“This is My kingdom”: Inside the Kitchen Spaces of Lebanese Australian Women

ABSTRACT

Migrants’ homemaking practices create a series of spatial inscriptions within their domestic environments, leaving behind a unique echo of cultural and personal history. Such spatial imprints, when approached through an architectural lens, become crucial in understanding the multifaceted nature of the migrant experience of home. One specific area of the migrant home that offers rich insights into this phenomenon is the kitchen. Kitchens are often the heart of the household, where family life unfolds and where the synthesis of cultural and social life takes place. For the Lebanese Australian women in this study, these kitchens serve as significant locations where their culture and identities contribute to Australian domestic architecture. These contributions are unique but unrecognised. This paper explores the transformation of suburban kitchens and the diverse behaviours that mirror the women’s various roles as mothers, household managers, cooks, teachers, housewives, and “Sit al byt” (the lady of the house). It delves into the daily experiences of 16 Lebanese Australian women, examining kitchens as hubs for food production, leisure, household management, and symbols of communication, and recognising how food production extends beyond the confines of the kitchen in Lebanese Australian homes.

Introduction

Food, cooking, and kitchens are central to migrants’ expression of their migration stories, identities, and belonging.¹ Migrant women, in particular, play a significant role in shaping the spatial qualities of their kitchens.² This paper contributes to research on the migrant house, focusing on the kitchen as a site for social and cultural production. By deploying an architectural approach to everyday experiences, this research recognises a series of spatial inscriptions within these kitchens and their integral connection to the women’s identities, which evolve alongside their shifting domestic roles over the various stages of their lives.

The study delves into the multifaceted roles that kitchens play in the everyday lives of 16 Lebanese Australian women. The paper, which draws on the study, highlights how the Lebanese Australian women’s efforts to express and preserve their cultural identity, coupled with their diverse domestic responsibilities, have resulted in enduring physical modifications to suburban homes, as well as the introduction of uses for kitchens within suburban Australian households that differ from the mainstream cultural understanding of the role of kitchens.

Background: The Symbolic Realm of Kitchens in the Migrant House

The concept of home stretches beyond the domestic sphere, and is tied to emotions, and practices that generate the sense of being home.³ In the context of migration, food and culinary practices emerge strongly in the discourse on homemaking practices (or migrants’ endeavours to create a sense of being at home).⁴ Migrants’ culinary practices play a prominent role in nurturing a sense of ontological security in the destination countries,⁵ which highlights the importance of kitchens (both emotionally and socially) in the everyday lives of migrant families. Longhurst, Johnston, and Ho explain that despite the significance of kitchens in the everyday life of migrant women, “it is not a space that geographers and migration scholars have paid much attention to.”⁶

Certainly, we should acknowledge that homemaking through food production, and its spatial implications on kitchens, are not reserved for those who experienced migration.⁷ However, migrants’ experiences of home are complex, involving the loss of past homes, and the gain of homes through homemaking practices in destination countries.⁸ The experience of migration also involves “abandoning a sensorial world and moving to a place where smells and flavours are different.”⁹ This underscores the pivotal role of kitchens in either facilitating or impeding migrants’ efforts to establish a sense of “home” within their residences and their new country. The realm of academic literature exploring the connections between domestic environments, culinary practices, and migration is diverse and interdisciplinary.¹⁰ As this paper aims to explore the relationship between culture, identity, and the kitchen from an architectural perspective, this section focuses on discourse that specifically addresses kitchens in the migrant’s house.

Interdisciplinary research (spanning across the disciplines of architecture, anthropology and human geography) document the significance of kitchens as “the heart and hearth of the home,”¹¹ and the “heart of the house and of everyday family life.”¹² The importance of kitchens as sites of social and cultural production, often under the control of women, has transformed them into a rich source of insights into how these women navigate the complexities of their identities, migration experiences, and the dominance of mainstream cultures.¹³ For example, Longhurst, Johnston and Ho use the subject of food as a way of understanding the relationship between power, identity and place for migrant women in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Describing their approach as “[r]esearch led by our stomachs,” the researchers adopted a visceral approach by engaging with a diverse group of migrant women in their domestic environments. They observed the women as they cooked, documented their feelings, perceptions, and reflections on identity. The researchers noted that “[t]he migrant women with whom we cooked and shared food were very comfortable, relaxed and in control in their domestic space, and in particular ‘their kitchen’.”¹⁴

The significance of kitchens in the everyday lives of migrant women has generated research that documents how their identities, perceptions, feelings and aspirations are interpreted into spatial responses. A prominent example is the work of Sian Supski, which investigated “the kitchen as home” for women who migrated to Western Australia in the 1950s.¹⁵ Through storytelling, Supski documented everyday life in migrant women’s kitchens:

The “kitchen as home” was manifested in particular practices: a central gathering place for family and friends where women worked and talked with other women about family life, recipes and child-raising; a place to eat; a space where women sewed, knitted, read, helped children with homework, wrote letters and played games.¹⁶

Supski’s study found that, to many migrant women, kitchens are the equivalent of home. They tailored kitchens by building, decorating and renovating them to meet their social and cultural needs. They also adapted the kitchens in rented properties. The transformation of kitchens marked a milestone in women’s lives as they made Australia their home.¹⁷

Researchers identified distinct features of domestic architecture, such as migrant families’ practice of having multiple kitchens in their homes, that make them transnational domestic spaces of belonging. Multi-kitchen migrants’ homes are found in various contexts, among several migrant groups. For example, Cassim, Hodgetts and Stolte’s explorations of Sri Lankan migrants’ homes in New Zealand reported that “a domestic enclave of particular significance (highlighted by all the participants of our study) was the kitchen.”¹⁸ A “unique” feature in a Sri Lankan migrant house was the two kitchens, located side-by-side, which differs from mainstream housing in New Zealand that mostly have “only have one kitchen–aside from an occasional butler’s pantry or self-contained unit, which is usually at the other end of the house.”¹⁹ The first kitchen located near an open-plan living area (which includes living, dining and TV room), and the second kitchen is smaller, enclosed from more public areas of the house. The second kitchen “closely reflects a Sri Lankan kitchen in that guests are shielded from cooking smells and activity occurring within this enclave.”²⁰

