbournians own or are purchasing their home and the majority live in detached suburban houses. About one-quarter of the population live in rental accommodation and this is traditionally a forerunner to homeownership. While houses and apartments vary in size and quality, most households have relatively

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spacious accommodation and most (96 per cent) dwellings have two or more bedrooms.3 Nonetheless, like most large cities, Melbourne has a problem with homelessness. Data from the 2006 census indicated that there were 14,500 homeless people in Melbourne on census night.4 This research used the cultural definition of homelessness to enumerate the homeless population.5 The definition counts people as homeless if they are sleeping rough, staying temporarily with friends and relatives (and reporting ‘no usual address’), using emergency accommodation or living in boarding houses. To be homeless in Melbourne is to be an outsider with a stigmatized identity. David Farrugia argues that popular typifications portray homeless people as ‘dirty, obscene, irresponsible, dangerous or passive, and are morally and ontologically inferior’.6 Farrugia believes that homeless people have a low sense of self-worth and feel ashamed of their situation. For example, Mallett and colleagues found that homeless youth often blamed themselves or their families for experiencing homelessness.7 Similarly, Parker and Fopp found that Australian women living in homeless accommodation services tended to blame themselves for their homelessness. According to Farrugia, homeless people have low self-esteem which is a consequence of the ‘symbolic burden of homelessness’. In a classic study, Erving Goffman referred to people in this situation as having a ‘stigmatized’ identity.10 This is where others perceive them to have characteristics that are ‘deeply discrediting’. When someone possesses a stigmatized identity, the individual will usually be denied full social acceptance, often resulting in an acute loss of social status and exclusion from the mainstream community. The stigmatized are shunned by other people and their sense of selfworth is low. The purpose of this chapter is to investigate how homeless people deal with the negative effects of stigma and how they search for community when they are excluded from the mainstream. The focus is on the different strategies that people use to manage the symbolic burden of homelessness. The common thread that underpins the analysis is that irrespective of how people manage stigma, it is always part of a broader search for community and a sense of belonging.

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While community remains a somewhat elusive concept, homeless people search for a sense of identity with other people that can mitigate some of the damaging effects of living with a stigmatized identity. In thinking about stigma and community in this way, we emphasize the active role that people play in making sense of their worlds. For this analysis we construct five ideal typical pathways into adult (defined as 21 or older) homelessness which are referred to as housing crisis, family breakdown, youth to adult, substance abuse and mental health. Authors such as Anderson and Tulloch, Crane, Fitzpatrick and Clapham have used the metaphor of a homeless pathway to draw attention to the fact that homelessness is best understood as a process that allows us to locate an individual’s experience of homelessness in the context of their life history.11 An ideal type is a construct that abstracts key features of a phenomenon, so that the core characteristics of a social arrangement (or institution) can be seen more clearly.12 The chapter also distinguishes between homeless ‘biographies’ and homeless ‘pathways’. A homeless biography is an account of an individual’s journey through homelessness, whereas a homeless pathway is an analytical construction which maps an ideal typical route through homelessness.13 Ford and his colleagues note: ‘Only in exceptional circumstances will a particular (homeless) biography coincide perfectly with a particular ideal type pathway’.14 People were classified into five different pathways, but this does not mean that their journeys through homelessness resembled an ideal typical pathway in all respects. First, we examine the experiences of those on the youth to adult and substance abuse pathways. People on these pathways often seek the companionship of other people in the homeless subculture who accept illicit drug use. These relationships provide a sense of community because people hang out together, share practical information and resources, and develop routines around raising money, scoring and using. In this way, the stigma of homelessness is lessened and a sense of community is created. Next we examine the experiences of people on family breakdown and housing crisis pathways. Both groups deflect the stigma attached

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to homelessness by distancing themselves from other homeless people. They continue to identify with the mainstream community and they do not feel a sense of belonging in the homeless subculture. Thus, it is easier for them to return to conventional accommodation. Finally, we consider those on the mental health pathway. People on this pathway are marginalized in the mainstream community because they have the dual stigma of mental illness and homelessness. Thus, many of them try to find belonging within the homeless subculture. Nonetheless, they are marginalized by other homeless people because of their mental health status. They are treated as outcasts and they often have no close friends. People on this pathway are isolated and alone.

Methodology The research was carried out at two high-volume services in inner Melbourne. Both agencies are generalist services that work with people who are ‘at risk’ of homelessness, as well as those who are actually homeless. The agencies work with a cross-section of homeless adults, but women escaping domestic violence were underrepresented because they often go to specialist services. A case file was kept on every client and we obtained permission to read these case files from our university ethics committee. The number of homeless people depends on the definition of homelessness that is employed. We used the ‘cultural definition of homelessness’ to enumerate the homeless population.15 We examined 5,526 case histories over an 18-month period. In this paper we are only interested in homeless adults aged 21 or older and we had information on 3,941 people. There were more men than women in the sample (70 per cent compared to 30 per cent). Just under half of the homeless (48 per cent) were aged between 21 and 34 years; another 30 per cent were aged 35 to 44 years and 22 per cent were 45 years or older. Nearly everyone (97 per cent) was either unemployed or not in the labour force. Most people were single (82 per cent), 8 per cent were with a partner and 10 per cent were in a family (at least one adult aged 18 or older and one child aged 17 or younger).

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Next we explain how we identified the five pathways. The databases at both agencies were compiled by many different workers over long periods of time. It might be argued that housing workers are not trained social scientists and their records cannot be used to ascertain pathways into homelessness. In fact, the housing workers at these agencies were good at recording details about clients’ housing histories and immediate needs. Workers knew from experience that it is inappropriate to ask clients to re-tell their stories each time they come to a service. Records were kept so that they remembered what clients had told them, and so that they could work with clients who had previously been assisted by someone else. At a client’s first contact, the staff endeavoured to make a broad assessment of the various factors that resulted in the person becoming homeless. It was recorded if a person had been evicted for non-payment of rent, or left home because of domestic violence, or if mental health or substance abuse issues had been involved. Housing workers also asked people their age when they first became homeless. If they were 18 or younger, we coded this as youth to adult pathway. For the remainder of the sample, we used information from the initial assessment, sometimes combined with information from other parts of the case history, to assess each person’s pathway into homelessness. We also undertook 65 in-depth interviews to supplement our analysis. Agency staff recruited people who were or had been homeless and were willing to participate in the study. Approval was obtained from our university ethics committee. A cross-section of homeless people using the agencies was interviewed and they matched the main sample in terms of basic social characteristics such as age, gender and household type. On average the interviews lasted an hour and they were tape-recorded and transcribed for qualitative analysis. People’s names and various personal details have been changed to ensure confidentiality. We illustrate the five ideal typical pathways using quotations from the interviews, rather than case notes, because interviews convey people’s experience in their own words. Often, we use only one or two quotations to illustrate a particular point. However, it must be remembered that the selection of interview data was informed by

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reading more than 5,000 case files, including at least 450 case files on each pathway.

