Te Ngira Institute for Population Research

Shared representations of history are crucial for a sense of coherent social identities, societal cohesion, and political legitimation in nation states. In settler societies such as Aotearoa New Zealand, collective settler memory has often served to justify colonialism. Previous research has particularly highlighted the role forgetting has played, first in taking possession of the
new country, and later in preserving the privileged position of settler descendants in a postcolonial society. In this paper, I focus on practices of remembering as one aspect of settler memory that has been neglected so far. Findings from a study with thirty-eight New Zealanders of European descent (Pākehā) suggest that memories of transformations in settlerindigenous
relations play an integral role in negotiating contemporary settler identities. I will demonstrate this function of remembering through a careful examination of one exemplary narrative which allows me to trace the narrative performance of memory and to pinpoint key themes. Through practices of remembering Pākehā acknowledge the need for a break with the colonial past. However, genuine efforts to develop new post-colonial settler subjectivities are compromised by discursive redefinitions of decolonisation as the recognition and "mainstreaming‟ of indigenous culture. This culturalisation serves to obscure on-going coloniality and protect white settler privilege whilst allowing Pākehā to claim a reformed, postcolonial identity.

Aotearoa New Zealand identifies as a bicultural nation built by two founding peoples – the white European settlers (Pakeha) and the indigenous Maori – and based on the Treaty of Waitangi signed in 1840 by representatives of the British Crown and a number of Maori rangatira (chiefs). Integral to the decolonising politics of the country, biculturalism stipulates, at least in theory, equal partnership between the two peoples, ‘with the values and traditions of both cultures reflected in society’s customs, laws, practice, and institutional arrangements, and with both sharing
control over resources and decision making’ (O'Reilly and Wood 1991: 321). However, most Pakeha only support a soft form of biculturalism - such as the incorporation of traditional Maori cultural markers into the ‘mainstream’ - while largely opposing measures designed to redistribute power and resources. At the same time that the meaning of biculturalism is still contested, a shift in immigration policies has been leading to a larger multi-ethnic presence in New Zealand, especially in its largest city Auckland. This raises the question how de facto multiculturalism impacts on a national imaginary grounded in biculturalism.
In this paper I will interrogate how European New Zealanders as the dominant ethnic group understand their position in relation to both biculturalism and multiculturalism. Presenting data from 38 biographical interviews with European New Zealanders in Auckland, I will show that the notion of multiculturalism with its emphasis on celebrating diversity provides a more comfortable and less threatening alternative to biculturalism. I argue that
mapping Western hegemonic discourses of liberal multiculturalism onto a post-colonising settler society effectively allows the dominant ethnic group to redefine and depoliticise the concept of biculturalism.

Settler societies are characterised by complex relations between settlers, indigenous peoples, and migrants. These relationships involve contestations over the rights of indigenous peoples, the place of ethnic minorities, and the position of settlers in de facto post-colonising settings. In Aotearoa New Zealand, these tensions are overtly encapsulated in the contested ‘isms’ of biculturalism and multiculturalism. Adopted in the 1980s in response to the indigenous sovereignty movement, biculturalism stipulates equal partnership between Anglo settlers (Pakeha) and Indigenous Maori. Since then it has become the national governance framework of Aotearoa New Zealand and an integral part of the decolonising imaginary of the country. At the same time though, a rapid increase in immigration has brought multiculturalism as a possible alternative to biculturalism to the fore, leading to debates about the compatibility of the two paradigms. In this chapter, I focus on the majority group of Pakeha and their position as stakeholders vis-à-vis bi- and multiculturalism. Drawing on thirty-eight life story interviews with Pakeha in New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland, I argue that respondents employ the globally hegemonic rhetoric of liberal multiculturalism as a discursive strategy to dismiss the continued relevance of settler colonialism and justify sustained patterns of ethnic inequalities. A number of specific discursive tropes will be presented and discussed as contemporary expressions of settler colonialism: Firstly, I will critically discuss the importance of temporality for advancing the settler colonial project. In this context, I will examine discourses in which respondents confine indigeneity to the realm of the past in order to progress to a less threatening multicultural future. Secondly, I will examine the discursive erasure of differences between Maori and migrants as a strategy to reject indigenous rights and to render coloniality irrelevant.

