The latest census figures, released last week, show that a quarter of the New Zealand population was born overseas. 25.2 percent of us moved here, compared to 22.9 per cent in 2006.
People who move here come from all over the place – England, China, India are the top three – but almost a third of overseas-born people are from Asia. Almost one in eight people living in New Zealand are Asian; in Auckland, that ratio is one in five.
So New Zealand is changing, and we wanted to ask what that means for people – those who moved here, those who were born here, and the tāngata whenua. Statistics New Zealand’s infographic of New Zealand as a village of 100 people shows the country as culturally diverse. But do we embrace that diversity?
Writing for The Pantograph Punch, Yasmin Chilmeran says immigrants need to free to feel ownership of their different pasts:
We have to remember to give immigrants time and space to have back stories and history and points of origin and to understand their otherness in relation to my own and our own. We don’t do that enough. I don’t even know what I mean when I say ‘we’. I think I’m talking to New Zealand, my sort-of homeland that keeps disappointing me in some ways and impressing me in others.
Chilmeran says there are two kinds of immigrants: ‘good’ ones, who learn English and educate people about their culture, and ‘bad’ ones, who don’t. “Am I asking New Zealanders for something?
“You’re my fellow citizens now, aren’t you? As a host nation to a multi-cultural society, is it the obligation of the majority to learn how to be multi-cultural in a way that doesn’t demean otherness?”
Fern Seto, whose parents immigrated here in the mid-1970s, says she’s always had trouble navigating her identity, because there are so few images of Asian people outside of the “geek, geisha or ninja” stereotypes. She points to multiple little hurts – Chinese takeaway jokes, and being the ‘token Asian’ – that reminder her of her otherness.
We knew those kind of places existed. Just not in our backyard.
Aaron Kirk, who grew up on a farm a couple of hours north of Gisborne, sees ‘home’ as where his whakapapa is. That’s what connects him to the land, and to his people.
What advertisers would have us see as symbols of New Zealand – the Chesdale ads, Weet-Bix, and Wattie's tomato sauce – don’t remind Aaron of the place he grew up in. “We knew those kind of places existed. Just not in our backyard.”
And then there’s Māori who might know their whakapapa, but haven’t ever lived at their tūrangawaewae, like Sarah Babbington, who is worried her son will miss out on his culture.
I remember when we had a culture day at school, and everyone else knew their background so well, and I was just blank.
“The other day I had to ask my mum what the word ‘tūrangawaewae’ [standing place] meant,” she says. “And I know lots of people who don’t even know their iwi. They just know they are Māori. That’s how lost it is to some people.”
Pacific peoples make up about seven per cent of the population, and for many of them, home is both close and far away. Ginah Vakaheketaha-Nelisi calls herself Niuean, but has never been to Niue.
“I remember when we had a culture day at school, and everyone else had something to present, and they knew their background so well, and I was just blank – from then on I’ve always wanted to know what it was like.”
Throughout the week, we’ll hear more from migrants, travellers, and Kiwis drawn back to New Zealand after time spent overseas. What makes this place home to people of so many different backgrounds? How do we recognise that? And do we let others feel it, too?