Youth to Adult The first route into homelessness was the youth to adult pathway. The adults on this pathway were aged 21 or older, but they first became homeless when they were 18 or younger. Table 10.1 shows that this was the largest pathway, accounting for 35 per cent of the sample. Forty-two per cent of those who made the transition from youth to adult homelessness had been in the state care and protection system. All had traumatic family experiences, including sexual and physical abuse, parental drug addiction and family violence. These young people already carried the stigma that they were from ‘dysfunctional’ families. The stigma of homelessness was an extra burden that they had to manage. Young people who had not been in the state care and protection system left home for more diverse reasons. For some, conflict at home emerged when they challenged what they perceived to be excessive parental control. Some adolescents rebelled against parents who held authoritarian views and restricted their children’s choices. In many cases, the conflict was between young people and step-parents and sometimes violence was involved. In other cases, a biological parent ejected their son or daughter, following a major family dispute. Whatever shape family conflict takes, young people who become homeless have to deal with the fact that they believe they are looked down upon by other people. Belinda said: ‘Yeah, I felt judged by the Table 10.1: Pathways into Adult Homelessness Youth to adult Housing crisis Substance abuse Mental health Family breakdown Other Total

N 1,382 732 654 631 453 89 3,941

per cent 35 19 17 16 11 2 100

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community . . . judged by my Nanna’s friends, judged by my friends . . . I was the homeless girl who couldn’t stay at school.’ Helmut told us that when he walked down the street: ‘Normal people knew I was homeless. . . . They look down on you. . . . They look at you like you’re a piece of shit.’ Homelessness is a highly stigmatized identity in Australia and young people are acutely aware that in the eyes of the broader community they are ‘right at the bottom of the fucking barrel’ (Doug). Young people also have to deal with the feelings of isolation and rejection as a consequence of family breakdown. Most start to mix with other homeless people to help counteract loneliness. Through these casual friendships they also obtained practical information about how to survive homelessness, such as where to get food and emergency accommodation. Tanya found out: ‘where to have lunch, where to have tea or if you want to grab some food vouchers go to here or go to there. That sort of thing’. These relationships served other purposes. For example, newcomers learnt how to handle themselves in difficult circumstances. People reported that learning what ‘not to do’ is of crucial importance. Joan was told ‘not to sleep alone for starters’, while Ken learnt when to ‘keep his mouth shut’. Young people began learning the rules when they were in refuges and other forms of short-term accommodation.16 Smith argues that: Life in services for homeless people and on the streets, where respondents met other homeless people, is an important part of the process whereby respondents both moved into a lifestyle and a culture of homelessness and picked up information needed to survive. This theme of companionship and learning the ropes from other homeless people is repeated throughout the interviews.17

For many young people drug use is commonly a form of ‘initiation’ or a ‘rite of passage’ into the homeless subculture.18 Tess said she started using heroin ‘because everybody was using smack’. Joan was explicit about the influence of homeless peers in her starting to use illicit drugs: ‘Just peer pressure, I suppose. People around me were doing it and I wanted to fit in’.

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By engaging in the social practices of the homeless subculture and interacting with others who also have substance use problems, newly homeless people start to feel part of a community.19 According to Auerswald and Eyre, drug use is an important way that young people affirm their identity ‘as an insider to street culture’. When this happens, young people have typically severed their connections with the mainstream community and their social networks are increasingly composed of other homeless people.21 Kylie told us that it did not take long before she knew: ‘a whole network of people . . . so you knew where the squats were . . . you had a community around you’. Young people always strive for a sense of belonging. As Goffman noted: ‘Without something to belong to, we have no stable self . . . Our sense of being a person comes from being drawn into a wider social unit’. By engaging in the social practices of the homeless subculture, young people experience a sense of camaraderie and a sense of interpersonal validation.23 Joan said: ‘I get along better with other homeless people. I don’t know why. I’m more comfortable with people who have had a tough time.’ Mixing with other homeless people also helps to counteract loneliness and isolation and provide people with a sense of belonging. Palik said: ‘You knew where the squats were so you always found somewhere to sleep . . . people you shared values with, ideas, dreams.’ At this stage, young people had neutralized the stigma attached to homelessness and found community within the homeless subculture.

Substance Abuse Substance ‘abuse’ occurs when drug use dominates a person’s life at the expense of other activities and has negative mental and/or physical side-effects. Seventeen per cent of the sample had substance abuse issues prior to becoming homeless (Table 10.1). People on the substance abuse pathway often started using drugs in their teens or early twenties, but sustained a casual habit for some years. It was only when ‘recreational’ substance use turned into substance ‘abuse’ that people encountered difficulties maintaining their housing.