Inside the houses of Italian migrants in North America, Pascali reports on the presence of two kitchens, two fridges, and two ovens as “one kitchen is simply not enough.”²¹ While many of these Italian migrants did not have two kitchens in their houses in Italy, the affordance of domestic spaces to accommodate several kitchens allows for separation between the formal and informal spaces inside the house. This practice mirrors the use of secondary kitchens observed among Sri Lankan migrants in New Zealand. The division of spaces enables Italian women to conceal elements they prefer to keep hidden from visitors, and in that case it is the cooking mess, especially considering that many Italian families engaged in the process of seasonal food production (such as making sausages, tomato sauce, and wine). Pascali described this spatial arrangement as follows:

In addition to a traditional kitchen on the first floor, many first-generation Italians have a second kitchen in a finished basement. Less formal and often more spacious, this is typically where women prepare food, families eat dinner, children play and holidays are celebrated. Italians also make tomato sauce and sausages in the basement, where no one worries about making mess. In contrast, families maintain the upstairs in pristine condition: a showroom that is virtually unused except for receiving the occasional special or unfamiliar guest.²²

As an architectural feature, the narrative behind the multi-kitchen in both of the examples above revolves around the central role of women in carrying out their daily tasks. Cassim and colleagues reported on a Sri Lankan woman’s experience, where having multiple kitchens granted her the “freedom to go about her daily routines, without having to worry about maintaining appearances or having to negotiate cultural differences when guests are present.”²³ The Italian migrant women in North America regard a second kitchen (in the basement) as “a liberating space, free from the constraints of formality and traditional room divisions.”²⁴

Architecture researchers studying migrants’ domestic spaces in Australia focus on how these spaces reflect the relationship between mainstream Anglo-Australian society and ethnic minority groups.²⁵ Pieris and Palipane argued that architectural research on home and migration “raises issues of assimilability into the Anglo-Australian architectural cultures core values.”²⁶ The mainstream society does not perceive all migrants equally and some are more welcomed than others. In some cases, individuals belonging to certain migrant groups may feel the need to conceal themselves from what the Australian Anthropologist Ghassan Hage described as “the Anglo-gaze.”²⁷ For example, the kitchens of Sri Lankan-Australian women (in Canberra and Melbourne) are sites of adaptations and persistence “in the face of diffused processes of assimilation.”²⁸ Using migrants’ kitchens as a spatial analogy, Pieris and Palipane argue for diversification of the Australian feminist architectural practice to “anticipate other culturally plural framings and experiences of the built environment.”²⁹ The kitchens’ “transmigration” and “reincarnation” exhibit the migrants’ experiences, and socio-political aspects of the relationship with the main society, which “frequently reduce them to ethno-cultural traits.”³⁰ However, an important contribution of Supski’s study is that it captures the meaning of kitchens to women from a multicultural, rather than a monocultural perspective. Kitchens were important across the study participants who migrated to Australia from several European countries that were perceived as “easily assimilable into the Australian culture and way of life,”³¹ and also from women who migrated from “countries not sought after actively.”³²

Lebanese Australian women, like other migrant women, strongly exhibit their identities in the domestic space, including their kitchens. The work of Neila Hyndman-Rizik unpacked the important role of women (who migrated to Australia during the 1950s and 1960s) as the centre of the Lebanese Australian household in Sydney.³³ Building on the work of Ghassan Hage,³⁴ Hyndman-Rizik investigated the Arabic phrase sit el bayt . The word sit translates to a grandmother, and the word bayt translates to the house.³⁵ According to Hyndman-Rizik the phrase sit el bayt translates into the power of the house, “as the grandmother (sit) has seniority over her daughters-in-law as the matriarch and, thus, rules over domestic space.”³⁶

However, the role of sit el bayt applies to the (one) woman in charge of the household, from the perspective of power, regardless of them being grandmothers or not. Women, seen as the power within the house, are core in constructing the feeling of being home not just for themselves, but for the whole family. Hyndman-Rizik explained:

I consider the power of the “matriarch,” sit el bayt, to be a suppressed reality under whose authority the father and the children often experience themselves, not as subjects, but as dependent objects of her nurturing. The matriarch in her nurturing does more than just feed the body; however, she feeds the soul and, in so doing, constructs the affective and spiritual dimensions of homeliness within domestic space, not just for herself, but for the entire family.³⁷

In the Arabic culture, kitchens are perceived as “the woman’s domain,” with little interference from men in the kitchen activities.³⁸ Hyndman-Rizik acknowledged division of labour in the house, men are responsible for maintaining the outside, such as the running the garden, while women controlled the internal spaces such as food production, and the visual aesthetics of the home. Similar to the migrant groups discussed above, the homes of Lebanese Australian families provide a refuge to families from the host society, and exhibit their successes post-migration. Spatially, this has resulted in an increase in the overall size of houses, as well as in the number of kitchens and bathrooms, and careful consideration of the furnishings and decorations that best communicate their identity, as well as their success stories.³⁹

This research acknowledges the contribution of Lebanese Australian women to domestic architecture in Australian suburbs by investigating the socio-spatial transformation of the participants’ kitchens. The kitchens reflect the several identities, as Supski describes them: “wife, mother, housewife and homemaker—and within these identities, others such as creative artists, cooks, chefs, stylists, tailors and project managers.”⁴⁰ Building on the work of Hyndman-Rizik, my research transfers the narrative of women’s roles as sit el bayt into the discipline of architecture. The examination of the kitchens of 16 women who are part of the Lebanese Australian community evidence that their roles as sit el bayt are central to the creation, adaptation, and modification of Australian domestic architecture.

Method

This study presents a qualitative analysis of kitchens in Lebanese Australian homes located in Sydney and Brisbane. Data were collected as part of a larger study that examined the role Lebanese Australians play in the architectural development of suburban housing types through building, modifying, and using their domestic spaces.

Data were collected through in-depth interviews with 16 women who self-identify as part of the Lebanese Australian community (the larger study also incorporated the perspectives of three men), household tours, photographic documentation, and mental mapping exercises. The participants were interviewed between April 2016 and December 2018 (Table 1). Floor plan diagrams, including furniture layouts, were produced during or shortly after the interviews.

