Transforming the Politics of Mobility and Migration in Aotearoa New Zealand

Transforming the Politics of Mobility and Migration in Aotearoa New Zealand is a future-focused edited collection that formulates alternative paradigms that can lead to a more just and ethical politics of mobility and migration in Aotearoa New Zealand. Examining a variety of topics, the book addresses the challenges of structural discrimination, integration and migrant rights framed within larger regional and global concerns. Collectively, the contributors advance perspectives on social justice and migrant rights, specifically addressing issues of ethics, collective well-being and solidarities.

The collection brings together leading and early career scholars paired with practitioners in the migrations sector. Developing conceptual knowledge in migration studies, it fills a gap in the sparse literature on the politics of migration in Aotearoa New Zealand. While theoretically engaged and of value to the research community, the book also follows recent calls to better communicate the complexities of migration to policy makers, with accessible chapters that address a range of issues faced by migrants and speak to a wide audience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anthem Press
• Release date: Aug 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781839983450

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Transforming the Politics of Mobility and Migration in Aotearoa New Zealand

Transforming the Politics of Mobility and Migration in Aotearoa New Zealand

Edited by

Jessica Terruhn and Shemana Cassim

Anthem Press

An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company

www.anthempress.com

This edition first published in UK and USA 2023

by ANTHEM PRESS

75–76 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK

or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK

and

244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA

© 2023 Jessica Terruhn, Shemana Cassim editorial matter and selection;

individual chapters © individual contributors

The moral right of the authors has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023934847

A catalog record for this book has been requested.

ISBN-13: 978-1-83998-343-6 (Hbk)

ISBN-10: 1-83998-343-4 (Hbk)

Cover Credit: H&D Donnelly

This title is also available as an e-book.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Contributors

Glossary of Te Reo Māori Words

Glossary of Te Reo Māori Place Names

Glossary of Other Non-English Words

List of Tables

List of Figures

Index

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to express our gratitude to the people without whom this collection would not have been possible. Above all, this book is the result of ongoing engagement with and between the migration researchers, policy makers, practitioners and activists who are members of the Aotearoa Migration Research Network. Both, the monthly seminars and the 2020 symposium dedicated to discussing migration in the context of the then still very novel Covid-19 pandemic have inspired and contributed to this collection.

More specifically, we would like to thank Bruce Cohen and Ottilie Stolte for their support of our work and for advising and helping us from day one through to the end. Our thanks also extend to Darrin Hodgetts, Jacquie Kidd and Francis Collins for generously agreeing to review selected chapters of this collection. Thanks, in particular to Francis for his support of this initiative, alongside his much-appreciated advice and mentorship. Tēnā koe (thank you) also to Rawiri Keenan, for his valuable thoughts and guidance as we navigated the glossary; and thank you to Nadia Baikalova for her skilful support with the book’s imagery.

We would like to thank our copyeditor Liz Stone for her expert skills that substantially enhanced the quality and presentation of this collection and sincerely acknowledge the publication team at Anthem Press for their thorough and diligent work and support throughout the publication and production process of this collection. We would like to acknowledge the contributions of our anonymous reviewers from around the world. We greatly appreciate and value your time, expertise and encouragement, as we know how busy you are. We are also grateful for the financial support provided by the Division of Arts, Law, Psychology and Social Sciences at the University of Waikato.

Most importantly, a heartfelt thank you to all our contributing authors for their critical mahi (work) in the field of migration and for their generosity, kindness and patience in creating the chapters and commentaries for this collection, and throughout the entire review and publication process. Without them, this collection would not have been possible, and we are so pleased and proud that they agreed to take this journey with us. We dedicate this collection to all of our contributors.

CONTRIBUTORS

Ayca Arkilic

Dr Ayca Arkilic is a senior lecturer in Political Science and International Relations at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. She has been teaching on immigration, European politics, and Middle Eastern politics. Ayca’s work focuses on state-diaspora relations, comparative immigration and integration politics, transnationalism, and religion and politics. Ayca has served as a visiting scholar at Oxford University, Sciences Po-Paris, and the Berlin Social Science Research Center’s (WZB) Migration, Integration, Transnationalisation research unit. Her most recent publication is Diaspora Diplomacy: The Politics of Turkish Emigration to Europe (Manchester University Press, 2022). She is currently coediting The Routledge Handbook of Turkey's Diasporas with Dr Bany Senay (Macquarie University).