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People with substance abuse issues often find it difficult to maintain employment and it is common for them to lose their jobs. For example, Cynthia was a hairdresser working in a regional city. After dabbling in drugs for a number of years, she was introduced to heroin by her boyfriend. Gradually, her heroin use burgeoned out of control and her work ‘started to get messy’. Cynthia left before she was sacked, but in a country town rumours spread quickly and she was unable to find alternative employment. When people lose their employment, it is the loss of income that has the biggest impact. People start to look for alternative sources of income to support their habit. The ‘business of raising money’ has a significant influence on people’s day-to-day lives, because the cost of illicit drugs is high and people on low incomes have to devote large amounts of time to securing money.25 Everything else tends to fall by the wayside besides raising money and ‘scoring’. People use a range of strategies to raise money, including borrowing money from friends and relatives. Borrowing money usually strained friendships to breaking point. Tony’s best friend tried to help but eventually: ‘He said I only see you when you want money. And it was true. I always made up lies to borrow money. Eventually he stopped lending me money’. When existing friends would no longer assist, other friends and acquaintances were approached. Tony said: ‘I tried everyone I could think of but no-one would lend me money’. Gradually, his friends stopped coming to see him as a result of his continuing demands. Many substance abusers asked their families for money, but when children failed to repay debts or stole money it put acute pressure on parents. Toby said: ‘I burnt my bridges with my family. I did some really shitty things’. Some breached family rules or behaved badly. Bert said: ‘One night when I was off my face I fell over in the laundry. I reached out for the sink and I ended up pulling the boiler over. That was it. My father said “get out”.’ Snow and Anderson point out that the erosion of support networks is: ‘. . . critical in the determination of homelessness. A person does not become homeless . . . simply because he or she is an alcoholic, but because these disabilities exhaust the patience or resources otherwise available in one’s social networks’.26

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Once the support of family and friends collapses, people on the substance abuse pathway are disconnected from their community and homelessness follows fairly quickly. People on the substance abuse pathway were acutely aware that being homeless was a devalued social identity. Santina told us about friends she’d known for 10 years who ‘didn’t want me staying at their house’. She also reported that people ‘look through you as though you’re not even there’. People were also acutely aware that being drug dependent was a devalued social identity. Ari told us: ‘The minute people find out you’re a drug addict, you’re a write off ’. People on the substance abuse pathway moved into the homeless subculture easily because most started to engage with other homeless substance users, including many who had come into the homeless population on different pathways. Table 10.2 shows about onefifth of those on a family breakdown and a mental health pathway developed substance abuse problems after becoming homeless, as did 63 per cent of those on a youth to adult pathway. Most people with substance abuse issues use boarding houses on a regular basis. Boarding houses are an integral part of the system of emergency accommodation in Australia’s major cities. In boarding houses, there is widespread acceptance of drug use as a normal recreational activity and drugs are hard to avoid. When illicit drug use is normalized, people no longer feel judged by other people. Michelle found some solace in the fact that: ‘At least other homeless people know how hard it is . . . I feel better with them because they don’t put me down . . . they know the shit I been through.’ John echoed the same theme: ‘Homeless people don’t stare down at you . . . they understand what it’s like and don’t judge you because of it.’ Table 10.2: Developed Substance Abuse Problem After Becoming Homeless, by Pathway

(in per cent)

Substance abuse

Housing Crisis (N=732)

Family breakdown (N=453)

Mental Health (N=631)

4

17

23

Youth to Other Total Adult (N=1382) (N=89) (N=3287) 63

4

34

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Homeless drug users often form friendships with other people in boarding houses and seek support from them as a way of dealing with stigma, but these relationships also reinforce their status as outsiders. While the homeless subculture can provide a non-stigmatizing reference group for homeless drug users, there is often an undercurrent of mistrust and violence, that runs through these relationships. Most people recognized that their friendships were fairly superficial. For example, Peter said: ‘With these people you can’t make true friends’. Others alluded to the fact that sometimes people feigned friendship when they were just as likely to ‘rip you off ’. According to Mick: ‘Sometimes you might think you’ve been befriended by somebody but it was really because they’re going to rip you off or something like that’. Palik first became homeless as a teenager, but subsequently developed a heroin addiction. He said that many relationships in boarding houses were based around ‘scoring’ and ‘using’: ‘I had a roof over my head, but I was more frightened in there than when I was on the streets. . . . There were all these big dudes. . . . There was nothing I could talk to them about apart from drugs. The only thing we had in common was heroin.’ Many people were ambivalent about their friendships with other homeless people. On the one hand, these friendships provided them with important support and personal validation, yet they also knew that friends could sometimes turn on one another, with surprising viscousness and little warning. Ted saw a fight in a boarding house: ‘They were smashing his head into the bricks. Then they got into a circle and started kicking him’. People on the substance abuse pathway often seek the companionship of other people in the homeless subculture who accept illicit drug use. These relationships provide a way of mitigating some of the stigmatizing effects of being homeless and drug dependent. They also provide a sense of community because people hang out together, share resources and develop routines around raising money, scoring and using. In this way, the stigma of homelessness is lessened and a sense of belonging is created. Nonetheless, this is a community where there is often an undercurrent of mistrust and violence. Most of the friendships are relatively superficial and they do not resemble the idealized sense of community embodied in popular culture.

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Housing Crisis and Family Breakdown One-third (30 per cent) of the sample became homeless because of a housing crisis or a family breakdown (Table 10.1). People on the housing crisis pathway had typically experienced some form a financial crisis that precipitated their homelessness but these crises took many forms. Low-income households often experience financial hardship and have to decide which bills to pay. Andrea’s situation was typical. She had to ‘pay all of these bills. I had no food. There were school costs . . . there was not enough money to pay everything’. For others it was the loss of a job, or the collapse of a small business, that brought on the financial crisis. A common response was to try to reduce household expenses, but low-income households often have little scope to make savings. Most people fought to maintain their housing using a variety of strategies such as borrowing money from family and friends, using credit cards, leaving bills unpaid and selling household goods. However, some families were overwhelmed by a series of problems, or a sustained ‘reversal of fortune’.29 What characterized the experiences of people on the housing crisis pathway was that their poor financial position eventually resulted in homelessness. The second pathway was family breakdown where there were two typical patterns. One pattern was family breakdown because of domestic violence. In most cases, it were women and children who left the family home. For many women verbal abuse preceded the onset of physical violence, but when partners became violent, relationships based on affection and cooperation were transformed into relationships based on fear and coercion. June told us, ‘He was my first true love, but holding on to him was killing me.’ Some women returned home after their partners had promised that there would be no more violence. However, in many cases, the violent behaviour recurred and the women left home permanently. The second form of family breakdown did not involve domestic violence. Typically, the relationship had failed and the male partner was ejected from the family home. In some cases, men took the family car and they slept in their vehicle before finding emergency accommodation. In other cases, men appeared to have few resources.