Table 1. Summary of participants’ personal and dwelling characteristics.

Participant Characteristics* Age; employment; migration status Time of interview	Pseudonym	Dwelling type	Number of kitchens	Kitchen layout	Tenure status	Changes to kitchen physical layout
Sydney-based participants
Participant 1 62 years old; unemployed; migrated to Australia in 1980. Interviewed in April 2016.	Deena	Detached house	1	Open-plan.	Homeowner, lived in the house since 2000.	Stove location.
Participant 2 30 years old; administration officer; Australian-born. Previously lived with Participant 1. Interviewed in April 2016.	Maha	Detached house	1	Open-plan.	Homeowner, lived in the house since 2018.	Change the location of the kitchen, and opting for an open-plan instead of a previous separate layout.
Participant 3 21 years old, health worker, Australian born. Lives with Participant 1. Interviewed in December 2017.	Amani	Detached house	1	Open-plan.	Homeowner, lived in the house since 2000.	Stove location
Participant 4 30 years old; teacher; Australian-born. Interviewed in December 2017.	Manar	Detached granny flat on a family-owned complex.	1	Open-plan.	Renting from the extended family since 2010.	No changes.
Participant 5 39 years old; previous teacher; Australian-born. Interviewed in December 2017.	Rania	Detached house.	1	Separate kitchen.	Renting since 2015	No changes.
Participant 6 52 years old; unemployed; migrated to Australia in 1986. Interviewed in December 2017.	Samiha	Detached house with granny flat on site.	2 kitchens in the main house, and 1 kitchen in the granny flat.	The main house has 1 separate kitchen, and 1 open-plan kitchen.	Homeowners, lived in the house since 1989.	A second kitchen was added to the main house, and the existing kitchen was renovated and turned into an open-plan kitchen.
Participant 7 39 years old; midwifery student; Anglo Australian. Interviewed in December 2018.	Jessica	Detached house with granny flat on site.	1 kitchen in the main house, and 1 kitchen in the granny flat.	Open-plan.	Homeowners, lived in the house since 2012.	No changes.
Participant 8 24 years old; health worker; Australian-born Interviewed in December 2018.	Nadine	Knock-down-rebuild house: Detached house with granny flat on site.	2 kitchens in the main house and 1 kitchen in the granny flat.	The main house has 1 separate kitchen, and 1 open-plan kitchen.	Homeowners, lived in the house since 2019.	Kitchens built to meet cultural needs of the participant.
Participant 9 29 years old; teacher; Australian-born Interviewed in December 2018.	Riham	Detached house.	1 kitchen	Dining-kitchen area combine, and the living area is separate.	Renting.	No changes.
Participant 10 30 years old; unemployed; Australian-born. Interviewed in December 2018.	Amal	Detached house.	1 kitchen.	Open-plan.	Renting.	No changes.
Participant 11 46 years old; unemployed; migrated to Australia 1985. Interviewed in December 2018.	Fatina	Detached house	1 kitchen	Open-plan.	Homeowners since 2000.	Separate kitchen converted into an open-plan kitchen with a living area added to the existing structure. Major renovations included the arrangement of bench spaces and allocation of built-in appliances.
Participant 12 39 years old; journalist; Anglo Australian Interviewed in April 2020.	Clara	Detached house	2 kitchens	The main kitchen is separate with sufficient space to accommodate a dining table. The second kitchen is separate.	Homeowners.	The second kitchen was added to the house accommodate multigenerational living needs. Clara family shares the house with Clara’s parents-in-law.
Brisbane-based participants
Participant 13 40 years old; retail worker; migrated to Australia in 1998. Interviewed in May 2016.	Firyal	Detached house	1 kitchen	Open-plan	Homeowners.	Major renovations transferring the kitchen from separate to open-plan, and allocations of built-in appliances.
Participant 14 25 years old; unemployed; migrated to Australia in 2014. Interviewed in October 2018.	Ameera	Townhouse	1 kitchen	Open-plan	Renting.	No changes.
Participant 15 36 years old; unemployed; migrated to Australia in 2010. Interviewed in October 2018.	Nehad	Detached house	1 Kitchen	Open-plan	Homeowners.	No changes.
Participant 16 37 years old; unemployed; migrated to Australia 2015. Interviewed in October 2018.	Zainab	Apartment	1 kitchen	Semi-open plan	Renting.	No changes.

The interviews documented the participants’ everyday practices inside their kitchens, changes to the use or physical layout, and meanings the women associated with their kitchens. The study included perspectives of seven women who migrated to Australia from the Middle East (Lebanese women who previously lived in Lebanon, Syria, and Dubai), five women who were Australian-born to Lebanese migrant parents, and two women who are from an Anglo-Australian background and identify themselves as part of the Lebanese Australian community, adopting the Lebanese Australian lifestyle after their marriages to Lebanese Australian men.

The participants mainly lived in detached suburban houses, except for one participant who lived in a granny flat, one who lived in a townhouse, and one who lived in an apartment. The number of kitchens in each dwelling ranged between 1 and 3 (including the kitchens of granny flats constructed on site), and were either open-plan or separate kitchens. The sample included the perspectives of both homeowners and tenants in rented properties. Table 1 assigns the participants pseudonyms and documents the participant characteristics (in terms of age, employment, and migration status), dwelling structure, number of kitchens, tenure status, and significant changes to the kitchen’s physical layout. The participants were asked to report past and present daily activities, and the ways in which they may have changed the use of their kitchens in response to changing needs over time. The analysis below discusses how the several identities embedded in the women’s roles as sit el bayt reflect on the use, change, and adaptation (physical or behavioural) of the kitchen.

Everyday Encounters in the Lebanese Australian Kitchen

Kitchens in the homes of the participating women played a significant role in allowing or hindering them from expressing their identities. Seen as a site where sit el bayt has the most power, Firyal (a 40-year old migrant participant) made the powerful statement, “this is my kingdom.” The reference to the kitchen, rather than the house, as a kingdom indicates that the kitchen holds a superior value in her everyday life compared to other domestic spaces.