Over the past three decades Auckland has become a ‘super-diverse’ city. A growing corpus of quantitative studies of New Zealanders’ attitudes to immigration has found overall positive attitudes to increasing ethnic diversity but have also indicated possible caveats and tensions. Thus far, there have been no attempts to qualitatively explore these tensions in New Zealand. In this paper I will examine how the majority ethnic group of European New Zealanders (Pākehā) experience lived multiculture in Auckland. Based on biographical interviews with thirty-eight Pākehā in Auckland, I argue that they are ‘conflicted cosmopolitans’ who endorse ethnic diversity and present themselves as cosmopolitan while simultaneously employing exclusionary discourses and practices when difference is perceived as a threat to Pākehā values and the hegemonic position of Pākehā as the national people.

This chapter discusses biculturalism as the current political paradigm defining relations between the indigenous Māori population and the settler population of New Zealanders of European descent (Pākehā) in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Following a brief sociohistorical analysis of settler colonialism and the place of Te Tiriti o Waitangi/The Treaty of Waitangi, the chapter charts how biculturalism emerged in response to an indigenous rights movement that brought settler colonial injustices into clear view. Since its inception in the 1970s, state biculturalism has broadly encapsulated a politics of redress and reconciliation for the
dispossession and destruction of indigenous communities at the hand of the settler state, but its scope and goals have been contested. In highlighting how biculturalism works in three key arenas – the Waitangi Tribunal, language revitalization, and social policy – the chapter discusses some of these contestations and their implications. The chapter centrally contends that while processes of reconciliation and redress through treaty settlements, efforts to revitalize te reo Māori, and
initiatives to tackle socioeconomic inequalities between Māori and Pākehā have made some difference to Māori communities, these strategies have fallen short of addressing indigenous rights to and aspirations for sovereignty.

In this chapter, Terruhn discusses the relationships between urban policy and planning discourses of diversity and socio-spatial urban inequalities in the context of New Zealand's largest and most diverse city, Auckland. Centrally, the chapter argues that in spite of aspirations to inclusiveness, discourses of diversity effectively reinforce and deflect from socio-spatial inequalities as a result of processes that are related to the marketisation of diversity in the context of global inter-urban competition. In conceiving of diversity primarily as an economic asset, policy discourses create a dichotomy between desirable and undesirable diversity, whilst spatial planning practices commodify diversity in a way that caters primarily to young, affluent consumers. Low-income residents are excluded from such visions and practices of diversity. At the same time, a preoccupation with shared values and social cohesion as the basis for convivial coexistence deflects from considerations of inequalities and how they affect social relations in diverse urban spaces.

Since the 1970s, Aotearoa/New Zealand has undergone wide-ranging social, political and cultural transformations both with respect to the politics of settler-indigenous relations and the ethnocultural diversification of the country’s population. Indigenous rights movements and the politics of biculturalism, as well as rapid increases in  immigration from non-traditional source countries have disrupted deeply entrenched settler narratives that naturalised white settler colonialism and destabilised the dominant position of the white settler majority (Pākehā), forcing Pākehā to rearticulate identities and re-imagine the nation.
This thesis investigates how Pākehā experience ‘being Pākehā’ today. Taking account of several decades of living with or growing up with biculturalism and increasing ethnic diversity, it explores how Pākehā construct and manage identity and their ‘social imaginaries’ (Taylor, 2002), that is, how they conceptualise their own position in society vis-à-vis both indigenous and migrant communities as well as the normative and ideological assumptions that guide their expectations.
Life story interviews with 38 Auckland-based Pākehā form the empirical basis of this study. The biographical approach produced stories of lived experience, of memories, expectations and anticipations that allowed me to analyse how Pākehā negotiate majority group identity, and the
role of wider discursive repertoires in enabling and constraining participant narratives. Guided by critical whiteness and settler colonial studies, the analysis primarily aims to reveal discursive practices that consolidate and/or challenge whiteness and settler colonial practices.
The empirical data demonstrates that participants discursively construct post-colonial cosmopolitan identities, as expressed in stories of personal transformation, which highlight a new recognition of and engagement with Māori culture, as well as the normality of everyday
multiculturalism. However, despite genuine intentions, such narratives often remain wedded to colonial, nationalist, and racialised assumptions and thereby serve to protect the majority’s normative and privileged position. Analysing in detail the politics of naming the majority group,
the role of collective ‘living memory’ in perpetuating old myths and creating new ones, and visions of a multicultural future as prime sites of Pākehā identity construction, the thesis contributes to the international literature by providing a current and empirically based analysis of
Pākehā identities and imaginaries that helps to deepen our understanding of the processes that secure white settler normativity and privilege in settler societies.

