Ua se ana : the promise of equity

Abstract

This project is concerned with differential education outcomes for Pacific people in Aotearoa New Zealand. This study argues that the reality and representation of Pacific people in New Zealand stems from racist and exclusionary dispositions and practices established by New Zealand administrators as colonial powers. Pacific peoples' presence in Aotearoa New Zealand is underpinned by the inequalities of a relationship of convenience; insofar that large-scale Pacific migration was encouraged to meet an economic imperative for New Zealand. The process of migration can be seen to fix Pacific people in a position of disadvantage within New Zealand society. The position of Pacific people as semi or unskilled labour restricts opportunities for them as a group to engage in culture contact which would increase their knowledge and potential transfer of Western cultural capital, expediting their ability for upward mobility. The Pacific state of crisis is thus argued as a systemic, rather than ethnic failure. The current typical Pacific learning identity is 'the tail' which depicts and positions Pacific learners at the bottom of the achievement ladder. In this way, the issue of Pacific education is constructed almost entirely in deficit terms, locating Pacific peoples as the source of deprivation. This project challenges the representation of Pacific deprivation and offers a reading of equity policy and programmes as a product of colonisation, and at the same time, as a site of hybridity, in which Pacific learners can produce new learning identities and deploy different forms of capital to their advantage through reciprocity.