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For example, Tom became homeless following the breakdown of his marriage. For the first three nights he slept on the streets, before finding a room in a boarding house. A few weeks later he was evicted for non-payment of rent. Most people on the housing crisis and family breakdown pathways were acutely aware of the stigma attached to being homeless and they did not want friends or family to know about their situation. This was often achieved by withholding information from friends and relatives. For example, Firass had become homeless because of a housing crisis. He said: ‘I didn’t want to burden other people with what was happening to me. . . . You don’t want people to know that you’re homeless because they will judge you.’ Similarly, Spencer said: ‘I could have told people but I was too proud to do that. I decided that I’ll battle this out for myself.’ Of course, managing information about one’s predicament is not always easy. Carole told us that when people asked why she had household possessions in her car, she used to laugh and say: ‘I’d just say I’m moving in to a new place. I’m just waiting to find the right one’. Another way people on the housing crisis and family breakdown pathways controlled information about their situation was to reduce their contact with friends and relatives. This was a common strategy but it created a dilemma. People on these pathways remained symbolically attached to the mainstream community, but they became increasingly isolated from friends, relatives and neighbours as their contacts with their community dissipated. Some people came into contact with the homelessness service system because they requested emergency accommodation. Here they met other people who treated them as homeless, even though they rarely thought about themselves in this way. This created a profound tension between their self-identity as ‘normal citizens’ and their realization that others saw them differently. One strategy that people employed to protect their self-identity as ‘normal citizens’ was to keep their distance from other homeless people. For example, Dale lived in a boarding house, but he kept ‘himself to himself ’ and did not make friends with other residents: ‘Most of them were just alcoholics, druggies, no brains, no nothing.

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They were quite happy with their situation . . . I always had an aim.’ Another example is Jill who became homeless because of an abusive relationship. She made it clear that she was very different from other homeless people: ‘I didn’t have anything to do with that type of person. I didn’t want them around me because most of them use drugs . . . I’ve got higher standards than that . . . and morals . . . I was educated.’ The clear inference in Dale and Jill’s comments is that homeless people are morally deficient or inferior in some way. The prejudicial attitudes that people on both pathways had towards the homeless meant that most were reluctant to form friendships with other homeless people. They perceived ‘homelessness’ to be a stigmatized identity in the wider society, and they wanted to make it clear that they did not have the same personal qualities as the homeless. A second strategy that people employed to distance themselves from other homeless people was to use ‘disidentifiers’. Disidentifiers are actions, behaviours or attitudes that signal that the person is not a member of the stigmatized group. Most people on the housing crisis and family breakdown pathway chose disidentifiers that were based on stereotypes about homeless people. For example, Terry commented that he was ‘not one of them’ because: ‘. . . of the way I dress and the way I conduct myself. Homeless people tend to dress down and not to be clean.’ Dale said: ‘I always had a shower and a shave every day. I kept up appearances . . . always neat and tidy. Most people would never have thought I was homeless.’ People on the housing crisis and family breakdown pathways consciously adopted disidentifiers to protect their self-identity as ‘normal citizens’. This illustrates how those who are stigmatized can sometimes ‘artfully dodge or constructively challenge stigmatizing processes’.28 The symbolic burden of homelessness is heavy, but people on the housing crisis and family breakdown pathways deflected the stigma attached to homelessness and still identified with the mainstream community. One consequence was that they did not develop a sense of ‘community’ or ‘belonging’ in the homeless subculture. In contrast, people on the substance abuse and youth to adult pathways felt a sense of ‘community’ with other homeless people

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with whom they shared social practices and recreational activities. These practices such as raising money, scoring and using make it difficult to get out of homelessness. Table 10.3 shows that 85 per cent of those on the youth to adult pathway had been homeless for one year or longer, as had 72 per cent on the substance use pathway. In contrast, only about 35 per cent of those on housing crisis and family breakdown pathways had been homeless for one year or longer (Table 10.3). It was easier for them to return to conventional accommodation if their financial situation changed, or if they were provided with support to find housing, because they had not developed a sense of community with other homeless people.

Mental Health Sixteen per cent of the sample had mental health issues prior to becoming homeless (Table 10.1). However, those who were aged 24 or younger when they first became homeless had different experiences from those who were aged 25 or older. Young people often find it difficult to maintain friendships when mental health problems emerge and they rely increasingly on their families. Previous research has found that families offer a foundation for survival by ‘providing material necessities like a place to live, food, transportation to and from activities’.29 Families also provide emotional support for young people and can encourage them to pursue recreational activities. However, some families find it difficult to deal with their children’s behaviour, especially if the young person has excessive mood swings or other inappropriate forms of behaviour. Tamara told us: ‘Mum Table 10.3: Duration of Homelessness Housing Family Subtstance Crisis breakdown Abuse (N=732) (N=453) (N=654) One year or longer

32

38

72

(in per cent)

Mental Youth to Total Health Adult (N=631) (N=1,382) (N=3941) 76

85

65

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couldn’t cope with me . . . she would come home and just see me getting worse. It was really tense and there were heaps of problems.’ Tensions between family members often increased and some young people were evicted: ‘The situation at home got so bad that my whole family wanted nothing to do with me . . . like they even changed the locks (Tamara).’ The second pattern on the mental health pathway occurred when people were 25 or older. This group first developed mental health issues in their late teens or early twenties, but had received ongoing family support while their parents were alive. They often became homeless in their thirties or forties, following the death or incapacity of an elderly parent. After Amelia’s parents died, her brother and sister-in-law: ‘. . . didn’t want me to stay with them. They had their reasons, I suppose. You could tell they were worried about having me there . . . they thought I might do something crazy.’ Some people on the mental health pathway experienced rejection by family members as particularly hurtful and they were acutely aware of stigma. Malcolm said: ‘It’s hard not to feel the stigma of mental illness when you’ve been in a psyche ward for seven days I can tell you’. They were also aware that ‘homelessness’ was a stigmatized identity and they lacked confidence dealing with other people: According to Nick: ‘I felt like I had a flashing beacon on the front of my head. . . . People in suits would look at me like I was some scum bastard . . . I just felt terrible.’ People on the mental health pathway were isolated in the mainstream community and they did not double up with friends or relatives when they lost their accommodation. Table 10.4 shows that 90 per cent had been accommodated in a boarding house and some Table 10.4: Been in a Boarding House by Age First Homeless (in per cent)

Been in a boarding house

Age 12 to 24 (N=228)

Age 25 or Older (N=336)

All* (N=564)

91

90

90

*Information on 89 per cent of cases.

