The fence as technology of (post-)colonial childhood in contemporary Australia

In this chapter we examine how fences in Australian colonial and post-colonial spaces come to literally and symbolically signify a regulatory framework through which self/other relations are constituted. We draw on collaborative research with Aboriginal people, and a recent research study “My Learning Place” in Frankston North, an outer suburb of Melbourne in Victoria, to investigate the meaning of the fence in post-colonial childhood in contemporary Australia. The fence has long been a key technology in the colonization of Australian land and its Aboriginal peoples. As Aboriginal people were progressively excluded from their Lands by the fences of white settlement, and fenced into missions and reserves, “Stolen Generations” of children were created by forcible removal from their parents. In Frankston North we examine the marked predominance of fences around both formal and informal learning places and ask how is the fence operating as a mechanism of exclusion and inclusion and with what effects? Of particular note were the high, opaque fences constructed around the two early childhood centers, which represent extreme versions of fences around many Victorian early childhood centers today. As specific examples of places of learning we ask: what does this mean for the women and children who work and learn there, and what subjectivities are being formed in early years learning places in (post-)colonial Australia