Papers by Jessica Terruhn
Transforming the Politics of Mobility and Migration in Aotearoa New Zealand, 2023
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
Transforming the Politics of Mobility and Migration in Aotearoa New Zealand, 2023
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
Transforming the Politics of Mobility and Migration in Aotearoa New Zealand, 2023
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, a... more JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
WERO Research Brief 3, 2024
This report and the key insights are based on findings from a housing survey that was conducted w... more This report and the key insights are based on findings from a housing survey that was conducted with 800 residents in neighbourhoods in Auckland, Hamilton and Christchurch. • Perceptions of unfairness in Aotearoa's housing sector are widespread. Renters, Māori, younger people and low-income groups as well as residents in neighbourhoods with high levels of housing deprivation are most likely to think that people are treated unfairly when trying to rent or buy a home in Aotearoa. • Nearly one in three respondents reported having experienced discrimination when trying to rent or buy a home in Aotearoa. Renters, Māori, younger people and low-income groups as well as residents in neighbourhoods with high levels of housing deprivation are most likely to report experiences of discrimination. • Advantage and disadvantage in securing a home are determined by a combination of interlocking factors, including income and employment status, age, family status, and race/ethnicity or skin colour. These patterns suggest widespread experiences of potentially unlawful housing discrimination. • People strategically try to avoid and mitigate discrimination. Expectations of being discriminated against and of being advantaged influence where and how home seekers search for housing. This finding signals that experiences of rejection play a role in constraining people's housing choices. • The survey findings suggest that discrimination, as part of tenant selection, contributes to housing precarity and inequalities in access to rental housing. Therefore, this research points to an urgent need to address housing discrimination, especially in the context of high levels of residential mobility among renters and intense competition for rental properties.
National days and the politics of indigenous and local identities in Australia and New Zealand [Book Review]
Review(s) of: National days and the politics of indigenous and local identities in Australia and ... more Review(s) of: National days and the politics of indigenous and local identities in Australia and New Zealand, by McAllister, Patrick A. (2012), Durham, NC Carolina Academic Press.
As a result of new policy initiatives that aim to address Auckland’s housing shortage and unaffor... more 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...
Since the 1970s, Aotearoa/New Zealand has undergone wide-ranging social, political and cultural t... more 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
Urban Geography, 2021
This article discusses neighboring practices across difference in Avondale, a diverse and changin... more 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.
Urban Diversity and Inequality in Auckland
Intersections of Inequality, Migration and Diversification
In this chapter, Terruhn discusses the relationships between urban policy and planning discourses... more 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.
Book Review: A. Bell, V. Elizabeth, T. McIntosh and M. Wynyard, A Land of Milk and Honey? Making Sense of Aotearoa New Zealand
Journal of Sociology
Kinship, whiteness and the politics of belonging among white British migrants and Pākehā in Aotearoa/New Zealand
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies
In this article, we examine how white British migrants in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Pākehā New Zea... more In this article, we examine how white British migrants in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Pākehā New Zealanders understand the nature of their relationship to each other. We present findings from two qualitative studies conducted in Auckland, one with British migrants and the other with Pākehā. Drawing on Nash’s (2005, 452) argument that kinship is a selective process of performing the “relations that matter,” we demonstrate convergences and divergences in how British migrants and Pākehā conceive of relatedness between the two groups. While there is some overlap in naturalising a common ancestry, British migrants tended to have a greater expectation and experience of sameness whilst Pākehā were more likely to distance themselves from the British, highlighting cultural differences and an idiosyncratic Pākehā identity. Our unique comparative analysis of these discourses of relatedness brings together feminist understandings of kinship with critical scholarship on whiteness and settler colonialism to examine the functions such imaginaries of sameness and difference play in the context of negotiating dominant identities in contemporary settler societies. We argue that the way in which relatedness and kinship were mobilized reflected a desire to rightfully belong in place.
Urban Geography, 2021
This article discusses neighboring practices across difference in
Avondale, a diverse and changin... more 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.
Transitions: Journal of Transient Migration, 2020
The globalization of the knowledge economy and a concomitant increase in educational mobility hav... more 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.
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2020
In this article, we examine how white British migrants in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Pākehā New Zea... more In this article, we examine how white British migrants in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Pākehā New Zealanders understand the nature of their relationship to each other. We present findings from two qualitative studies conducted in Auckland, one with British migrants and the other with Pākehā. Drawing on Nash’s (2005, 452) argument that kinship is a selective process of performing the “relations that matter,” we demonstrate convergences and divergences in how British migrants and Pākehā conceive of relatedness between the two groups. While there is some overlap in naturalising a common ancestry, British migrants tended to have a greater expectation and experience of sameness whilst Pākehā were more likely to distance themselves from the British, highlighting cultural differences and an idiosyncratic Pākehā identity. Our unique comparative analysis of these discourses of relatedness brings together feminist understandings of kinship with critical scholarship on whiteness and settler colonialism to examine the functions such imaginaries of sameness and difference play in the context of negotiating dominant identities in contemporary settler societies. We argue that the way in which relatedness and kinship were mobilized reflected a desire to rightfully belong in place.
New Zealand Population Review, 2019
As a result of new policy initiatives that aim to address Auckland’s housing shortage and unaffor... more 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.
Intersections of Inequality, Migration and Diversification, 2020
In this chapter, Terruhn discusses the relationships between urban policy and planning discourses... more 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.
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Papers by Jessica Terruhn
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.
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.
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.
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.