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in the older age group had been in and out of boarding houses over many years. At first, people with mental health issues did search for community and new friends within the homeless subculture, but they were often denigrated as ‘crazies’ by other boarding house residents or ‘picked on’ because of their vulnerability. For example, Rosa felt: ‘very scared . . . a number of blokes tried to come on to me for sex. It was awful’. Brian said: ‘I was paranoid and scared. I was just worried that someone was going to hurt me’. Over time, people with mental health issues developed strategies to protect themselves, including routines to minimize their exposure to other homeless people. Heinz said: ‘I would go to the local library. . . . They have free internet and free newspapers. I could read in there.’ Some people employed strategies such as avoiding communal kitchens at meal times. Other strategies included sleeping rough if violence in the boarding house got out of hand. According to Thompson et al., the development of these survival strategies can further ‘alienate the individual from . . . their social networks’.30 Not only does this reduce the quality of their life, but it can also ‘exacerbate existing disorders’.31 The lack of interaction with other homeless people was a characteristic of this group and their social isolation was particularly severe. People on the mental health pathway withdrew in order to reduce the possibility of being exploited or assaulted, but they also withdrew to distance themselves from other homeless people. As Rosa put it: ‘I had nothing in common with those people. I tried to have nothing to do with them’. They differentiated themselves from other homeless people by drawing on stereotypes about the homeless. According to Heinz: ‘I had absolutely nothing in common with them. . . . They were all druggies and alcoholics. . . . They had either got out of jail or were going to jail.’ Moreover, they often distanced themselves from people with mental health issues. According to Christos: ‘Some of them have psychosis, bipolar and schizophrenia. I have nothing in common with those people.’ A common argument in the sociological literature is that the longer people remain in the homeless population, the more likely they are to identify with other homeless people. This is sometimes

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known as the cultural identification thesis32 or the social adaptation account.33 This argument is plausible for those on the youth to adult and substance abuse pathways, but it does not explain the experiences of those on the mental health pathway. People with mental health issues are marginalized by other homeless people because of their mental health status. They develop routines that emphasize their outsider status and they often have no close friends. People on the mental health pathway do not find community within the homeless subculture and they remain isolated and alone.

Conclusion As we have seen, Melbourne is a prosperous city where the symbols of affluence are all around. Most Melbournian’s enjoy good health and quality education, have high rates of employment and social participation, and most live in comfortable, detached suburban homes with at least one vehicle in the driveway. Not surprisingly, homeless people in Melbourne are acutely aware that they do not have the material possessions and symbols of success that are common in the mainstream community. Homeless people reason that they sit at the bottom of the social ladder. They are acutely aware that popular typifications of the homeless portray them as either ‘mad’, ‘bad’, ‘sad’ or deserving of ‘pity’. Moreover, Australia is a society that puts a premium on individual achievement and homeless people realize that most people judge them as ‘failures’ and treat them as outsiders from the mainstream community. Thus, the devalued social identity attached to homelessness becomes an important prism through which the homeless interpret virtually all of the social interactions they have. The stigma of homelessness was a pervasive experience for most people in this sample, but they did not passively accept dominant cultural stereotypes about homeless people as either ‘mad’, ‘bad’ or ‘sad’. Our findings suggest that the homeless actively tried to make sense of their own social identity and to deal with the fact that they are marginalized in the mainstream community. They respond to the loss of social ties and stigmatization in a variety of ways, and this has

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much to do with what has happened to them in the past, and the social and cultural capital they have when they become homeless. People on the youth to adult and the substance abuse pathways often deal with their initial feelings of isolation and stigma by engaging with other homeless people. Through these relationships they access resources, learn survival strategies and engage in social practices that are accepted by others who are homeless. Through their emerging connections with other people in similar circumstances they become insiders in the homeless subculture. Being an insider helps to deal with society’s opprobrium at the same time as providing a sense of belonging. Contrary to the popular image of the homeless as isolated outsiders, people on these two pathways are often embedded in a complex web of social relationships. Nonetheless, this is a community where substance abuse is widespread and people can turn on one another with surprising viciousness. This is a community where there is often an undercurrent of mistrust and violence. In contrast, people on the housing crisis and family breakdown pathways aim to maintain their connection with the mainstream community. They try to deflect the stigma attached to homelessness by managing the flow of information about their circumstances and paying careful attention to the symbols which set them apart from the homeless. They seek to retain their connection to the mainstream by distancing themselves from other homeless people and by passing as ‘normal’.34 People on the mental health pathway are doubly stigmatized because of their mental health issues and their homelessness. Most have been marginalized within the mainstream community because of their mental illness. In addition, they have experienced rejection by other family members prior to becoming homeless. People on this pathway usually search for acceptance within the homeless subculture. However, they are often exploited or assaulted by other homeless people and they withdraw from social contact for selfprotection. In many ways this group fits the classical ‘skid row’ image of the homeless as chronically isolated and disaffiliated.35 This paper has shown that most people experience homelessness as a stigmatized identity, but they manage the symbolic burden of

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homelessness in different ways and with different consequences. However, despite the variation in how people respond to the stigma of homelessness, their actions are underpinned by the common desire to find acceptance. The desire to belong and to be accepted by other people provides the driving force that underpins the search for community. Most people do not want to be ‘outsiders’, excluded from meaningful social contacts. They want to feel accepted by those who are significant others in their lives, whether these are friends, relatives or neighbours. The symbolic burden of homelessness is real and most people strive to avoid isolation. Stigma and the fear of isolation are powerful forces that have a tangible impact on the way the homeless present themselves to others. Most homeless people want to be part of a community where they can be accepted and where they can belong.

