Gozo in the World and the World in Gozo
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Gozo in the world and the world in Gozo The cultural impact of migration and return migration on an island community Raymond C. Xerri Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for Doctor of Philosophy Europe-Ausfralia Institute Victoria University of Technology 2002 CONTENTS Declaration iv Acknowledgements v Abstract ix INTRODUCTION 1 PARTI GOZO 1. Ferry Crossings 15 2. Gozitan Identity Under Construction 43 3. Double Crossings: Positioned Ethnography and Writing Gozo 77 Pictorial Essay I Imag(in)ing Gozo 94 PARTII GOZO IN THE WORLD 4. The Land at the Edge of the World 99 5. Making Dreams Work 123 6. Faith and Festa 148 7. Linguistic Menus 181 Pictorial Essay II Gozo-Melbourne Crossings 197 PART III THE WORLD IN GOZO 8. Bingo, Races and Bars 202 9. Making Money 221 10. Flags and Firecrackers 247 Pictorial Essay III Melbourne-Gozo Crossings 271 CONCLUSION 276 REFERENCES 280 APPENDICES 289 TABLES AND FIGURES Figure 1. Nassa tas-Sajd G^awdxija (Gozitan Fisherman's pot) 27 Figure 2. Village of Qala coat-of-arms 38 Figure 3. City of Rabat coat-of-arms 39 Figure 4. The Flag of Gozo 39 Table 1. 1915 Gozitan Passport Applications for Ausfraha Nos. 42-52 104 Table 2. City of Brimbank: Residents' Place of Birth 118 Table 3. Gozitan Organisations in Melbourne 153 11 Table 4. Gozitan Festas Celebrated in Melboume 160 APPENDICES Appendix 1. Basic Xerri-Buttigieg Family Tree Appendix 2. Xerri Buttigieg Marriages Appendix 3. Questionnaire/Interview Questions Appendix 4. Responses to Question : Why did so many Gozitans settle in Melboume? Appendix 5. Responses to Question: When you migrated did you think that it was permanent or temporary? Appendix 6. Gozitan Applicants for Passports to Austtalia 1915-1928 Appendix 7. Gozitan Words/Phrases Appendix 8. Words/Phrases with different meaning(s) or usage in Gozo Appendix 9. The Gozitan Dictionary: same meaning but different spelling 11 DECLARATION I declare that this thesis is my original work, except where otherwise cited, and has not been submitted, in whole or in part, for any other academic award. Raymond C. Xerri March 2002 IV ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis owes much to the encouragement and guidance of others. Fust and foremost, I would acknowledge the role of my supervisors at Victoria University. For the first three years of my part-time candidature these included Dr Barry York, who shared with me his incomparable knowledge of and enthusiasm for the history of Maltese and Gozitan settlement in Austtalia. Erik Lloga, who patiently and generously shared with me his exttaordinary familiarity with the literature and the issues, showed me how to recognise and begin to articulate theoretical and conceptual dimensions of which I was only vaguely aware. In taking over from Erik as co-supervisor for the past year, Dr Greg Gow has helped me to tighten and further develop both my ideas and my capacity to communicate those ideas. Dr Les Terry also provided valuable advice for improving both my ideas and my writing. My Principal Supervisor, Professor Ron Adams, encouraged and guided me at every stage of the project and instilled in me sufficient self-confidence to fread paths of unknown destinations. Without him, I doubt that I would have made the crossing that this thesis represents. It has been a rare privilege to have been supervised by such gifted teachers from the university described by Malta's Prime Minister, Dr Edward Fenech Adami, as 'the university in Ausfralia which has done most in the academic field for the benefit' of the Maltese in Ausfralia. My own experience confirms this observation. Professor Jarlath Ronayne, Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Rob Pascoe, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and Professor Ron Adams, at the time Head of the Department of Social and Cultural Studies, arranged for me to receive a Victoria University Occasional Scholarship, which spared me financial difficulties. Jane Trewin in the Faculty of Arts and Niky Poposki in the Europe-Austtalia Institute ensiued that I was spared many administtative headaches. I owe Ms Poposki my particular thanks for the many hours she laboured typing and retyping text and tables, scanning images and locating and inserting Maltese font into the final draft. The continuing encouragement and goodwill of Professor and Mrs Ronayne helped maintain my own commitment to the project. To these and all the other Victoria University staff who have assisted me over the years, I say thank you. I wish also to thank the many individuals who assisted with access to such records as the archives of the Malta High Commission in Canberra, the passport applications held at the Santo Spirito National Archives at Mdina, Malta, and the Qala Parish House Archives and Nadur Parish House Archives on Gozo—and the other precious repositories of information where I was helped by generous people like HE Mr George Busuttil, Joe Camana, George Borg, Monsignor