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This paper discusses the meanings and practices of multiculturalism among young people from refugee and migrant backgrounds in one of Australia's most multicultural cities. It is based on a three-year ethnographic study exploring refugee and migrant youth engaged in sports and arts in the suburbs of Melbourne known as "migrant", "ethnic" and "multicultural" areas. The result of the study indicates that multiculturalism from below can happen differently from the "place making" strategy or "ethnic enclave" idea in which ethnic minorities are viewed as creating their own ethnic colonies in isolation from the mainstream society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participation in organized sports can provide a wide range of health and social benefits and, for young people from migrant and minority ethnic groups, can act as a critical mediator of inclusion and belonging. These population groups have relatively low participation rates however, with recognized barriers including costs, transport, culturally determined gender norms, culturally inappropriate club environments, a lack of knowledge and understanding of sports 'systems' and competing family priorities. Count Me In (CMI) was a mixed-methods, participatory action research project designed and implemented in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia between 2017–2019 to address these barriers. Key elements of the intervention included employment of bicultural community support coordinators, partnerships with clubs and community-based organisations, encouragement of volunteering and development of resources. This paper reports the qualitative results of the study and discusses the effectiveness and impacts of the Count Me In model for addressing participation barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adds to the existing insights into the occurrence, explanations for and experience of Islamophobia in Australia by focusing on contact with the 'other' in suburbs with high concentrations of Muslims. The study was conducted in two diverse and socio-economically disadvantaged localities with high Muslim concentrations in metropolitan Melbourne. A mixed method approach was used: a quantitative analysis of 2016–2017 survey data in two suburbs (N = 301), Broadmeadows and Fawkner in Melbourne's north, followed by local experiences of Islamophobia, drawing from 36 semi-structured follow-up interviews with local residents, while keeping in mind specific local circumstances. It was found that positive contact with diverse neighbours makes people less Islamophobic, but negative experiences makes them more Islamophobic. These findings provide evidence for the 'contact theory' as well as the 'threat theory' in explaining local variations in the levels of Islamophobia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks comparatively at the process of social change and its impact on local community cohesion in two Melbourne suburbs, ‘Northburb’ and ‘Greenburb’. The two localities are geographically close, part of the same local government area and both highly ethnically diverse, but considerably different in terms of their socio-economic and ethnic profiles. Based on ethnographic data collected through individual interviews, focus groups and participant observation in 2012–2013, the paper shows how the process of deindustrialization and the switch to service economy over the past decades took distinctly different turns in the two localities. Our data suggest that the processes of social change seem to have diminished local community cohesion in both localities. In Northburb, gentrification has contributed to socio-economic polarization, while Greenburb has lagged behind in socio-economic indicators and experienced ethnic fragmentation due to a considerable influx of new immigrant groups. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

How might notions of what is cosmopolitan be geographically reinterpreted through the diverse settlement of recent migrants and refugees in Australia? This article brings this question to bear on Springvale, a suburb in the Australian city of Melbourne, discussing the area's geographical circulation of people, businesses and products as a means of understanding the interstices between marginalised cultures or traditions and the role of architecture and the built environment in this context. Discussion of these questions involves the description of the physical and spatial environment of Springvale, concentrating on its commercial and industrial centres. In part, this illustrates the marginalisation of certain buildings and uses, but also how the process of establishing new kinds of activity and identity alters the nature of environments. The result is that these perceptually and geographically peripheral zones are paradoxically becoming centres in a diversifying metropolis, affording new nodes of usage and inhabitation that are arguably becoming sites of "local cosmopolitanism." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the crystallisation of a community composed mostly of ethnic Ukrainians at Ardeer in Melbourne's outer-west after 1949. The cohort of small-home builders collectively constructed dwellings, grew vegetables, bartered goods and favours, kept animals and nurtured a staunch diaspora nationalism in one of the city's rawest suburbs. Despite a robust contemporary discourse on migrant suburbs, recent historical examinations of the experiences of ethnic settlers on city fringes are scarce indeed. These few accounts fail to locate the hybrid cultural worlds fashioned by the newcomers within key political, economic and intellectual contexts of the post-war era, as this article does. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]