Acknowledgments We thank the homeless people we interviewed. We also thank the staff at the Salvation Army Crisis Services (St Kilda) and Home Ground Services for their assistance. Financial support for the research came from an Australian Research Council Linkage grant (LP0560760).

Notes 1. This chapter draws on information first presented in: G. Johnson and C. Chamberlain, ‘From Youth to Adult Homelessness’, Australian Journal of Social Issues, vol. 43, no. 4, 2008, 563-82; G. Johnson and C. Chamberlain, ‘Homelessness and Substance Abuse: Which Comes First?’ Australian Social Work, vol. 61, no. 4, 2008, 342-56; and C. Chamberlain and G. Johnson, ‘Pathways into Adult Homelessness’, Journal of Sociology, vol. 49, no. 1, 2012, 60-77. 2. Economist Intelligence Unit, Global Liveability Report 2012, available at www.eiu.com 3. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Year Book Australia 2012, Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012, catalogue no. 1301.0. 4. C. Chamberlain and D. MacKenzie, Counting the Homeless 2006: Victoria, Canberra: Australian Institute for Health and Welfare, 2009, catalogue no. HOU 203.

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5. C. Chamberlain and D. MacKenzie, ‘Understanding Contemporary Homelessness: Issues of Definition and Meaning’, Australian Journal of Social Issues, vol. 27, no. 4, 1992, pp. 274-97. 6. D. Farrugia, ‘The Symbolic Burden of Homelessness: Towards a Theory of Youth Homelessness as Embodied Subjectivity’, Journal of Sociology, vol. 47, no. 1, 2011, p. 73. 7. S. Mallett, D. Rosenthal, D. Keys and R. Averill, Moving Out, Moving On: Young People’s Pathways in and through Homelessness, London and New York: Routledge, 2010. 8. S. Parker and R. Fopp, ‘“I’m a Slice of the Pie That’s Ostracised”: Foucault’s Technologies and Personal Agency in the Voice of Women who are Homeless’, Housing, Theory and Society, vol. 21, 2004, pp. 145-54. 9. Farrugia, ‘The Symbolic Burden of Homelessness’. 10. E. Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled identity, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963, p. 3. 11. I. Anderson and D. Tulloch, Pathways through Homelessness: A Review of the Research Evidence, Edinburgh: Scottish Homeless Task Force, 2000; M. Crane, Understanding Older Homeless People: Their Circumstances, Problems and Needs, Buckingham: Open University Press, 1999; S. Fitzpatrick, Young Homeless People, Basingstoke: MacMillan, 2000; D. Clapham, ‘Pathways Approaches to Homeless Research’, Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, vol. 13, 2003, pp. 119-27. 12. M. Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences, New York: The Free Press, 1949; J. McKinney, Constructive Typology and Social Theory, New York: Appleton-Century Crofts, 1966. 13. J. Ford, J. Rugg and R. Burrows, ‘Conceptualising the Contemporary Role of Housing in the Transition to Adult Life in England’, Urban Studies, vol. 39, no. 13, 2002, pp. 2455-67. 14. Ford, Rugg and Burrows, ‘Conceptualising the Contemporary Role of Housing’, p. 2463. 15. C. Chamberlain and D. MacKenzie, Counting the Homeless 2006, Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2008, catalogue no. 2050.0. 16. C. Hirst, Forced Exit: A Profile of the Young and Homeless in Inner Urban Melbourne, Melbourne: The Salvation Army, 1989; S. Mallett, D. Rosenthal and P. Myers, ‘Providing Services to Homeless Young People in Melbourne’, Youth Studies Australia, vol. 20, no. 4, 2001, pp. 26-33; G. Johnson, H. Gronda and S. Coutts, On the Outside: Pathways in and out of Homelessness, Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Press, 2008.

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17. J. Smith, Being Young and Homeless, Melbourne: The Salvation Army, 1995, p. 23. 18. Fitzpatrick, Young Homeless People; C. Auerswald and S. Eyre, ‘Youth Homelessness in San Francisco: A Life Cycle Approach’, Social Science and Medicine, vol. 54, 2002, pp. 1497-1512; S. Hartwell, ‘Deviance over the Life Course: The Case of Homeless Substance Abusers’, Substance Use and Misuse, vol. 38, nos. 3-6, 2003, pp. 475-502. 19. D. Snow and L. Anderson, Down on their Luck: A Study of Street Homeless People, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. 20. C. Auerswald and S. Eyre, ‘Youth Homelessness in San Francisco: A Life Cycle Approach’, Social Science and Medicine, vol. 54, 2002, p. 1503. 21. E. Rice, N. Milburn, M. Rotheram-Borus, S. Mallett and D. Rosenthal, ‘The Effects of Peer Group Network Properties on Drug Use Among Homeless Youth’, American Behavioural Scientist, vol. 48, no. 8, 2005, pp. 1102-23. 22. E. Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961, p. 280. 23. Snow and Anderson, Down on their Luck. 24. S. Mallett, J. Edwards, D. Keys, P. Myers and D. Rosenthal, Disrupting Stereotypes: Young People, Drug Use and Homelessness, Melbourne: Key Centre for Women’s Health in Society, The University of Melbourne, 2003. 25. J. Rowe, ‘Survival Strategies of the Homeless and Drug Dependent’, in Housing, Crime and Stronger Communities Conference, Melbourne, Australian Institute of Criminology and Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, 2002. 26. Snow and Anderson, Down on Their Luck, p. 256 27. P. Rossi, Down and Out in America: The Origins of Homelessness, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1989, p. 94. 28. B. Link and J. Phelan, ‘Conceptualizing Stigma’, American Review of Sociology, vol. 27, 2001, p. 378. 29. R. Hawkins and C. Abrams, ‘Disappearing Acts: The Social Networks of Formerly Homeless Individuals with Co-occurring Disorders’, Social Science and Medicine, vol. 65, 2007, p. 2033. 30. S. Thompson, D. Pollio, K. Eyrich, E. Bradbury and C. North, ‘Successfully Exiting Homelessness: Experiences of Formerly Homeless Mentally Ill Individuals’, Evaluation and Program Planning, vol. 27, 2004, p. 429.

