Food and the challenge to identity for post-war refugee women in Australia

Abstract

In many societies, feeding one’s family in traditional and culturally appropriate ways is an essential part of being a mother and a wife. For migrants, food can play an important role in the maintenance of tradition, culture, and identity. This paper uses archival evidence, media coverage, memoirs, and oral histories to explore how policies associated with food in migrant hostels impacted on, and interfered with, the central role of food in the commensal circle of the family, and in the identification of migrant women as wives, mothers, and cultural gatekeepers. We identify three main factors that contributed to this negative cultural impact: the preparation of quintessentially ‘Australian’ menus that were alien to most of the population; communal dining arrangements which disrupted the basic social activity of commensality; and the fact that there was no need for women to prepare food for their families, and no opportunity to do so since having private cooking facilities was illegal. The impact of these eating/dining experiences on women and their families was obviously profound: even today, the topic of food and enforced communal dining is among the first and most vivid of memories, typically negative, reported by those who transitioned through the hostels.

Keywords:

• Displaced persons (DPs)
• commensality
• foodways
• assimilation
• migrant hostels

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Erratum

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to our colleagues on the research team and to our community research partners for their support and feedback on this work, as well as to various audiences at conferences at which previous versions of this paper were presented. We particularly wish to thank the participants in our study. Ethics clearance was obtained from the University of Adelaide Human Research Ethics Committee (approval H-2012-120).

Notes

1. Single quotation marks are used throughout the article both for terms that were commonly used during the period (but which we do not necessarily endorse) and around direct quotations.

2. The term ‘New Australian’ was first coined by the Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, in the late 1940s. Use of the term was encouraged in the wider Australian society in order to replace the pejorative terms commonly in use such as ‘reffo’ (short for ‘refugee’) and ‘Balt’ and as a symbol of assimilation; however, the term itself quickly took on a derogatory meaning, although some of our interviewees continue to use it to this day.

3. Good Neighbour Councils were formed and partially funded by the Australian Government. They had two official tasks: to assist new arrivals to assimilate into the norms and expectations of the host society, and to educate the Australian public about the benefits of the mass migration scheme towards a level of acceptance of new arrivals. For more information on this topic see for example Wills (2004).

4. ‘Hostel Stories: Toward a Richer Narrative of the Lived Experiences of Migrants’ is an Australian Research Council funded Linkage project. The project team (including this paper’s authors) is comprised of staff and students at the University of Adelaide, in conjunction with community and government partners.

5. Interviews were typically conducted in locations most convenient for the interviewees, and often in their homes particularly for those of advanced age, with two members of the Hostel Stories team in attendance. Collection of registration forms and interviews continue to be ongoing for the project.

6. There are a number of reasons why earlier migrants did not produce written or oral accounts of their migrations, including but not limited to, literacy levels, language constraints, and availability of resources.

7. The ‘Australian way of life’ was a rarely defined but frequently used term which became common currency in the late 1940s and 1950s in Australia. It was regularly used in official, public, and even advertising vernacular and referred to the idea of a quintessential and specific Australian spirit or character which related to upholding certain ideals and values. For further discussion of this term, see for example White (1981, pp. 158–160), and for contemporaneous discussion, see Stanner (1953).

8. There is one exception to this, namely Gepps Cross in South Australia, where kitchenettes were added later; however, this hostel was a British-only one and not open to DPs.

9. Using the Elder Park Immigration Reception Depot menus for the period 1951–1952, Postiglione (2010) comments on the high frequency of meat served to residents. Interestingly, a memo to the Manager of Elder Park in July 1954 from the Director of Hostels comments that ‘it appears migrants eat very little meat prepared for breakfast’ and agrees to a menu which limits meat at breakfast to bacon on Sunday and fried sausage on Mondays with the usual eggs (fried, poached, boiled, and scrambled) as the hot option (State Records of South Australia: GRG7, 119/1953).

10. By the 1970s and 1980s, menu items became what might be thought of as more international in flavour, with breakfast including pickled pork alongside cereal, toast, and eggs. Lunches and dinners similarly included ‘savoury spaghetti’ and pepperoni pizza, alongside roast chicken and baked mutton. Sandwich fillings and cold meats included Polish salami, Mettwurst, and Polony, although the latter was probably simply a name change with what was Fritz now served as Polony. By the 1980s, hostels were catering in a much more multicultural manner as large numbers of Southeast Asian refugees arrived; dining room menus included ‘ethnic’ items such as Nasi Goreng, Chicken Chow Mein, Chop Suey, dim sims, and sweet and sour pork, all with distinctly Australian twists, including large lashings of MSG. See for example NAA, D2973, 3/1/4 and NAA, D2973, 3/1/1.

11. Please note that oral histories (audio files and transcripts) will be deposited at the State Library of South Australia at the conclusion of the project; within this paper references are to initials and date of interview.

12. By contrast British migrants frequently wrote to newspapers in Australia and at home, they also wrote to officials including the King and the British Prime Minister about camp conditions and in particular about communal eating, the lack of private cooking facilities, and the quality of the food. British migrants also involved external British clubs and societies and other organisations sympathetic to their plight, all actions which were largely unavailable to DP women. See Hassam (2009).

13. The rations were reportedly cut by up to 40%. Australian authorities argued that the rations were not ‘cut’ but rather ‘changed’ in line with age and gender nutritional requirements. Within days rations were restored.