Recent transformations in migration policy and practice in Anglophone settler colonies (Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia and Canada) have been characterised by a purportedly post-racial regime where there are growing numbers of migrants granted temporary entry and status (especially for study and work) that substantially exceed those granted permanent rights of residence. This shift towards “provisional migration” regimes marks a substantial departure from the dominant 20th century form of racial exclusionary settlement migration that was pivotal to the foundation and ongoing character of settler colonialism. In this seminar presentation I explore the relationship between the management of migration as provisional and the reconfiguration of settler colonialism’s projects in Aotearoa/New Zealand. In particular, I discuss the uneven regulation of recent patterns of migration in Aotearoa/New Zealand, the gendered and racialized patterns of movement that follow, and the state and societal mechanisms for differentiation and control that shape the prospects for migrant inclusion in the setter nation. State discourses often frame provisional modes of migration management as objective economic technologies for attracting and retaining “quality” migrants while providing only short term opportunities to less desirable others. A focus on settler colonialism, however, reveals how the provisional status of migrant others, and their enticement into uncertain subordinate status, buffets the dominance of white settler identities against both indigenous and multicultural challenges. Unpacking this relationship between settler colonialism and provisional migration, then, is fundamental to a more critical account of contemporary migratory processes and their relationship with nation building and hierarchies of citizenship and inclusion.
Francis L. Collins is Professor of Geography and Director of the National Institute of Demographic and Economic Analysis at the University of Waikato. Francis’ research explores international migration focusing on the experiences, mobility patterns and regulation of temporary migrants in the Asia Pacific region. This research includes work addressing: international students and urban transformation, higher education and the globalisation of cities, labour migration and marginalisation, time and youth migration, and aspirations and desires as drivers of migration. Francis is the author of Global Asian City: migration, desire and the politics of encounter in 21st century Seoul (Wiley 2018) and the co-editor of Migration and Diversity in Asian Contexts (ISEAS Publishing 2013) and In the Intersections of Inequality: migration and diversification in Aotearoa/New Zealand (Palgrave 2019).