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31. E. Perese, ‘Stigma, Poverty and Victimization: Roadblocks to Recovery for Individuals with Severe Mental Illness’, Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association, vol. 13, no. 5, 2007, p. 289. 32. H. Westerfelt, ’The Ins and Outs of Homelessness: Exit Patterns and Predictions’, Unpublished Ph.D, Ann Arbor: University of WisconsinMadison, 1990; I. Piliavin, B. Wright, R. Mare, and A. Westerfelt, ‘Exits from and returns to Homelessness’, Social Service Review, vol. 70, no. 1, 1996, pp. 33-57. 33. R. Wasson and P. Hill, ‘The Process of Becoming Homeless: an Investigation of Female Headed Families Living in Poverty’, Journal of Consumer Affairs, vol. 32, no. 2, 1998, pp. 320-42; J. May, ‘Housing Histories and Homeless Careers: A Biographical Approach’, Housing Studies, vol. 15, no. 4, 2000, pp. 613-38; Auerswald and Eyre, ‘Youth Homelessness in San Francisco’. 34. J. Kaufman and C. Johnson, ‘Stigmatised Individuals and the Process of Identity’, The Sociological Quarterly, vol. 45, no. 4, 2004, pp. 80733. 35. H. Bahr, Skid Row: An Introduction to Disaffiliation, New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.

References Anderson, I. and D. Tulloch (2000), Pathways Through Homelessness: A Review of the Research Evidence, Edinburgh: Scottish Homeless Task Force. Auerswald, C. and S. Eyre (2002), ‘Youth Homelessness in San Francisco: A Life Cycle Approach’, Social Science and Medicine, 54: 1497-1512. Australian Bureau of Statistics (2012), Year Book Australia 2012, Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics (Catalogue no. 1301.0). Bahr, H. (1973), Skid Row: An Introduction to Disaffiliation, New York: Oxford University Press. Chamberlain, C. and D. MacKenzie (1992), ‘Understanding Contemporary Homelessness: Issues of Definition and Meaning’, Australian Journal of Social Issues, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 274-97. ——— (2008), Counting the Homeless 2006. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics (Catalogue no. 2050.0). ——— (2009), Counting the Homeless 2006: Victoria, Canberra: Australian Institute for Health and Welfare (Catalogue no. HOU 203). Clapham, D. (2003), ‘Pathways Approaches to Homeless Research’, Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, vol. 13, pp. 119-27.

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Crane, M. (1999), Understanding Older Homeless People: Their Circumstances, Problems and Needs, Buckingham: Open University Press. Economist Intelligence Unit (2012), Global Liveability Report 2012, available at www.eiu.com. Farrugia, D. (2011), ‘The Symbolic Burden of Homelessness: Towards a Theory of Youth Homelessness as Embodied Subjectivity’, Journal of Sociology, vol. 47, no. 1, 71-87. Fitzpatrick, S. (2000), Young Homeless People, Basingstoke: Macmillan. Ford, J., J. Rugg and R. Burrows (2002), ‘Conceptualising the Contemporary Role of Housing in the Transition to Adult Life in England’, Urban Studies, vol. 39, no. 13, pp. 2455-67. Goffman, E. (1961), Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates, Harmondsworth: Penguin. ——— (1963), Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, New York: Simon and Schuster. Hartwell, S. (2003), ‘Deviance Over the Life Course: The Case of Homeless Substance Abusers’, Substance Use and Misuse, vol. 38, nos. 3-6, pp. 475-502. Hawkins, R. and C. Abrams (2007), ‘Disappearing Acts: The Social Networks of Formerly Homeless Individuals with Co-occurring Disorders’, Social Science and Medicine, vol. 65, pp. 2031-42. Hirst, C. (1989), Forced Exit: A Profile of the Young and Homeless in Inner Urban Melbourne, Melbourne: The Salvation Army. Johnson, G., H. Gronda and S. Coutts (2008), On the Outside: Pathways in and out of Homelessness, Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Press. Kaufman, J. and C. Johnson (2004), ‘Stigmatised Individuals and the Process of Identity’, The Sociological Quarterly, vol. 45, no. 4, pp. 807-33. Link, B. and J. Phelan (2001), ‘Conceptualizing Stigma’, American Review of Sociology, vol. 27, pp. 363-85. Mallett, S., J. Edwards, D. Keys, P. Myers and D. Rosenthal (2003), Disrupting Stereotypes: Young People, Drug Use and Homelessness, Melbourne: Key Centre for Women’s Health in Society, The University of Melbourne. Mallett, S., D. Rosenthal, D. Keys and R. Averill (2010), Moving Out, Moving On: Young People’s Pathways in and through Homelessness, London and New York: Routledge. Mallett, S., D. Rosenthal and P. Myers (2001), ‘Providing Services to Homeless Young People in Melbourne’, Youth Studies Australia, vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 26-33.

