(Re)creating Home: The Lived and Gendered Experiences of Tamil Women in Sydney, Australia

Abstract

In Sri Lankan society, women’s stories are often marginalised and/or silenced, despite the insights into experiences of war and displacement these stories have. Gender plays a fundamental role in our understanding of war since it affects how past lived experiences become situated in everyday resettlement practices in the home. I present the stories of Anjali and Jayamala—two Tamil refugee women—through a gendered lens about the war and their everyday experiences of resettling and (re)creating home in Sydney, Australia. In this research, I walked through, and filmed, their homes as they shared their stories and histories. To understand the construction of their homes, I explore how Anjali and Jayamala’s stories revealed past and present lived experiences, emotions and practices, refracted through the material and symbolic spaces of their homes. The multilayered home and everyday practices remind us that memory, identity and place are tightly woven together, especially when implicated by conflict.