While kitchens are generally seen as places of food production, the participants revealed their significance in the everyday life of the Lebanese Australian family extends beyond merely facilitating cooking. They serve as sites of leisure and household management and are symbolic communicators of family successes and the women’s abilities to perform their roles as sit el bayt. The centrality of the kitchen in the women’s everyday life has in turn made the kitchen, as Hyndman-Rizik explains, “the most important space within the house.”⁴¹ Additionally, cooking activities are not solely performed in kitchens, as other spaces–such as backyards–play a significant role in the production of Lebanese food.

Kitchens as Sites of Food Production

Traditional Lebanese cooking has always been part of Lebanese Australian homemaking practices in the Australian suburbs.⁴² The ability of participating women to cook food for their families was associated with the feeling of being proud of their Lebanese heritage. Fatina, a 40-year-old migrant participant, explained her surprise when her “Anglo Australian neighbour” once told her he had eaten a tuna sandwich for lunch. She stated that:

My Australian neighbour, I ask[ed] him what [did] you have for lunch, and he said tuna and two slices of bread. I have Shisbarak ; Middle Eastern meat dumplings cooked with yoghurt], Mjaddara , a vegetarian dish made of spiced rice, lintels and fried onion], I have a lot of things … This tuna sandwich is only enough for one hour for me … They never cook, I do not know [why]

As cooking traditional food allowed the women to express their roles as sit el bayt, the kitchens’ ability to accommodate these cooking activities influenced the participants’ satisfaction with their houses. They claimed that Lebanese food preparations were more complex than preparing Western cuisine. The participants explained that traditional Lebanese food requires more time to cook, generates more heat, produces stronger smells (particularly if a large quantity of food is being fried), and requires additional storage for cooking tools such as large pots. Poor ventilation and lack of storage spaces emerged as common complaints among the participating women. Poor ventilation was particularly an issue for women who cooked in open-plan kitchens adjoining living spaces. Several participants offered an explanation for this:

Rania: You know how much smell comes out of it; Lebanese cooking is just overboard.

Riham: If you have guests over, like now for example also, you wouldn’t want them to be distracted by the way you’re cooking, or have the smell come through to them.

Nehad: To me, the kitchen should be separate, a separate area that can be closed. Because of the smell of cooking, and noise made in the kitchen … if I cook something that has a strong smell, all the smell goes to the living room

The women’s endeavours to accommodate Lebanese cooking in mainstream Australian houses resulted in several spatial responses among the participants who own their homes. The renovations focused on improving the kitchen’s ventilation, such as moving the cooking stoves closer to—or just under—the windows. The women also stated that a lack of storage space in the kitchen and/or having small-sized kitchens were spatial problems. The lack of storage space was mentioned as inducing a feeling of being crowded in the kitchen, a place where some women might spend a good portion of their day. As noted earlier, large gatherings are a significant aspect of Lebanese Australian families’ lifestyle. Whenever gatherings occur, large quantities of food are also prepared and served. Cooking for gatherings requires using larger pots, more equipment, and the need to store large quantities of food. As Manar explained:

For Arabs, we need big kitchens because we love Azayem , large gatherings and serving food to visitors]; we spend a lot of time in our kitchens, that is why we love big kitchens. We use big pots that would never fit in the cupboards. They make the kitchen look messy, even if it is clean.

Three women–Nadine, Samiha, and Clara–chose to add secondary kitchens to eliminate indoor cooking of food that generate strong smells and increase the storage space for food and cooking equipment. The secondary kitchens in Samiha and Clara’s houses were added post-occupancy, while Nadine (who is the only participant who was involved in the design of her knock-down-rebuild house) incorporated a secondary kitchen when building the house (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Spatial layouts of Samiha, Clara and Nadine’s houses showing the locations of the main and secondary kitchens. (source: Author).

This spatial arrangement contains unwanted smells away and ensures that the main kitchen, typically visible to visitors, remains relatively clean and tidy. Although capable of accommodating most cooking activities, all three secondary kitchens are smaller than the main kitchens. Figure 2 illustrates the internal arrangement of the main and secondary kitchens in Samiha’s house. In addition to cooking equipment, the smaller-in-size secondary kitchen is utilised to store cleaning equipment that is considered aesthetically unappealing if visible in the living areas. It also houses the washing machine, laundry sink, and laundry basket.

Figure 2. The main (top) and secondary (bottom) kitchens inside Samiha’s house: a. built-in stove; b. indoor plant; c. dishwasher; d. empty bench top; e. backsplash panel, f. cleaning equipment; g. stove and oven; h. washing machine; i. laundry sink; j. laundry basket. (source: Author).

However, house adjustments, such as altering or adding a kitchen, are only feasible in owned houses. In rented properties, the participants alter their behaviour rather than the space. In such cases, the backyard plays a vital role in achieving satisfaction with cooking practices, as will be discussed later in this article.

Kitchens as Sites for Household Management

While the open-plan kitchen is viewed by several participants as impractical for accommodating Lebanese cooking, it is also seen as a support for women managing multiple household duties while preparing food.

The idea of open-plan kitchens was particularly associated with the women’s role as caregivers for children.⁴³ Several participants viewed open-plan kitchens as supportive of child supervision while performing household chores. In particular, open-plan kitchens that allow supervision of the backyard allows mothers to monitor the children’s indoor and outdoor activities. Amal explained:

I think our house is excellent for raising kids. We moved to this house for our kids, because they needed an outdoor area to play, and get sun, and they spend most of the day there. The beautiful about it [the spatial arrangement] is that while I am working in the kitchen, and kitchen work does not end, I can see them while they are there, and that is necessary.

Two participants, Rania and Jessica, were home-schooling their school-aged children. Home-schooling had a major influence on the way they use their suburban houses. When asked about the motivations behind the decision to home-school, Rania, a former primary school teacher, explained that she “want[s] to protect them.” She likes her children to have Akhlaq , good manners), and fears that her children would be bullied or would become bullies if attending school outside the home.

