New Zealand - Changing Tides in the South Pacific: Immigration to Aotearoa New Zealand

New Zealand, or Aotearoa as these antipodean islands are called in the indigenous Maori language, is a country of both extensive immigration and emigration. This chapter addresses the considerable "churn" in the country's contemporary international migration system. New Zealand has an extensive diaspora of expatriates, and contemporary immigration policy is focused on attracting new residents, especially from countries in Europe and Asia, and encouraging New Zealanders living overseas to return. Immigrant surveys suggest that quality of life and the environment tend to be more important attraction factors than wages or economic opportunity. There has been an increasing trend toward politicization of debates about immigration, especially since the 1990s with the major influx of Asian migrants. Notwithstanding this, the prevailing attitude at both political and public levels is that New Zealand needs immigrants, if only to offset the losses of New Zealanders overseas.