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May, J. (2000), ‘Housing Histories and Homeless Careers: A Biographical Approach’, Housing Studies, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 613-38. McKinney, J. (1966), Constructive Typology and Social Theory, New York: Appleton-Century Crofts. Parker, S.M. and R. Fopp (2004), ‘ “I’m a Slice of the Pie That’s Ostracised”: Foucault’s Technologies and Personal Agency in the Voice of Women who are Homeless’, Housing, Theory and Society, vol. 21, pp. 145-54. Perese, E. (2007), ‘Stigma, Poverty and Victimization: Roadblocks to Recovery for Individuals with Severe Mental Illness’, Journal of the American Psychiatric Nurses Association, 13(5): 285-95. Piliavin, I., B. Wright, R. Mare and A. Westerfelt (1996), ‘Exits From and Returns to Homelessness’, Social Service Review, vol. 70, no. 1, pp. 33-57. Rice, E., N. Milburn, M.J. Rotheram-Borus, S. Mallett and D. Rosenthal (2005), ‘The Effects of Peer Group Network Properties on Drug Use Among Homeless Youth’, American Behavioural Scientist, vol. 48, no. 8, pp. 1102-23. Rossi, P. (1989), Down and Out in America: The Origins of Homelessness, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Rowe, J. (2002), ‘Survival Strategies of the Homeless and Drug Dependent’, in Housing, Crime and Stonger Communities Conference, Melbourne, Australian Institute of Criminology and Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute. Smith, J. (1995), Being Young and Homeless, Melbourne: The Salvation Army. Snow, D. and L. Anderson (1993), Down on Their Luck: A Study of Street Homeless People, Berkeley: University of California Press. Thompson, S., D. Pollio, K. Eyrich, E. Bradbury and C. North (2004), ‘Successfully Exiting Homelessness: Experiences of Formerly Homeless Mentally Ill Individuals’, Evaluation and Program Planning, vol. 27, pp. 423-31. Wasson, R. and P. Hill (1998), ‘The Process of Becoming Homeless: An Investigation of Female Headed Families Living in Poverty’, Journal of Consumer Affairs, vol. 32, no. 2, pp. 320-42. Weber, M. (1949), The Methodology of the Social Sciences, New York: The Free Press. Westerfelt, H. (1990), ‘The Ins and Outs of Homelessness: Exit Patterns and Predictions’, Unpublished Ph.D, Ann Arbor: University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Index Alexander, Jeffrey 50 Bangladeshis 27, 77, 79-93 Bengali 80, 84, 87, 92 Delhi 77-88, 90-3 India 77-91, 93 Hindu 79-81, 83, 86, 89-92, migrant 77-9, 81, 83, 84-7, 89-92 Muslims 80, 81, 84, 86, 90, 92 Pakistan 79-81, 83, 91, 93 Partition 79, 81, 90, 93 refugee 79, 80, 87, 88 Bataille, George 37, 43 Bauman, Zygmunt 20, 41-2, 188 Brent, Jeremy 50-2 Bryson, Lois (see also Martin Mowbray) 44-5 capitalism 187, 198, 201 Castells, Manuel 39-40 Chicago School of sociology 38-9 city 17-26 conceptual field 17 community-centred study of 17-18, 24-6 communities in 17-22 and globalization 18-24, 29-30 and immigration 21, 22, 25 (see also: Bangladeshis, Indian diaspora) reframing concept of community in the 17-24 urban growth 21-2 Cohen, Anthony 42-3 Colombo 28, 129-44 colonial economy 133

colonial elite 131 colonial city 132 communities building/formation 129, 143 Cosmopolitan 143 Disadvantaged 138, 141, 144 Minority 138 Neighbourhood 141, 142 dependent city 142 dependent urbanization 131 economic liberalization 133, 134, 136 ethnic enclaves 132, 137, 138, 139, 142, 144 ethnic conflict 129, 137, 139 informal economy 136, 132 displacement 138 divided cities 130 dual economy 131 ethno-nationalism 142 metropolitan region 129, 136, 137, 138 national identity 145 primate city 131 social networks 140 urban space 129, 138 urban symbolism 145 Community 17-21, 36-51, 100, 101, 105, 108, 110, 115, 116, 121, 129, 138, 141-3 ambivalence and hope 52 ancient Greek conceptions of 47 and civil society 50 communitas 36

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Index

community development practice 50-1 conscious creation of 48-9 dark side of 37 and globalization 17, 19-21 narratives of 18-20 need for inclusive orientation 49 and new communication technologies 20 past traumas 46 sense of belonging 20-1, 26-7 sociology of 53 spatially defined 19, 22-3 sustainable 17 token manifestations 44 toxic manifestations 45-6 and urbanization 18-19 Delanty, Gerard 20, 35, 47-8 Delhi 78-93 Diaspora philanthropy 61-4, 65-70, 71-2 and building community 66-7 male face of 63-4 religion and 63, 64, 65-6, 67-8, 69, 71 giving locally and 62, 65-8, 71 and migration experiences 64-72 Durkheim, Emile 34-5, 38 Esposito, Roberto 36-7, 42 Globalism Research Centre, RMIT University 49 Heidegger, Martin 37 Hobsbawm, Eric 40 home ownership in Australia 223-4 homeless biographies 225 homeless pathways 29, 225-40 family breakdown 234-7 housing crisis 234-7 mental health 237-40 substance abuse 230-3 youth to adult 228-30 homeless people and boarding houses 238-9 number of 224 search for community 230 and sub-culture 229-30, 232, 240 homelessness 28-9, 223-42 definition of 223, 226 duration of 237-8

ideal types 225 and stigma 224-5, 228-9, 232, 238, 240-2 symbolic burden of 236 hypermobility 29, 189, 193, 197, 214 immigration 20-1, 187, 190-2, 210-11, 214 Indians in Australia 27, 59, 64-71 first generation 64-7 Indian students 70-1 second generation 68-70 twice migrants 67-8 Jha, Manoj 46 Kuala Lumpur 27, 99-117 everyday 100, 102, 109, 121 settlement 100, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 115, 116, 120, 124 development 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 111, 114, 115, 118 state 102, 103, 111, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117 space/spaces 99, 100, 102-3, 106-8, 113, 115-17 Lynd, Helen and Robert 39 Maffesoli, Michel 44 Melanesia 149-62 customary land 155, 152, 161 festival 157, 158, 159, 161 Melanesian urbanism 151, 152, 161, 162 resource (extraction industry social impact) 152, 159, 160, 161 royalties 150, 160 settlements 149, 150, 153, 154, 156 Melbourne a ‘liveable city’ 223 a transnational city 60 homelessness in 223-42 Indian diaspora in 59, 64-72, migrants in 190 suburbia/suburban 194-7, 200, 2012, 205-8, 210, 214 mobility 187-9 in Australia 189-93 residential 194, 196-8

employment 198-9 Mowbray, Martin (see also Lois Bryson) 44-5 Nancy, Jean-Luc 43 Park, Robert 38 Port Moresby 28, 149-61 Rose, Nikolas 20, 42, 47 Sennett, Richard 19-20, 41-2 Singapore 28, 165-82 Chinese in 173-6

Index multiculturalism 176-9 nationalism, everyday 168-73 race and ethnicity 166-8, 179-81 transnational 30, 59-61, 72 community 59, 61, 72, 30 urbanism 59, 60, 61, 72 Tonnies, Ferdinand 18, 34 Turner, Victor 42 Williams, Raymond 40 Wirth, Louis 39

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