For Rania and Jessica, the role of sit el bayt demands that they be mothers, teachers, cooks, and household managers at the same time. The families assigned a personal learning zone to each home-schooled child. However, ensuring that each school-aged child’s academic achievement is not negatively affected by their personal space available is challenging. In both houses, home-schooling areas are located in, or near, the kitchen area. This allows Rania and Jessica (see Figure 3) to coordinate and supervise the learning and teaching activities while managing other daily household tasks, such as cleaning and cooking.

Figure 3. The location of home-schooling areas inside Jessica and Rania’s houses. (source: Author).

Rania also uses her house to accommodate interactions between her children and their peers. She is a member of a group of parents who home-school their children, and hosts twice-weekly group home-schooling sessions involving up to 10 children. During these sessions, the kitchen is transformed into a bigger classroom, with two foldable tables and ten chairs brought in for the learning activities. Meanwhile, the preschool-aged children are settled in the main living room as a play area. Rania described the kitchen as “a life saver” for being adaptable and flexible to accommodate activities other than food preparation.

Kitchen as Sites of Leisure

Indoor leisure time activities are commonly associated with several domestic spaces including the kitchen, dining room, and living areas.⁴⁴ Fatina, a 46-year-old participant, offered a fresh perspective on the kitchen as a leisure space. For her, cooking is not just a chore but a leisure activity, as she explained “I love cooking. I really love cooking. I like [to] make sweets a lot. So I like to have all the things [kitchen appliances] in my house.” Fatina extended her kitchen after she and her husband bought the house. The house extension changed the kitchen’s layout from separate to open-plan, still separated from areas where guests would be, adding a small couch, a TV connected with Arabic channels, and a small dining/food preparation table. While Fatina cooks out of passion, bringing leisure into the kitchen allowed her to experience nostalgia of being in Lebanon. While she cooks Lebanese food, she watches Arabic TV channels and enjoys the aroma of traditional Arabic coffee (also known as Turkish coffee) in the kitchen. Fatina recreated the sense of being home in the kitchen, making it the space where she likes to spend most of her time.

Similar to Fatina, the kitchen-TV relationship is central to Firyal’s experience of the home. She explained: “the kitchen is my space, I love the open-plan [layout] as I keep the TV on and still guests won’t be able to watch me if they are sitting downstairs.”

Kitchen as a Symbolic Communication

Paradoxical experiences were reported by the women when they discussed the negative implications of open-plan kitchens. A major concern for those who do not prefer open-plan kitchens (in addition to poor ventilation and limited storage capacity) is the lack of privacy in the kitchen. It is particularly inappropriate for Lebanese women to be observed performing house duties by men who are not part of the family (which in this case refers to non-household members who are not part of the extended family). Firyal explained:

Having an open plan kitchen is really good just because we have a second living area, it is really uncomfortable and sometimes inappropriate to let everyone sit near the kitchen watching me as I work.

For participants who have multiple living rooms, with one visually-separated from the kitchen, privacy is not a concern. Instead, an open-plan kitchen serves as a symbolic communicator to those who are welcome to see the kitchen (such as visiting women or close family friends.).

An open-plan kitchen communicates two messages: the women’s skills in maintaining their houses (or their success in fulfilling their roles as sit el bayt), and the family’s success in improving their financial situations post-migration. This is observed in the women being attentive to the tidiness and cleanliness of their kitchens. For example, Rania explained:

Because if you have visitors, you do not want them to see you in your kitchen. And if you have been cooking and it smells, and you did not have time to tidy up yet so you have pots everywhere … We started to tell people if you would like to visit me come after 8 pm because that is the time when I start cleaning … You are welcome to visit, but do not expect it to be neat and tidy all the time.

Adding a second kitchen to Samiha and Nadine’s houses ensures that the main kitchens, visible to visitors, are always tidy and clean reducing the emphasis on the appearance of the secondary kitchens. In both of these cases, adding second kitchens aimed to improve practicality. However, Basem (a male participant of the larger study, and husband of participant 4, Manar; see Table 1) provided a perspective that the number of kitchens not only reflects the women’s attempt to improve the functionality of the kitchen, but also draws in wider influences. Basem claimed that his mother’s experience with lack of space, house crowding, and inadequate housing at the time of her arrival from Lebanon (in the 1980s), through to around 2015 (when Basem’s parents built a new two-storey house), led her to overestimate the spatial needs of the family and to desire to express their successful post-migration settlement in Australia. Basem described the kitchens in his parents’ house as follows:

There are three kitchens too, one on the top level, which is a kitchenette, and a very big one on the lower level. The garage was then converted into a third living area, and the third kitchen was added there. The garage was supposed to be a drive-in garage for cars, but we closed it off, added a kitchen and a toilet and started using it as a living area. The main kitchen is near the informal living room, but is never used.

Basem acknowledges that his view, which suggests they do not need all these kitchens, does not fully reflect his mother’s perception of the house. He explains, “I am sure she would have a different perspective.” While this perspective is from a male participant, it underscores the significant influence of Lebanese Australian women in shaping domestic architecture through owner-driven renewal in the Australian suburbs.

Alternative Spaces: Food Production in the Backyard

Several spaces in the Australian house supported the food production in Lebanese Australian homes. Other spaces accommodated cooking activities, producing traditional Lebanese food, and maximising the storage capacity within the house.

Autonomy over the backyard space allows for the production of traditional Lebanese food. While the suburban backyard does not address all the shortcomings of internal kitchens, it does offer relative freedom to Lebanese Australian families, making these backyards central to fostering homemaking practices. For many participants, food production in the backyard evokes a sense of nostalgia. Fatina emphasised the importance to her and her husband of owning land: “gardening is important, we bought a house with Ared (; land/soil) because we are attached to Ared.” Several of the participants planted herbs and vegetables that are used as main ingredients in traditional Lebanese cooking. For some participants, productive backyards are a source of pride. As two participants noted:

Firyal: This backyard means a lot to me. It is one of the main parts we have worked on since we moved in. I recreated my own Daiaa , village]. This backyard makes me call this house “my sweet home.” We raise chickens, and we planted fruits, vegetables and herbs. We try to use our own organic produce as much as possible. I wish it were even larger. My husband installed an irrigation system, and we spend a lot of time maintaining it.

