Placemaking and transnationalism : recent migrants and a national park in Sydney, Australia

A study of the way Arab and Vietnamese migrants engage with a national park environment in southwest Sydney, Australia, has highlighted the agency of these people as they not merely adapt to that environment but actively make places for themselves in it. The concept of placemaking is useful particularly in showing that 'place' can be constructed out of social practice, emotion and affect, and does not have to entail physical impact on or alteration of the existing environment. Migrants bring with them into the park many of the perceptual habits, cultural 'ways', and expectations about nature that were formed in their homelands. Participants in the study also reported that certain elements of the park environment, including the river, strongly evoked and triggered memories of their homelands. They experienced being in two places at once. The concept of transnationalism allows us to understand how a national park environment can, for certain people, be situated in transnational more than national space. Transnational connectivity is helping to destabilise park boundaries much the way that, from another perspective, wildlife corridors and the theory and practice of connectivity conservation view them as ideally porous.