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Just the Place is Different: Comparisons of Place and Settlement Practices of some Hong Kong Migrants in Sydney
Author(s) -
Mar Phillip
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
the australian journal of anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.245
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1757-6547
pISSN - 1035-8811
DOI - 10.1111/taja.1998.9.1.58
Subject(s) - narrative , settlement (finance) , space (punctuation) , sociology , perception , sense of place , point (geometry) , position (finance) , order (exchange) , gender studies , aesthetics , media studies , history , geography , psychology , social science , art , literature , computer science , finance , world wide web , economics , payment , geometry , mathematics , neuroscience , operating system
Interviews with HK migrants in Sydney yield a diverse array of perceptions about their sense of space and position. These 'spatial stories' (following de Certeau) can be read as different ways of inhabiting the everyday, as narratives which may cut across the 'proper' spatial order. All the senses are brought into play in accounts of densities and absences in people's everyday world. Banal discourses about 'here' and 'there' provide migrant subjects with a means to evaluate their social and spatial trajectories by comparing the 'feel' of very different places and scales. I also point to the limits of such strategies, and the kind of memories which lie outside of discursive exchanges.