Heritage and Migration

The Heritage Corridor argues for a transnational approach to investigating and recording heritage places that emerge from histories of migration. Addressing the material legacy of migration, this book also relates it to issues of contemporary importance.

Presenting an image of the built environment of migration as one shaped by the ongoing flows of people, ideas, objects and money that circulate through migration corridors, Byrne proposes that houses and other structures built by migrants in their home villages in China over the period 1840–1940 should be seen as crystallisations of the labour, aspirations and longings enacted and experienced by their builders while overseas. Demonstrating that the material world of the migrant is distributed across transnational space, the book calls for an approach to the heritage of migration that is similarly expansive. It proposes and illustrates new methods and strategies for heritage practice.

The Heritage Corridor is a book for scholars and students in the fields of critical heritage studies, migration studies and Chinese diasporic mobilities. It is designed to be accessible to heritage practitioners, readers with an interest in the material worlds of migration, past and present, and to all those with an interest in the ‘archaeology’ of transnational migration.

Heritage and History in the China–Australia Migration Corridor traces the material and social legacy of migration from China to Australia from the 1840s until the present day. The volume offers a multidimensional examination of the material footprint of migration as it exists at either end of the migration corridor stretching between Zhongshan county in south China and Australia. Spanning the fields of heritage studies, migration studies, and Chinese diaspora history, Denis Byrne, Ien Ang, Phillip Mar, and the other contributors foreground a transnational approach to the history and heritage of migration, one that takes account of the flows of people, ideas, objects, and money that circulate through migration corridors, forming intricate ongoing bonds between those who migrated to Australia and their home villages in China.

Currently, heritage practice brings a nation-centric lens to the heritage of migration, privileging narratives of arrival and settlement over narratives of return, circulatory transnational flows, and cross-border connectivity. Drawing on the case of Chinese migration to Australia in the period from the 1840s to the 1940s, the 'heritage corridor' concept is proposed here as an aid in conceptualising a heritage that escapes the nation-state frame of reference. The aspirational modernity of Chinese migrants in this period led them to construct new houses, schools, and infrastructure in their home villages in China using money earned in Australia, even though in Australia at this time Chinese migrants were characterised as premodern misfits by a white majority that saw itself as modern and progressive. In relegating Chinese migrants to the past, white Australia conferred on them a state of non-belonging that I argue is perpetuated in the country's heritage system by a form of structural racism which, embedded in site listing processes, minimises the visibility of Chinese Australians in the heritage record.

This paper examines and problematizes the place of contemporary immigration in the Galata Maritime Museum in Genoa, one of Italy’s principal ports of embarkation for millions of transatlantic emigrants during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The museum, which opened on Genoa’s waterfront in 2004, today has a floor dedicated to the history of mass emigration including a permanent section on current migration to Italy. Since the 1970s, the city has seen the settlement of different migrant communities, particularly in the historic centre adjacent to the port; an area that has concomitantly become a fulcrum for burgeoning heritage and museum industries. Significantly, very few foreign migrants have arrived in Genoa by sea, while historically the majority of immigration has entered Italy via land or air routes. The paper critically reflects on the production of ‘migration heritage’ in the museum vis-à-vis the presence of international migrants in the surrounding area. In particular, I interrogate three key representational frames: (i) the correlation between emigration and immigration; (ii) the sea as an all-embracing metaphor for mobility; and (iii) the recourse to images of emergency and crisis, such as arrivals on the island of Lampedusa, which – I contend – are underpinned by what Didier Fassin defines as ‘humanitarian reason’. Drawing on display/discourse analysis and ethnographic fieldwork in Genoa as well as engaging with recent literature on the representation of migration in European museums (e.g. Whitehead et al. 2015), I argue that the Galata Museum, despite its good intentions, dislocates the local contingencies of immigration and, in doing so, overlooks migrants’ contributions to the reshaping of ‘indigenous’ heritage sites in the historic centre.

La educación pública y la divulgación son imperativos éticos de la práctica en arqueología y en la gestión del patrimonio arqueológico. En la última década, el número de actividades dedicadas a la participación del público en la arqueología ha aumentado rápido y de manera considerable en la Península Ibérica. Sin embargo, este proceso también ha transformado estas actividades en componentes que algunos arqueólogos y profesionales del patrimonio desarrollan por obligación. Esto, obviamente, afecta a la calidad de la información y los programas ofrecidos a los diversos públicos, así como la mejora de la salvaguardia y protección de los registros arqueológicos y del patrimonio. La participación del público en la arqueología va más allá del entretenimiento interactivo puntual. Por lo tanto, debe cumplir con un objetivo preciso y cuidadosamente planificado a largo plazo. Esta sesión tiene como objetivo de discutir la teoría y la ética en relación con la educación pública y la difusión en la arqueología entre los profesionales de Portugal y España. Se invita a los participantes a no centrarse solo en presentar ejemplos de actividades desarrolladas; deben utilizarlos como casos de estudio para explorar la filosofía que les subyace. Aceptaremos trabajos que traten con: teoría, ética, agendas e ideologías relacionadas con la enseñanza y la comunicación de arqueología, así como la investigación de base comunitaria; el papel de las colaboraciones pluri e interdisciplinares en la promoción de la inclusión del público en arqueología; la integración de grupos de migrantes y la resolución de crisis post-migratoria a través del patrimonio arqueológico.