Losing One’s Place: Narratives of Neighbourhood Change, Market Injustice and Symbolic Displacement

This article examines the narratives offered by those displaced through the gentrification of neighbourhoods in Melbourne and Sydney. Extensive qualitative interview data generated from encounters with self-identified displacees in these cities is used here to examine their responses to changes in and after they moved from their originating neighbourhoods and the impacts these changes had on them. This data reveals that despite displacement commonly being defined in terms of physical movement, in many cases, participants became dislocated and isolated by the physical and social changes that took place while still residing in neighbourhoods as they changed. The article traces these twin modes of displacement – both as a series of impacts generated by direct market dislocation but also as feelings of loss connected with a home that might be imminently lost and the cherished place around it. These narratives reveal how private renters respond to a symbolic violence that they locate in a changing built environment and a shifting social physiognomy that impinges and threatens the viability of their tenure of these places. The article locates these resentments and displacements within a sociopolitical context that celebrates ownership and investment in the very homes and places that are now lost to them.