Western Sydney Lecture Series - (Re)Narrating Western Sydney: Young people and the politics of place

The spatial location, demographic composition, and colonial history of Penrith position it as both a working-class suburb that services metropolitan Sydney and a site of racialised in-migration. The city is home to a growing population of racialised migrants, Indigenous families, and underemployed young workers.

The contemporary composition of the region is articulated through two competing yet interconnected narratives. One speaks of Sydney’s west in aspirational terms, framing the region and its residents as essential to fulfilling the promises of a multicultural Australia and Sydney as a global city. A significant part of the economic redevelopment plan for Penrith involves transitioning the city into a service economy and expanding the NGO sector, particularly in community and health services. Within this narrative, young people’s education, health, and employment are constructed as the future promise of economic redevelopment and cultural renewal. Reimagining Penrith includes new housing developments (rezoned land) and encouraging capital investment to create professional jobs, both intended to reduce the extent to which the western suburbs merely service Sydney as the economic core.

The second narrative is informed by the longer trajectory of colonial suburban settlement and marks the region as negatively racialised, often in gendered and classed terms. The stigmatisation of place can be traced back to governmental neglect and disinvestment in social welfare. Further, young adults living in Penrith note the absence of queer or counter-cultural community activity, identify a rift with the conservative “white” Australian values of “old” Penrith, and express interest in building politicised communities, yet see this idea as unsupported by local businesses and NGOs.

Rather than understanding these two narrative constructions as simply opposing, the ongoing research unpacks the ways in which both narratives construct Penrith’s young people as an unfinished project or as being in need of re-education and service-based management.

About the Speakers

Dr Genevieve Ritchie is a Lecturer in youth work and sociology in the School of Social Sciences. Dr Genevieve Ritchie’s work utilises a variety of feminist and participatory methods to critically interrogate conditions of displacement, dispossession, racialisation, youth resistance, public pedagogy, and democratic transformations. She works with NGOs, youth groups, and artists to develop community engaged research, teaching, and informal education.

Dr Joshua Kalemba is a Lecturer in youth work and sociology in the School of Social Sciences. Dr Joshua Kalemba’s research explores the labour market trajectories of young racialised and migrant youth, focusing on how changing labour markets, driven by processes like deindustrialisation and their engagement with new forms of work like digitally mediated labour, shape their labour market experiences, sense of non/belonging and aspirations for the future.

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