Clara: We have a large backyard plus a massive vegetable garden, which my in-laws are eternally proud of … The block is about 950 metres square, so quite large—lots of veranda space, grass, long driveway and the kids are always in and out all the time.

Firyal equipped her backyard with a Saj , convex metal griddle) to bake Khibiz Arabi , Lebanese flat bread) and Manaqeesh , traditional Lebanese pides), she installed a Mangal , barbecue), and constructed a Firn Hatab , wood-fired oven) for traditional cooking (see Figure 4). This equipment can only be accommodated outside, and they are usually found in village houses in Lebanon, where outdoor space is more likely to be available.

Figure 4. Cooking equipment installed in Firyal’s backyard. (source: Author).

Fatina’s passion for Lebanese cooking led her to use two of the three sheds in her backyard as storage areas for food, kitchen appliances and three fridges/freezers, as well as having a fridge inside the main kitchen. Fatina’s son was present during the interview, he associated his mother’s focus on food storage with the Lebanese culture. He explained: “we know one family, they are Lebanese, they built a house with a basement specifically for storage, storing food.” Amal, who participated in this study, is Fatina’s daughter, agreed with her brother’s perception of emphasis on food storage as being part of the Lebanese culture. She stated:

I think it is a Lebanese thing. My husband’s uncle’s house is exactly the same, They have something in every corner in the house, and they have two fridges in the garage, and she has no children [living with them], they [the children] are all married.

In rented properties, where making changes to the layouts is not an option, some participating women use backyards to compensate for the inconvenience of poorly ventilated kitchens. For example, Ameera (and her family of four) lived in a rented townhouse, and cooks six days per week. She does most of the cooking in the backyard, where she has set up a simple portable cooking station. In addition to problems with ventilation, the kitchen in her house has an electric cooking stove, which she considers impractical for making Lebanese food. She explained:

I rarely cook inside … the gas [stove] is electric. I do not like it. So, I have to go outside and cook. I have a portable cooking stove on the table. I just have to move it to the side when people come in. It is always moving, every single day. I also move it inside every night because I am scared of the sun [heat during the day] causing an explosion of the gas cylinder.

Discussion

The analysis above presents the kitchen inside the Lebanese Australian home as dynamic and evolving within the context of suburban housing. The findings underscore the kitchen’s pivotal role in shaping the lives and identities of the participating women, shedding light on its significance beyond its conventional function as a site for food production.

For the women whose kitchens symbolise their autonomy and agency as sit el bayt, it was evident that the centrality of the kitchen in developing a sense of being home. And home, here, referred to either the house, or being in Australia (for those who were not Australian-born; as is the case among migrant women in Supski’s research).⁴⁵ It is important to scrutinise how this agency to modify, create and adapt the kitchen is understood through the architectural lens.

First, autonomy over the internal and external space is integral to the architectural narrative of the detached suburban house and garden, both historically and in contemporary contexts.⁴⁶ However, the participating women did not all have equal access to autonomy over their kitchens. The narratives of women who lived in rented properties, apartments, and townhouses demonstrated disparities in access to autonomy over space. They needed to rely mainly on behavioural adaptation methods constrained by the physical parameters of their housing. This challenge is identified in related research. Pieris and Palipane explain, the “luxury of space [in this case, to bifurcation of kitchens] was not afforded to apartment dwellers, detached houses typically appropriated or even built spaces to accommodate these differences, whenever possible.”⁴⁷ Therefore, I question the extent to which the physical attributes of domestic architecture can truly mirror the migrant women’s role in shaping the evolution of kitchens, especially when their agency in initiating change is constrained. Constrained autonomy over domestic spaces, combined with the prevalence of mainstream cultural narratives regarding kitchens, may result in the underrepresentation of migrants’ influence in the transformation of Australian domestic architecture.

Second, the analysis identified commonalities in the reconfigurations and utilisation of the participants’ kitchens and other migrant women from various countries of origin, across different geographical and historical context. An example is the emergence of two-kitchen spatial arrangements, with similar rationale behind them in terms of practicality, privacy, and reducing aesthetic concerns such as smell, clutter, or mess. This spatial arrangement and experience mirrors the two-kitchen houses observed among Italian migrant women in North America,⁴⁸ as well as among Sri Lankan migrant women in both New Zealand⁴⁹ and Australia.⁵⁰ I, therefore, argue that architectural research possesses a profound capacity to encapsulate the concept of “aesthetic commonality,” a term borrowed from Hage’s book The Diasporic Condition: Ethnographic Explorations of the Lebanese in the World.⁵¹ Aesthetic commonality in Hage’s study describes how various Lebanese family members in diaspora could “share a certain generalized Lebaneseness.”⁵² Architectural research can capture the ways in which aesthetic commonality is interpreted spatially and/or through the utilisation of the domestic space. It is important to note that the multi-kitchen spatial response in Australia, by the Lebanese Australian women interviewed in this study and discussed in the work of Hyndman-Rizik,⁵³ as well as in North America among Italian migrants as documented by Pascali,⁵⁴ does not necessarily attempt to replicate the spatial arrangement of houses in countries of origin prior to migration. This underscores the necessity for future architectural research to investigate migrants’ housing alongside the histories and narratives associated with mainstream domestic architecture.

Furthermore, the examination of kitchens may also be powerful in documentingcommonalities between the women who are part of migrant communities, and those who are part of the mainstream society. For example, the spatial reflections of migrant women’s identities “further elided by the designation as motherly home-maker,”⁵⁵ emerged in this study to be strongly associated with the desire to contain or hide the messes (either caused by children or generated during cooking), the need to supervise children, and the need for spaces that remain tidy and ready to host guests at all times. Similar to the notion of sit al bayt for the Lebanese Australian, the mainstream notion of the good housewife includes “the determination of what constitutes mess, dirt and other excess, and the acts of managing or removing mess, are important components of home and family making.”⁵⁶ Dowling and Power’s research on Sydney’s “large houses”⁵⁷ detailed how autonomy over the spaces of detached suburban houses, particularly those that are relatively large, resolves the “tension between ideals of familial togetherness and the desire for privacy and individualism, in particular, by allowing residents to be together and separate within the same space.”⁵⁸

Third, the paper demonstrated that food production in the houses of migrant communities is often dispersed across several spaces, rather than being solely tied to the kitchens. Similar to the experience of this study’s participants, Vietnamese migrants’ gardens accommodated “messy cooking,” especially during large family gatherings.⁵⁹ Food production outside the kitchen is sometimes a practice to overcome the shortcomings of internal kitchen (such as lack of ventilation), and it also accommodated cooking traditional food that requires an external set-up, such as the use of wood-fire ovens. The implication of this observation is profound for considerations of the cooking space needed in speculatively produced housing, especially when autonomy over domestic spaces is physically constrained (such as in high and medium-density housing).