Umi Asaka

Umi Asaka is, among other roles, a junior research fellow at the Donald Beasley Institute and CCS Disability Action’s lower South Island representative on their National Board. Having immigrated from Japan when she was 15, she currently holds a post-study work visa and is working towards gaining permanent residence.

Charlotte Bedford

Dr Charlotte Bedford is a research fellow in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University. She has a PhD in Geography on the RSE scheme from the University of Adelaide and a Graduate Certificate in Evaluation from the University of Melbourne. Charlotte has a particular interest in assessing outcomes of policy initiatives fostering temporary migration, especially in the Pacific region. She recently led a major study of the impacts of the RSE scheme on workers, families and communities in the Pacific commissioned by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

Richard Bedford

Professor Richard Bedford CNZM, QSO, FRSNZ is Emeritus Professor at the University of Waikato and the Auckland University of Technology. He is a population geographer who specialises in migration research and, since the mid-1960s he has been researching processes of population movement and demographic change in the Asia-Pacific region. Since the 1980s Professor Bedford’s research has had a strong applied focus, addressing critical issues in immigration policy in New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific region.

Juliana Carvalho

Juliana Carvalho is an author, speaker, marketing consultant and disability activist from Brazil. She has first-hand experience of being turned down at every step of the residency application process, having a medical waiver denied twice and eventually facing deportation. She was granted residency via ministerial intervention after a seven-year legal battle and is now campaigning for the immigration policy to change. The petition she created has gathered over 34,000 signatures and is currently being considered in Parliament.

Shemana Cassim

Dr Shemana Cassim is a lecturer at Te Kura Hinengaro Tangata School of Psychology, Massey University. Shemana has an interest in the cultural, historical and social contexts and societal structures that influence the everyday life-worlds of peoples of colour. Recently, Shemana has been involved in multiple community health research projects aimed at promoting equitable health outcomes for Māori as well as Muslim migrant communities. Shemana has held a Research Fellowship with Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, and was also a research fellow on multiple externally funded research projects based at the University of Waikato. Shemana is a co-convenor of the Aotearoa Migration Research Network, an executive council member of CEAD (Contemporary Ethnographies Across Disciplines), and on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology.

Francis L. Collins

Francis L. Collins is Professor of Sociology in Te Puna Mārama School of Social Sciences at Waipapa Taumata Rau University of Auckland. Francis’ research addresses international migration with a particular focus on the experiences, consequences, migration patterns and regulation of temporary migrants in Aotearoa and in the context of the broader Asia Pacific. This includes recent and current projects exploring temporary migration and national futures, workplace exploitation of temporary migrants, the politics of migration policymaking, and systems and experiences of racism in employment. Francis is the author of Global Asian City: Migration, Desire and the Politics of Encounter in 21st century Seoul (Wiley 2018) and co-editor of Intersections of Inequality, Migration and Diversification (Palgrave 2020), Aspiration, Desire and the Drivers of Migration (Routledge 2020) and The Handbook of transnationalism (Edward Elgar 2022).

Cameron Dickie

Cameron Dickie has a MA in Social Anthropology and is in the early stages of a PhD project analysing youth, education, social crises, and the future in the UK and Norway. Previously, he provided research assistance with the CaDDANZ (Capturing the Diversity Dividend of Aotearoa New Zealand) research programme, and he also provides research and learning support at Massey University, in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Deb Donnelly

Deb Donnelly is New Zealand born artist, printmaker, researcher and writer of family textile tales. She is a full-time independent Asian art textiles curator after 30 years’ experience as a tertiary art tutor while raising her family. She is happily domiciled on the Kapiti Coast as long as it allows her international travel. She is interested in growing trees and plants as dye stock.

Ruth Faleolo

Dr Ruth (Lute) Faleolo is a New Zealand–born Tongan, based in Australia. Her Pacific research interests include migration histories, trans-Tasman and trans-Pacific mobilities, collective agencies, e-cultivation of cultural knowledge and heritage. Her recent PhD study (2015–2020) captured Pacific perspectives and well-being experiences, in Auckland and Brisbane, among Samoan and Tongan, communities (AERC/ISSR, University of Queensland). Her current Postdoctoral research (2020–2024) examines trans-Pacific mobilities and multi-sited Pacific Islander communities, connected in Australia and through Australia (ARC, La Trobe University).

