Memory and water : a Vietnamese Australian family's sense of loss and home

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.To fully comprehend the issue of migration is to go beyond understanding migration as movement from one place to the other, such as crossing international borders. It is to look into whole life histories which includes the mundane everyday life of a migrant. This thesis addresses the need to understand the everyday experience with memory for heightened awareness and empathy within society towards refugees. Inspired by the methodology of auto-ethnography and the writing of family history, this non-traditional thesis will explore the intergenerational memories of my Vietnamese Australian refugee family through the poetic device of water to explore the research question: How does exploring the presence of water within Vietnamese Australian memories of loss and homeliness create new approaches for understanding migration in Australia? As the fluid composition of water defies objectivity, migration is fluid, intangible and seeps into the subjective way of being in the world. This thesis uses migrant memories of water as a tool for encapsulating the migrant experiences of a family. Complex ideas and experiences of loss and homeliness within Australia and Vietnam would demonstrate how nuanced the migrant experiences are. The thesis contests the idea of home as a comfortable site of belonging. Rather, home is a site of becoming, constantly changing and oscillating between belonging and un-belonging. For many Vietnamese Australian refugees, water was not only the means to escape one’s homeland to another form of homeland - by boat - but is a part of sensory experiences of feeling both at home and displaced within Australian landscapes. The Vietnamese word of water, nước, is the exact same word for country, evoking a linguistic and cultural link to this natural matter to the collective emotional and cultural sense of belonging. The thesis explores various themes, activities, and landscapes surrounding ideas of water. This includes rivers, fishing, ocean deaths, water buffalo, boats and beaches. Each of these themes opens up new ways of thinking about the nature of forced migration within the field of Environmental Humanities and Cultural Studies. The contested nature of home becomes layered and complex when political meanings around what it means to be a migrant living in a country that was invaded and dispossessed from the Aboriginal people are explored. It challenges ideas that legitimise colonialism through violent ways of asserting power, governance and border controls in Australia. This thesis explores intergenerational experiences of migration through memories, both lived and transmitted through stories