The indoor-outdoor relationship in terms of food production was also reported in the spatial configuration of post-WWII Italian migrant houses in Brisbane, reflecting the significance of food preparation in the lives of migrant Italian families.⁶⁰ Furlan documented the daily use of kitchens in two-storey houses of Italian migrants. Kitchenettes on the ground floor, located at back of multi-use rooms (used for food storage) and in proximity to backyards were used on a daily basis, and the main kitchens (located in the first floors) were also used for cooking activities. The main kitchens were normally open-plan allowing for social interactions. According to Bosworth, some Italian families living in Western Australia between 1987–9 “went to the trouble of constructing an outside kitchen in a separate room which suited them better than the one provided for them.”⁶¹ The descriptions provided in Furlan and Bosworth’s articles are very similar to the arrangement adopted by the Lebanese Australian participants who have several kitchens in their houses.

Hage’s anthropological research shifted the thinking around migrants’ homemaking practices from being solely a reflection of homesickness to a way of co-existing within the new context.⁶² What this article adds, is recognising how co-existence can be understood from the architectural lens. The presence of multi-kitchens, as continued by Australian-born participants, indicate that the practicality and cultural continuity is appreciated among both migrant and non-migrant women participants alike. The significance of this observation is to recognise that women’s homemaking practices within the kitchen were not solely associated with the post-migration adjustment period. Instead, these practices persisted and were supported and sustained across many decades by long-settled migrants. The Lebanese Australian women’s efforts to fulfil several identities embedded in their roles as sit el bayt—being mothers, cooks, household managers, and teachers—either lead to permanent alterations to suburban homes (such as creating second kitchens to accommodate Lebanese cooking), or introduce new domestic space utilisation methods (such as accommodating long-term home-schooling). This positions them as active contributors to Australian architecture; however, their contribution remains not fully-explored

In sum, the process of tailoring kitchens (by the study participants, and the several migrant groups discussed earlier in the literature), is one among several architectural responses that collectively contribute to the conceptualisation of the migrant house as a distinctive form of domestic architecture within the Australian context. The work of Mirjana Lozanovska emphasises migrants’ role as contributors to domestic architecture in Australia, explaining:

Migrants and migrant communities directly participate in their housing through adaptation, addition, extension or the building of a new house, and this constitutes symbolic materiality, creative productivity and the platform for agency in the broader context of the immigrant city.

Lozanovska accentuates the need to address the “the sociospatial transformation of the conventional house,”⁶³ to fully examine and better-understand how migrants contribute to the Australian domestic architecture, and to address what the Australian architectural researcher Cathy Keys describes as the long overdue “‘[i]nclusion of Indigenous and migrant architectures into Australian mainstream architectural histories.”⁶⁴

Conclusion

This paper investigated the kitchens of 16 Lebanese Australian women as both a social and spatial experience. The paper conveyed how the women’s roles as sit el bayt, or the power of the house, embed several identities, being mothers, housewives, household managers, teachers, and cooks. It documents how the women’s agency in transforming conventional Australian houses allowed them to express identities through various physical and behavioural responses, contributing to the creation of Australian domestic architecture. The article extends the role of kitchens in the everyday life of Lebanese Australian women beyond food production, to encompass sites of leisure, household management, and symbolic communications.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Sian Supski, “‘It was another skin:’ the kitchen as home for Australian post-war immigrant women,” Gender, Place & Culture 13, no. 2 (April 2006).

2. Anoma Pieris and Kelum Palipane, “‘Persistent’ Migrant Kitchens: Spatial Analogies and the Politics of Sharing,” Australian Feminist Studies (2023) DOI: 10.1080/08164649.2023.2199909; Supski, “‘It was another skin,’”

3. Paolo Boccagni, Migration and the Search for Home: Mapping Domestic Space in Migrants’ Everyday Lives (New York: Palgrave Macmillan); Ghassan Hage, “At Home in the Entrails of the West,” in Home/world: Space, Community and Marginality in Sydney’s West, eds. Helen Grace, Ghassan Hage, Lesley Johnson, Julie Langsworth and Michael Symonds (Sydney: Pluto Press, 1997): 99–153.

4. Sabrina Dinmohamed, “Exploring immigrants’ experiences through cultural practices and homemaking: the case of Dominican immigrants’ food practices,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 46, no. 10 (2023), 2220–224.

5. Ghassan Hage, The Diasporic Condition : Ethnographic Explorations of the Lebanese in the World (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2021); Pieris and Palipane, “‘Persistent’ Migrant Kitchens.”

6. Robyn Longhurst, Lynda Johnston and Elsie Ho, “A Visceral Approach: Cooking ‘at Home’ with Migrant Women in Hamilton, New Zealand,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 34, no. 3 (2009), 333–345.

7. For example, see Risto Moisio, Eric J. Arnould, and Linda L. Price, “Between Mothers and Markets: Constructing family identity through homemade food,” Journal of Consumer Culture 4, no. 3 (2004), 361–384; Louise C. Johnson, “Browsing the Modern Kitchen—a feast of gender, place and culture (Part 1),” Gender, Place & Culture 13, no. 2 (April 2006): 123–32.

8. Boccagni, Migration and the Search for Home.

9. Dinmohamed, “Exploring immigrants’ experiences through cultural practices and homemaking,” 2223.

10. Pieris and Palipane, “‘Persistent’ Migrant Kitchens.”

11. Robyn Longhurst, Lynda Johnston and Elsie Ho, “A Visceral Approach: Cooking ‘at Home’ with Migrant Women in Hamilton, New Zealand,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 34, no.3 (2009), 333–345.

