Intergenerational Experiences of Belonging and Place-Attachment Amid Environmental Challenges in Regional Australia

Abstract

Recent scholarship has turned to the concept of ‘intergenerational belonging’ and to questions about how belonging is navigated and experienced in contexts marked by environmental challenges. This article contributes to each of these bodies of literature by considering how members of different age cohorts experience, perform and represent belonging and place attachment in a regional Australian suburb undergoing significant environmental change. It presents findings from a walking ethnography, and from two community mapping workshops conducted with members of different age cohorts. We find that, in our field site, belonging is shaped by whether one is ‘born and bred’ in the suburb or is otherwise considered a ‘blow-in’, and that those who are deemed ‘locals’ are able to speak with authority on topics such as where the suburb ends, with this authority legitimated by their knowledge of place. However, we find that caring for and about the local environment allowed those who were not considered ‘locals’ to engage in a performance of belonging that provided them with a specific status and social role in the suburb. Ultimately, we highlight how care for and about the environment can provide a means for individuals to perform belonging, and, stemming from this environmental focus, we demonstrate how intergenerational belonging can extend beyond connections through families to also encompass broader intergenerational concerns.