Gozo in the world and the world in Gozo : the cultural impact of migration and return migration on an island community

Abstract

This thesis explores the meaning and significance of migration and return migration between the Maltese island of Gozo and the Australian city of Melbourne. The exploration begins in the Introduction with 'Lina', a Gozitan. return migrant from Melboume whose situation captures the dilemma of cultural 'hybridity'. Through Lina, the reader is introduced in turn to the concept of crossings into worlds beyond the familiar, a metaphor which is employed throughout the thesis. With her experience of crossings, Lina, it is suggested, is, like so many Gozitans, simultaneously 'home' and 'homeless'. As argued throughout the thesis, among Gozitan migrant and return migrant communities, diversity and difference coexist alongside similarity and unity, and should not be thought of as mutually exclusive. Similarly, it is argued that local and global must be understood as intermeshed-particularly in the processes of migration and return migration-if we are to understand the evolving Gozitan identity. These themes are elaborated in the following three chapters, which explore the ways in which being 'Gozitan' are articulated, as well as the ways in which 'non-Gozitan' characteristics of life are negotiated. Chapter 1, 'Ferry Crossings', explores how Gozitans maintain essentialised representations of their island and themselves in deliberate contrast to the neighbouring island of Malta and the Maltese. Chapter 2, 'Gozitan Identity Under Construction', elaborates some of the theoretical difficulties and contradictions of such idealised self- representations. It engages with debates surrounding questions of identity formation in relation to Gozitan migrants to the western suburbs of Melbourne and return migrants back to Gozo. Borrowing such concepts as 'positionality', 'habitus', 'hidden transcripts' and 'reflexivity', the chapter establishes a conceptual and theoretical framework for approaching the notion of 'Gozitan identity'. Chapter 3, 'Double Crossings: Positioned Ethnography and Writing Gozo', outlines the ethnographic method employed to research these issues. As the chapter describes, the writer's engagement with the topic-as 'outside' researcher and 'inside' Gozitan-was at times a problematic process. As its title suggests, the chapter sets the stage for ethnographically mapping the contours of Gozitan identity as they are affected by the crossings and double (return) crossings between Gozo and Melbourne. The following four chapters focus on the crossings to Australia. They describe how the conditions of life in Melbourne's western suburbs and the ways in which Gozitan migrants responded to them generated a set of socially-produced practices and perceptions-a 'habitus' in Bourdieu's terms-which continues to inform and form their sense of who they are and their place in the world. Specifically, Chapter 4, 'The Land at the Edge of the World', describes how Gozitans transformatively created 'Gozo' in Melbourne as they settled in the municipality of Brimbank. As the chapter argues, perceived similarities between the western suburbs of Melbourne and the island of Gazo were refracted, in particular, through the prism of identification with the land. Chapter 5 argues that just as land is central to the habitus of Gozitan identity, so too is work 'Making Dreams Work' explores the importance of work-:including · recreational activities-for Gozitans, and contends that in [...]