As a result of new policy initiatives that aim to address Auckland’s housing shortage and unaffordability, the city has seen a large number of recent housing development projects. This paper critically discusses the discursive role that the idea of a diversity dividend plays in such urban development projects with a focus on the Auckland neighbourhood of Northcote. The Northcote Development is exemplary of current large-scale developments in Auckland: it takes place in a socio-economically deprived neighbourhood with a large area of land owned by Housing New Zealand. In the course of redevelopment, this land will be intensified as well as partially privatised by offering a mix of affordable and market homes alongside public housing. Based on a content analysis of planning documents, website content and
community publications pertaining to the Northcote Development, the paper argues that diversity is explicitly mobilised to justify processes that amount to state-led gentrification. This is particularly evident in discourses that frame tenure mix and a likely influx of higher-income earners as a way of achieving greater socio-economic diversity that is said to benefit all neighbourhood residents. While existing ethno-cultural diversity is portrayed as a core strength, it is increasingly transformed into a commodity, especially as part of a food culture attractive to new residents. The discussion situates the findings in critical scholarship on the diversity dividend to argue that such discourses of socio-economic diversity ultimately benefit developers and gentrifiers, while risking direct and indirect displacement of low-income residents.

The globalization of the knowledge economy and a concomitant increase in educational mobility have seen greater numbers of international students take up studies in Aotearoa/New Zealand’s education system. As a result of increased educational mobility, alongside other types of migration, ethno-cultural and linguistic diversity
has become more common in New Zealand schools. This  internationalization of Aotearoa/New Zealand’s education sector has been met with government policies and strategies to ensure the well-being of international students. In these strategies, well-being is indicated by economic security, health and safety, as well
as high-quality education and a welcoming and inclusive experience in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Drawing on data from a research project that examined how school policies and practices shape international English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) students’ sense of belonging, inclusion and well-being at a New Zealand secondary school, this article illuminates how school language practices impact on international students’ well-being. Specifically, the article highlights a profound
mismatch between the diversification of the student body and the privileging of monolingual English-only practices in the classroom as well as the disparity between intentions and effects of the school’s pull-out ESOL class programme, in which ESOL-designated students are taught separately from ‘mainstream’ students. The discussion highlights the detrimental and discriminatory impacts such language practices had on international students. Based on this analysis, we argue that strategies that are designed to ensure international student well-being
need to put greater emphasis on the instructional needs of culturally and linguistically diverse learners by advocating for linguistically responsive practices and that schools need to normalize multilingual practices to ensure international student well-being and to work towards equitable and just education.