12. Long, “Diasporic dwelling,” 339.

13. For example, see Supski, “‘It was another skin;’” Pieris and Palipane, “‘Persistent’ Migrant Kitchens;” Hyndman-Rizik, “At My Mother’s Table;” Shemana Cassim, Darrin Hodgetts and Ottilie Stolte, “Exploring distancing among Sri Lankan migrants in New Zealand,” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 79 (2020), 156–176; Joanna C. Long, “Diasporic dwelling: the poetics of domestic space,” Gender, Place & Culture 20, no. 3 (2013), 329–345,

14. Longhurst, Johnston& Ho, “A Visceral Approach,” 338.

15. Supski, “It was another skin,” 133.

16. Supski, “It was another skin,” 137.

17. Supski, “It was another skin.”

18. Cassim, Hodgetts and Stolte, “Exploring distancing among Sri Lankan migrants in New Zealand,” 171.

19. Cassim, Hodgetts and Stolte, “Exploring distancing among Sri Lankan migrants in New Zealand,” 172.

20. Cassim, Hodgetts and Stolte, “Exploring distancing among Sri Lankan migrants in New Zealand,” 172.

21. Lara Pascali, “Two Stoves, Two Refrigerators, Due Cucine: The Italian immigrant home with two kitchens,” Gender, Place and Culture 13, no. 5 (2006), 685–695.

22. Pascali, “Two Stoves, Two Refrigerators, Due Cucine,” 685.

23. Cassim, Hodgetts and Stolte, “Exploring distancing among Sri Lankan migrants in New Zealand,” 172.

24. Pascali, “Two Stoves, Two Refrigerators, Due Cucine,” 685.

25. For example, see Maram Shaweesh and Kelly Greenop, “Aesthetic Anxieties in the Migrant House: The Case of the Lebanese in Australia,” Fabrications 30, no. 2 (2020), 217–240; Mirjana Lozanovska, Migrant Housing : Architecture, Dwelling, Migration (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2019).

26. Pieris and Palipane, “‘Persistent’ Migrant Kitchens,” 3.

27. Hage, “At Home in the Entrails of the West,” 112.

28. Pieris and Palipane, “‘Persistent’ Migrant Kitchens,” 1.

29. Pieris and Palipane, “‘Persistent’ Migrant Kitchens,” 1.

30. Pieris and Palipane, “‘Persistent’ Migrant Kitchens,” 1.

31. Including Holland, West Germany, East Germany, Austria, Poland, Ukraine, and the UK.

32. Including Pakistan, India, Malta and Sri Lanka.

33. Nelia Hyndman-Rizik, “At My Mother’s Table: Migration, (Re)production and Return between Hadchit, North Lebanon and Sydney.” PhD diss, Australian National University, 2009.

34. Ghassan Hage, “At Home in the Entrails of the West”

35. Other interpretations of sit al bayt were recorded in Dahlia Hassanien, “Gendering Decent Work: Obstacles to Performativity in the Egyptian Work Place,” Surfacing 3, no. 1 (2010), 1–15.

36. Hyndman-Rizik, “At My Mother’s Table,” 116.

37. Hyndman-Rizik, “At My Mother’s Table,” 117.

38. Helen Vallianatos and Kim Raine, “Consuming Food and Constructing Identities among Arabic and South Asian Immigrant Women,” Food, Culture & Society 11, no. 3 (2008): 363.

39. Hyndman-Rizik, “At My Mother’s Table,” 118.

40. Supski, “It was another skin,” 134.

41. Hyndman-Rizik, “At My Mother’s Table,” 119.

42. Hage, “At Home in the Entrails of the West”

43. Pascoe, “Home Is Where Mother Is”

44. Margaret E. Beck and Jeanne E. Arnold, “Gendered time use at home: an ethnographic examination of leisure time in middle‐class families,” Leisure Studies 28, no. 2 (2009): 121–42

45. Supski, “’It was another skin.’.”

46. See Terry Burke and Kath Hulse, “The Institutional Structure of Housing and the Sub-prime Crisis: An Australian Case Study,” Housing Studies 25, no. 6 (2010): 821–38.

47. Pieris and Palipane, “‘Persistent’ Migrant Kitchens,” 12–13.

48. Pascali, “Two Stoves, Two Refrigerators, Due Cucine.”

49. Cassim, Hodgetts and Stolte, “Exploring distancing among Sri Lankan migrants in New Zealand”

50. Pieris and Palipane, “‘Persistent’ Migrant Kitchens”

51. Hage, The Diasporic Condition,120.

52. Hage, The Diasporic Condition,120.

53. Hyndman-Rizik, “At My Mother’s Table”

54. Pascali, “Two Stoves, Two Refrigerators, Due Cucine.”

55. Lozanovska, Migrant Housing, 40.

56. Robyn Dowling and Emma Power, “Sizing Home, Doing Family in Sydney, Australia,” Housing Studies 27, no. 5 (2012), 614.

57. Dowling and Power, “Sizing Home, Doing Family in Sydney, Australia,” 605.

58. Dowling and Power, “Sizing Home, Doing Family in Sydney, Australia,” 612.

59. Lesley Head, Pat Muir, and Eva Hampel, “Australian Backyard Gardens and the Journey of Migration,” Geographical Review 94, no. 3 (2004): 335.

60. Raffaello Furlan, “The Spatial Form of Houses Built by Italian Migrants in Post World War II Brisbane, Australia,” Architecture Research 5, no. 2 (2015): 31–51

61. Michal Bosworth, “Conversations with Italian women: close encounters of a culinary kind,” Studies in Western Australian History 12 (1991): 95–102.

62. Hage, “At Home in the Entrails of the West”

63. Lozanovska, Migrant housing: Architecture, Dwelling, Migration, 78.

64. Cathy Keys, “Diversifying the early history of the prefabricated colonial house in Moreton Bay,” Queensland Review 26, no.1 (2009): 86–106.