Guzepp Buttigieg, Joe Muscat, Frans Zammit vi Haber, Euchar Mizzi, Fr Emanual Cutajar and Gaetan Naudi. To these people and all those I may have overlooked but who have contributed in this project I offer my heartfelt thanks. I thank also those who have shared with me their insights into various aspects of this work: Jean Cassar and my dear cousin Linda Josephine Buttigieg, Rev. Dr Joseph Bezzina, Gozo's leading contemporary historian. Professor Maurice Cauchi and the other acknowledged experts from whom I have leamt so much. Finally, there are the unacknowledged experts— all the informants both in Australia and Gozo who answered my questions, who welcomed me into their midst, who shared with me then enthusiasm for this story to be told. In particular I would mention Noel Formosa, Mayor of the village of San Laurenz, and Michael Buttigieg, President of the Ausfralian-Qala Association in Melboume, the management of the St Paul's Bocci Club in Melboume and the Xerri Bocci Club in Gozo, and the members of my immediate family. In addition to my parents Joseph and Margaret, who have always been towers of sttength in thefr dedication and patience, I would single out for special mention my late grandparents, Antonio and Caterina Xerri, who, although vii they never got to see this thesis completed, inspired me with their words of wisdom. To them, and to Gozitans of all times and places from whom I have drawn sttength and inspiration, I humbly dedicate this work. Vll ABSTRACT This thesis explores the meaning and significance of migration and return migration between the Maltese island of Gozo and the Austtalian city of Melboume. The exploration begins in the Inttoduction with 'Lina', a Gozitan retum migrant from Melboume whose situation captures the dilemma of cultural 'hybridity'. Through Lina, the reader is infroduced in turn to the concept of crossings into worlds beyond the familiar, a metaphor which is employed throughout the thesis. With her experience of crossings, Lina, it is suggested, is, like so many Gozitans, simultaneously 'home' and 'homeless'. As argued throughout the thesis, among Gozitan migrant and retum migrant communities, diversity and difference coexist alongside similarity and unity, and should not be thought of as mutually exclusive. Similarly, it is argued that local and global must be understood as intermeshed—^particularly in the processes of migration and retum migration—if we are to understand the evolving Gozitan identity. These themes are elaborated in the followmg three chapters, which explore the ways in which being 'Gozitan' are articulated, as well as the ways in which 'non-Gozitan' characteristics of life are negotiated. Chapter 1, 'Ferry Crossmgs', explores how Gozitans maintain essentialised representations of IX their island and themselves in deliberate conttast to the neighbouring island of Malta and the Maltese. Chapter 2, 'Gozitan Identity Under Construction', elaborates some of the theoretical difficulties and conttadictions of such idealised self- representations. It engages with debates surrounding questions of identity formation in relation to Gozitan migrants to the western suburbs of Melboume and retum migrants back to Gozo. Borrowing such concepts as 'positionality', 'habitus', 'hidden franscripts' and 'reflexivity', the chapter establishes a conceptual and theoretical framework for approaching the notion of 'Gozitan identity'. Chapter 3, 'Double Crossings: Positioned Ethnography and Writing Gozo', outlines the ethnographic method employed to research these issues. As the chapter describes, the writer's engagement with the topic—as 'outside' researcher and 'inside' Gozitan—was at times a problematic process. As its title suggests, the chapter sets the stage for ethnographically mapping the contours of Gozitan identity as they are affected by the crossings and double (retum) crossings between Gozo and Melboume. The following four chapters focus on the crossings to Austtalia. They describe how the conditions of life in Melbourne's westem suburbs and the ways in which Gozitan migrants responded to them generated a set of socially-produced practices and perceptions—a 'habitus' in Bourdieu's terms—^which continues to inform and form thefr sense of who they are and their place in the world. Specifically, Chapter 4, 'The Land at the Edge of the World', describes how Gozitans transformatively created 'Gozo' in Melboume as they settled in the municipality of Brimbank. As the chapter argues, perceived similarities between the westem suburbs of Melboume and the island of Gozo were refracted, in particular, through the prism of identification with the land. Chapter 5 argues that just as land is cenfral to the habitus of Gozitan identity, so too is work. 'Making Dreams Work' explores the importance of work— including recreational activities—for Gozitans, and contends that in the process of negotiating what it means to be Gozitan in Melboume the work ethic is cenfral. Chapter 6 explores another centtal element underpinning Gozitan identity in Melboume—^religion.