Abstract
Various ethnic communities undertake collective action to satisfy their social needs in a place of settlement. Collectively created social resources are representative of the patterns of fragmented ethnic collective actions that differ in their capability to appropriate human and material resources, orientation, outcome, form and intensity. Through collective creation of social space migrants add a new and dynamic dimension to the social environment. During the dramatic post-1945 changes in Sydney demographic and cultural structures, over 450 “other” (ethnic) collectives mobilised through grass-roots efforts their scarce resources and created needed collective goods, such as places of worship, clubs, schools, age care facilities. In this way, through creation of communal roots ethnic collectives navigate the path between exclusion and the various forms of inclusion in a dynamic culturally diverse society. Ethnic communal places signify collective conscience, participation, and the embeddedness of transplanted cultures in a transforming social environment and transnational social space.
Highlights
Collective actions are often undertaken by segments of ‘other’ ethnic communities to satisfy collectively perceived needs in a place of settlement
This article begins with a brief discourse on key theoretical concepts of collective action and communal places, considered as collective goods, being the outcome of fragmented collective acts
Data on demographic and cultural changes in the post-1945 period identify the intensity of settlement constraints and migration-derived demand for collective goods and migrant response
Summary
Italian settlers arrived in Western Sydney in large numbers after 1950. Powell (1993) describes how Italian immigrants had no place of their own in which they could socialise, have a glass of wine, play bocce or football. Having grown from a small Italian communal association to a professionally managed institution, Marconi is a meeting place for many local associations and multiple links with the rest of community and overseas It is a very visible major node on the urban landscape and a unique cultural space collectively developed to meet the recreational needs of the Italian migrants in the area. Participation To develop their own communal places migrants rely primarily on their own resources Their actions enhance collective empowerment and community satisfaction, best emphasised by a motto in the local Assyrian periodical ‘let us build it together’ (i.e, the Nineveh Club) (Kinarah 1980, 4). Diverse modes of participation in ethnic communal organisations are shown in table 2
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