From Sojourners to Setlers: Homes of Italian Migrants in Brisbane and their Meanings

Abstract

This thesis focuses on the architecture of the domestic dwellings built by a group of twenty first-generation migrants, natives of the Veneto region in Italy. This group migrated to Australia after the Second World War and built their houses in the 1980s and 1990s in Brisbane. This thesis looks at the material realm of these houses, that is, their facades, the internal and external organisation and use of spaces, as well as at the symbolic realm that corresponds to the meanings attributed by the Veneto people to their houses in Brisbane. The project is of qualitative nature and as primary sources of data uses semi-structured interviews (1), associated when circumstances made this possible, to photo-elicitation interviews (2), and focus group discussion (3). The semi-structured interviews were conducted both in Australia with twenty first-generation Italian migrants, and in italy with another ten informants who are indigenous to the Veneto region and who built their homes their. These primary data are supplemented by secondary data in the form of photographs and drawings (4).