Bingo: lifestyle gambling, precarity and cultural resilience among Pacific migrants in Australia

John Cox, Kathleen Maltzahn, Sarah MacLean, Helen Lee and Mary Whiteside

Chapter 41 in Research Handbook on the Sociology of Consumption, 2026, pp 476-487 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Recent studies of “lifestyle gambling” have pointed to the success of the predatory gambling industry in expanding into everyday life. This chapter combines ethnographic research with an intersectional approach in analysing neglected dimensions of lifestyle gambling. It explores bingo playing among Pacific migrant women in regional Australia to highlight distinctive experiences of “lifestyle” that are located within a set of collective cultural norms that mitigate some gambling harms. Bingo, like other forms of gambling, can amplify financial insecurity and escalate social tension. However, it also provides opportunities for migrant women to enjoy social connection and leisure outside the home. When they win, money is not simply used to keep playing, but is reinvested in domestic expenses or family treats that momentarily relieve financial austerity. Pacific diaspora cultures generate and reproduce distinctive registers of value based on family and collective identities rather than market consumerism. The chapter sees this as a form of “cultural resilience” even as prevailing economic conditions become ever more precarious.

Keywords: Gambling; Social capital; Bingo; Precarity; Cultural resilience; Polynesia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035310500
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