Meng Foon

Meng Foon has taken up the appointment of Race Relations Commissioner, after 24 years at the Gisborne District Council. Mr Foon was elected as a councillor in 1995 and in 2001 he was elected Mayor, a role he held for 18 years. He is one of a handful of people of Chinese descent to have become a mayor in New Zealand. He is fluent in English, Cantonese and te reo Māori. As of 2019, he is still the only mayor in New Zealand who is fluent in te reo. He is a member of a number of community organisations including the Ngā Taonga a Ngā Tama Toa Trust, the New Zealand Chinese Association, Aotearoa Social Enterprise Trust and MY Gold Investments Ltd. Mr Foon is responsible for leading the work of the Human Rights Commission in promoting positive race relations.

Erin Gough

Born in South Africa, Erin lived in Christchurch before moving to Wellington in 2015. Erin has extensive advocacy experience, both personally as someone disabled since birth, and professionally, having worked for Community Law Canterbury, the Human Rights Commission, Ministry of Education and currently, the Office of the Children’s Commissioner. Erin is a proud disabled, queer activist committed to the principles of Disability Justice – and to always learning from other activists both in Aotearoa and around the world. Erin immigrated to New Zealand in 2000 before the policy requirements became stricter.

Amber Kale

Dr Amber Kale graduated with a PhD in Geography from Victoria University of Wellington in 2021. Her research uses participatory multisensory methodologies to explore experiences of displacement, citizenship, place-attachment, and holistic well-being in refugee resettlement. She has volunteered for various organisations in the Wellington refugee resettlement sector since 2013 and has experience working as an artist and refugee activist.

Anu Kaloti

Anu Kaloti is the president of the Migrant Workers Association and a licenced immigration advisor. She is also a veteran activist and organiser in Aotearoa New Zealand. Anu immigrated to Aotearoa New Zealand from the UK in 2003, but her family is originally from the Indian subcontinent.

Áine Kelly-Costello

Áine Kelly-Costello is a blind and chronically ill campaigner and creative. Living in Ireland and Canada as a child, from age nine she grew up in Aotearoa New Zealand, and she is currently based in Norway. Áine has worked on campaigns and trainings for disability rights and climate justice and as a journalist. She curates a podcast and associated blog called Disability Crosses Borders to uplift stories at the intersections of disability, migration and culture. When her family immigrated to New Zealand in 2004, Áine’s parents fought on her behalf to obtain her student visa and residency, faced with discrimination on the grounds of her cost to education services.

Jennifer Khan-Janif

Originally from Fiji, Jennifer Khan-Janif migrated to Aotearoa New Zealand 32 years ago. She has worked in various public sector roles in Aotearoa New Zealand and in 2001 established the Auckland Branch of the Office of Ethnic Affairs (currently known as Office of Ethnic Communities, Department of Internal Affairs). She is a highly skilled practitioner specialising in development, identity, human rights, ethnic minority rights, gender violence and women rights. She has presented academic papers at international and local conferences.

She is a graduate of the University of Auckland with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Sociology and has a post graduate Diploma in Arts from Auckland University of Technology. She was appointed a Justice of Peace in 1998 and in 2020 New Year’s Honours List, she was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to refugee and migrant communities. She is a creative writer and has publications of poetry and short stories. She is currently employed as a senior advisor for E Tū Whānau (Refugee and Migrants), Ministry of Social Development.

Duncan Law

Dr Duncan Law’s research focuses on institutional economics and social epistemology, with a particular interest in the theorisation of social power in economic theory and on the global political economy of scientific knowledge production. Methodologically, he is interested in agent-based modelling and in techniques for the analysis of large-scale qualitative datasets.

Nuke Martiarini

Nuke Martiarini is a lecturer in the Psychology Department, Universitas Negeri Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia. Currently, she is also a PhD student at Massey University, New Zealand. For the past 10 years, Nuke has been involved in activities with communities of vulnerable women (primarily with women in poverty in an area where she lives in Indonesia, homeless girls and women, and women as sex workers). She also worked with young people in Indonesia on taking care of the neglected elderly. Now, Nuke is carrying out community research relating to Muslim migrant women in New Zealand. Her research highlights how Muslim women from different ethnicities create spaces for their ‘sisters’ to be well resettled in New Zealand.

