Emerging Pacific Island Community PDF Download

The growth of the Pacific communities in New Zealand has fundamentally changed our relations with the island countries of the Pacific, and it nudges us to think about Pasifika in a different way. It is not a new idea that Pacific Island countries are important to New Zealand - that has been a theme in our foreign policy because of colonial relationships and the continuing associations, constitutional and other, that survived them; because of trade and tourism; and because of geography. We saw that what happened in Oceania ('our back yard') might affect New Zealand and impinge on our interests; and in the period of the Cold War, we felt that a large part of our role as a small team-player in the Western alliance was to help ensure that Oceania prospered within the Western sphere of influence. We maintained what was for New Zealand a high level of representation there, centred on Polynesia where our primary links were, and we focused our development aid on the region. More profoundly, since the end of the Second World War, the peoples of the Pacific have again been on the move. The flows are not evenly spread: from Melanesia, with the exception of Fiji, there has been relatively little migration - until very recently, only the skilled and educated have been able to gain more than minimal access to other countries' labour markets. But from Polynesian villages and - especially after the coups - from Fiji families have travelled to New Zealand, as well as to other destinations on the Pacific Rim, and settled there. By doing so, and in numbers, they have relieved demographic pressures on the constrained resources of their countries of origin, and in some cases even reduced their populations. They have also sent home as remittances, through informal as well as formal transactions, money (and goods) in significant volumes - in some cases equal to the flows of overseas development aid, and in most cases far in excess of foreign direct investment. And remittances, in the form of traditional goods and foods and ceremonial services have flowed in the other direction, too. The point of departure for this project is the shift in the nature of our relationship with Pasifika that more than 50 years of immigration has brought about. At the end of the Second World War the Pacific community in New Zealand was around 2,000. By the 2006 census, it numbered just under 266,000, or around 7% of the population - large enough to be significant in our economy, our politics and our culture. Pacific New Zealanders have a younger demographic profile than the country as a whole and a higher birth rate. More than 60% of the Pacific community in New Zealand was born here, and intermarriage with other New Zealanders is on the increase. But though it continues to change, links with countries of origin remain vital; and migration from Pacific Island countries continues, though sometimes by different pathways from earlier periods. New Zealand Pacific communities are transnational communities. They dispose of resources, and accumulate them not just in New Zealand (and other countries in which they are living), but also in the island countries with which they are linked. In short, this reflection on the relationships between New Zealand and its Pacific neighbourhood stems from the realisation that Pasifika is here in New Zealand and that its presence here is an essential element in the way in which New Zealand and Pasifika interact.