Welcome to our world? Immigration and the reshaping of New Zealand

Abstract

New Zealand is one of the classic immigrant-dependent societies but the nature of migrant flows into the country has changed dramatically since the 1960s. The historic reliance on immigrants from the UK and Ireland was supplemented and then replaced by migrants from elsewhere in the Pacific and then globally, especially from Asia. These changes not only altered New Zealand's demography but also the nature of community life and cityscapes, how diversity has been understood and experienced, and the shape of economic participation - or exclusion. Aotearoa New Zealand is now one of the worlds' most super-diverse societies, with all the excitement and the tensions that accompany such population shifts.