Heather Nunns

Dr Heather Nunns is Director of Analytic Matters, a company that has undertaken policy-related research, evaluation and policy analysis for government agencies since 2007. She has a PhD in public policy evaluation, a Master of Business Studies and a Post Graduate Diploma in Social Sector Evaluation Research, all from Massey University. Before becoming self-employed Heather worked in research, evaluation and policy roles in government agencies for over 20 years. She led the New Zealand stream and synthesis stage of the recently completed RSE Impact Study.

Nicole Pepperell

Dr Nicole Pepperell is Senior Lecturer and Director of Te Puna Ako Centre for Tertiary Teaching & Learning at the University of Waikato. Her research interests include contestations over national identity and conceptions of national belonging in settler colonial societies, critical sociological theory, and how the colonial context shaped classical sociological and economic theory.

Guanyu Jason Ran

Dr Guanyu Jason Ran is a lecturer in sociology at Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland. His research interests cover topics including transnational migration and families, refugee settlement and integration, as well as policy-making and social services towards immigrant and refugee groups in the host society. He has published broadly under those topics on different platforms in different genres, including a book, book chapters, and journal articles in high-ranking international journals such as Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Population, Space and Place, Journal of Population Research, and The European Journal of Social Work. He is also a registered social worker in both China and New Zealand with extensive social work experiences in the field of public health, human rights advocacy, youth development, and social innovation.

Julija Sardelić

Dr Julija Sardelić is a senior lecturer in Political Science at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington. Prior to this position, she was Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Leuven International and European Studies (University of Leuven, Belgium). Before her Marie Skłodowska-Curie fe llowship, she worked at the University of Liverpool, European University Institute and the University of Edinburgh. She was also a visiting fellow at the Centre on Statelessness (University of Melbourne). Her research and teaching encompass broader themes of citizenship and migration, while she has written several journal articles and book chapters with a focus on marginalized minorities (especially Roma) and refugees. Her book entitled The Fringes of Citizenship was published in 2021 with Manchester University Press.

Paul Spoonley

Distinguished Professor Emeritus Paul Spoonley was previously the pro vice-chancellor of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Massey University. He is now a co-director of He Whenua Taurikura National Research Centre of Excellence in Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism. He is the author or editor of 29 books, including The New New Zealand. Facing Demographic Disruption (2020, 2021), and he is a co-editor of Histories of Hate. The Radical Right in Aotearoa New Zealand (2022). He was a programme leader of a research programme on the impacts of immigration and diversity on Aotearoa (MBIE, 2014–2021). He was made a fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 2011 and was granted the title of Distinguished Professor by Massey University in 2013. He was awarded the Science and Technology Medal by the Royal Society in 2009; he was a Fulbright Senior Scholar at the University of California Berkeley in 2010, and since 2013, he has been a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, Germany. The Auckland War Memorial Museum made him a fellow in 2015. He is member of the Marsden Fund Council, and a Senior Affiliate of Koi Tū: The Centre for Informed Futures.

Jessica Terruhn

Dr Jessica Terruhn is a senior research fellow at Te Ngira Institute for Population Research at the University of Waikato. Before joining Te Ngira, she obtained a PhD in Sociology from the University of Auckland and worked as a senior research officer on the CaDDANZ (Capturing the Diversity Dividend of Aotearoa New Zealand) research programme at Massey University. Her research expertise lies at the intersections of urban studies and racism, migration and settler colonialism. Recent research has focused on the formal and informal management of difference and the spatial reproduction of inequalities. She is Co-convener of the Aotearoa Migration Research Network and Editor of New Zealand Sociology.