This article discusses neighboring practices across difference in
Avondale, a diverse and changing neighborhood in Auckland,
New Zealand. Based on a qualitative study of urban encounters,
we draw attention to modes of coexistence in the parochial realm
and, more specifically, to encounters with neighbors as an underresearched site of living with difference in cities. In Avondale,
adherence to tacit norms of pragmatic, light-touch neighboring is
crucial to residents’ sense of convivial coexistence and negotiating
such rules is regularly inflected with ‘difference’. Our findings show
that various facets of diversity are salient in enacting neighborliness.
However, class-based differences associated with a recent
influx of higher-income earners threw difference into stark relief
because newcomers were perceived as deliberately breaching
codes of conduct. Our findings demonstrate the importance of
accounting for the salience of multiple facets of difference and for
conditions of demographic change in developing an understanding
of the complexities of neighboring.

This article discusses neighboring practices across difference in Avondale, a diverse and changing neighbourhood in Auckland, New Zealand. Based on a qualitative study of urban encounters, we draw attention to modes of coexistence in the parochial realm and, more specifically, to encounters with neighbors as an underresearched site of living with difference in cities. In Avondale, adherence to tacit norms of pragmatic, light-touch neighboring is crucial to residents’ sense of convivial coexistence and negotiating such rules is regularly inflected with ‘difference’. Our findings show that various facets of diversity are salient in enacting neighbourliness. However, class-based differences associated with a recent influx of higher-income earners threw difference into stark relief
because newcomers were perceived as deliberately breaching codes of conduct. Our findings demonstrate the importance of accounting for the salience of multiple facets of difference and for conditions of demographic change in developing an understanding
of the complexities of neighboring.

Since the 1970s, Aotearoa/New Zealand has undergone wide-ranging social, political and cultural transformations both with respect to the politics of settler-indigenous relations and the ethnocultural diversification of the country's population. Indigenous rights movements and the politics of biculturalism, as well as rapid increases in immigration from non-traditional source countries have disrupted deeply entrenched settler narratives that naturalised white settler colonialism and destabilised the dominant position of the white settler majority (Pākehā), forcing Pākehā to rearticulate identities and re-imagine the nation. This thesis investigates how Pākehā experience 'being Pākehā' today. Taking account of several decades of living with or growing up with biculturalism and increasing ethnic diversity, it explores how Pākehā construct and manage identity and their 'social imaginaries' (Taylor, 2002), that is, how they conceptualise their own position in society vis-à-vis both indigenous and migrant communities as well as the normative and ideological assumptions that guide their expectations. Life story interviews with 38 Auckland-based Pākehā form the empirical basis of this study. The biographical approach produced stories of lived experience, of memories, expectations and anticipations that allowed me to analyse how Pākehā negotiate majority group identity, and the role of wider discursive repertoires in enabling and constraining participant narratives. Guided by Writing a PhD thesis may seem like a solitary endeavour, but it truly takes a village to bring it to completion. I have been privileged to have the help and support of institutions, colleagues, friends and family and would like to thank them here. First and foremost, I thank the participants of this study who so generously gave their time and shared their life stories with me. Without them, this study would not exist. Secondly, I am deeply grateful to my formidable team of supervisors, Dr Steve Matthewman and Dr Louise Humpage. Their expertise, constructive feedback, and level-headed advice made me a better writer and researcher. I also thank both of them for their unwavering belief in my capabilities and for their patience when I struggled to let go! I further thank Dr David Craig for his supervisory support in the early stages of this thesis, and all academic and administrative staff in the Department of Sociology for their continuous support and encouragement, especially

As a result of new policy initiatives that aim to address Auckland’s housing shortage and unaffordability, the city has seen a large number of recent housing development projects. This paper critically discusses the discursive role that the idea of a diversity dividend plays in such urban development projects with a focus on the Auckland neighbourhood of Northcote. The Northcote Development is exemplary of current large-scale developments in Auckland: it takes place in a socio-economically deprived neighbourhood with a large area of land owned by Housing New Zealand. In the course of redevelopment, this land will be intensified as well as partially privatised by offering a mix of affordable and market homes alongside public housing. Based on a content analysis of planning documents, website content and community publications pertaining to the Northcote Development, the paper argues that diversity is explicitly mobilised to justify processes that amount to state-led gentrification. T...