Career Migration as Personal Biography: New Zealand Case Studies

The paper is based on autobiographical details of residential mobility for a small sample of New Zealand male career professionals collected in 1981. Classified by cohort and employment sector, the information is used to examine migration in the context of personal career development. Aspects explored include age of entry to the workforce, frequency of movement, migration and career promotion, and the spatial structure of migration. Also discussed, in conclusion, is the impact on career-related migration of the surge of national economic restructuring initiated in 1984.     

Managed Temporary Labour Migration of Pacific Islanders to Australia and New Zealand in the Early Twenty-first Century

ABSTRACT

Circular migration was one of several enduring themes in Graeme Hugo’s highly productive research career. Although his specialist field was Asian population movement, during the 2000s he became increasingly interested in labour migration in the Pacific Islands. This paper reviews the development of two managed circular migration schemes targeting Pacific labour that emerged following the UN High-level Dialogue on International Migration and Development in 2006. New Zealand’s Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme and Australia’s Seasonal Worker Program (SWP) have attracted international attention as the kind of ‘best practice’ temporary labour migration schemes that Hugo had in mind when he emphasised the positive contributions that circular forms of mobility could make to development in both source and destination countries. The two schemes have transformed mobility between the participating countries and have played a major role in the negotiations over a free-trade agreement between Pacific Forum countries, including Australia and New Zealand. Although the schemes have been in operation for almost 10 years, this paper argues that they are not becoming ‘business as usual’; they embody complex systems of relationships between multiple stakeholders that require ongoing management to ensure that they do not become traps for low-skilled, low-paid ‘permanent’ temporary workers.     

Social Democracy and Contextual Unemployment: New Zealand Labour in 1990

This paper examines the spatial implications of social-democratic policy transformation. It does so by exploring the political consequences of residential contextual unemployment engendered by a Labour government which had once been dedicated to maintaining full employment. Faced with economic crisis, as Przeworski's model predicts [Capitalism and social democracy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1985)], New Zealand Labour, beginning in 1984, abandoned its traditional social-democratic statist policies, including the maintenance of full employment, and allowed unemployment to skyrocket under its stewardship. This meant subjecting its supporters to significant contextual cross-pressures, since many residential neighbourhoods became characterised by both high concentrations of Labour partisans, and by those recently unemployed by Labour's new market-liberal policies. Using original survey data merged with New Zealand census data, empirical findings show that residual partisan loyalties and a lack of a major party alternative constrained respondents' partisan disaffection, while channelling their disillusionment into both minor party voting and systemic, governmental criticisms - likely fuelling New Zealand's drive for electoral reform and a new system of proportional representation.     

Gendered Work: Female Labour in Pipfruit Production in New Zealand and Chile

This article seeks to contribute to the literature on female labour in the pipfruit industry in New Zealand and Chile. As added workers seeking to supplement household incomes by casualised, seasonal employment, these female workers are significant contributors to what are often declining household incomes, given changes in production and the labour market of the 1990s. But this enhanced role continues to exist alongside normative expectations about domestic roles and responsibilities. This research reports on a survey that was completed by female workers in both Chile and New Zealand. While there are differences in the respective labour markets of the two countries concerned, the role of women in balancing employment and domestic responsibilities is characteristic of both situations. It is the intersection between normative expectations and participation in casual/seasonal labour in the two research sites that is the focus of this article.     

Temporary Migration and the Labour Market in Australia

Australia's labour market is most influenced by international migration among OECD nations, but Australian research on this issue focuses almost exclusively on permanent settlement migration. The present paper, however, demonstrates that non-permanent migration has an important impact on the Australian labour market, although such migrants are not included in standard data collections and research on migrants and the labour market. A number of data sources are utilised to estimate the labour-market impact of Working Holiday Makers, Temporary Business Entrants, Overseas Students, and New Zealand temporary migrants. It is shown that their impact is equivalent to more than 400?000 full-time jobs. However, the effect is magnified because it is concentrated in particular sectors of the economy and in particular communities within Australia. A number of issues relating to temporary migration are discussed, including the nature of its relationship with permanent migration, the effects on job training, and the implications for regional development.