Matthew Wynyard

Dr Matthew Wynyard (Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāpuhi) teaches Sociology at Massey University / Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa in Manawatū. His research focuses on capitalism, colonisation and the capture and enclosure of Indigenous lands and natural resources, agriculture and the environment. Before joining Massey University, Matthew worked as a senior Historian at the Office of Treaty Settlements, researching the Crown’s historical breaches of Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

GLOSSARY OF TE REO MĀORI WORDS

GLOSSARY OF TE REO MĀORI PLACE NAMES

GLOSSARY OF OTHER NON-ENGLISH WORDS

LIST OF TABLES

LIST OF FIGURES

INTRODUCTION: REIMAGINING THE POLITICS OF MOBILITY AND MIGRATION THROUGH DECOLONISATION, SOCIAL JUSTICE AND SOLIDARITIES

Jessica Terruhn and Shemana Cassim

Migrant Lives Matter

The Migrant Lives Matter slogan was first used in a 2015 protest against European governments letting asylum seekers die at sea rather than offering them refuge (De Genova 2018). Much like the Black Lives Matter activism the slogan connects to migrant activists and their allies have been calling out state-sanctioned structural violence that treats racialised/migrant bodies as worthless and disposable and consciously puts their lives at risk.

In Aotearoa New Zealand (hereafter, Aotearoa), migrant activists adopted the Migrant Lives Matter slogan in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic to draw attention to the exclusionary and dehumanising effects of the New Zealand Government’s Covid-19 response on migrants. As Aotearoa closed its borders to all but permanent residents and returning New Zealand citizens on 19 March 2020, the lives of temporary visa holders were thrown into disarray. Many of those who were in Aotearoa at the time lost jobs and faced financial difficulties, with often little access to the social support available to residents and citizens. For some time, they faced insecurities about their prospects of remaining in Aotearoa as visa processing was curbed or suspended. In addition, temporary visa holders in Aotearoa were immobilised in so far as had they wanted or needed to journey overseas, they would have had to forfeit any possibility of return. Meanwhile, temporary visa holders who happened to be overseas on 19 March 2020 – including those readying themselves to migrate to Aotearoa as well as those already home in Aotearoa but momentarily absent – found, and more than two years later continue to find, themselves in limbo. While Aotearoa’s borders were closed, the vast majority of those migrants were unable to return, no matter how long they had previously lived in Aotearoa, no matter whether they had jobs or studies to return to, and no matter whether their family members lived in Aotearoa. Initial short-term blanket extensions of temporary visas, a one-off 2021 Resident Visa and the gradual opening of the border since May 2022 have brought relief to some, though by no means all, of the temporary visa holders in and outside of Aotearoa. Rather than offering a blanket amnesty to all onshore temporary visa holders, the one-off 2021 Resident Visa, for instance, retained a range of exclusions based on the perceived value of migrants centred on a ‘settled, skilled or scarce’ logic. Those who happened to be overseas continue to face uncertain prospects: many found their visas expired with no recourse for extensions, and all of them found themselves excluded from the chance of applying for the 2021 Resident Visa for the mere unfortunate fact that they happened to be overseas on 19 March 2020. As such, the remedies offered to mitigate the effects of the pandemic have been partial at best and reflect the ongoing disregard by the New Zealand Government for migrant lives.

The Covid-19 response arguably constitutes a particular and, in many ways, exceptional moment in the history of international mobility with such abrupt and widespread disruptions of movement rarely seen. Given its rhetoric of kindness that bound the ‘team of five million’ during the pandemic, the Government’s wholesale exclusion and dehumanisation of temporary visa holders in particular was striking and raises significant questions about the ethics that govern the politics of migration (Alrob and Shields 2022; Collins 2021). The point to make here – and it is one that activists have made over the past two years – is that the Covid-19-related restrictions have merely revealed and exacerbated the precarities that have been systematically created by ‘a broken immigration system’ (Kaloti, cited in APR Editor 2021) since long before the pandemic.

Among the precarity, distress and hardship caused by Covid-19 restrictions, the New Zealand Government announced a ‘reset’ of its immigration settings. From our perspective as critical migration scholars, practitioners and activists, the pandemic could and should have provided an impetus to heed activist calls for transformative change. Instead, early indicators suggest that the New Zealand Government chooses to reinforce an economistic approach to regulating migration that further prioritises highly skilled and highly paid migrants. Often referred to as ‘rebalance’, the shift will further reduce migration and settlement opportunities for low-skilled and low-wage migrants while fast-tracking those with highly sought-after skills and in high-wage occupations, as evident in the recently introduced Green List (see Terruhn, Chapter Three) that offers expedited