Abstract:
This thesis examines how migrant integration and participation is shaped by government and elite discourses, policies and programs and the way in which these regimes and practices distribute migrants and ethnic minorities within the social order, shaping what is visible, sayable, and audible. It specifically focuses on neoliberalism, multiculturalism and social cohesion discourses and policies and discusses the possibility for migrant political autonomy and subjectivity and therefore equality in a post democratic environment. Post democratic refers to ideas around debates that the state while institutionally democratic leaves little room in the presence of neoliberal and corporate agendas for any genuine political action and meeting the democratic demands of the people. Political participation points to the capacity to act outside the ever increasing marketization and privatisation of the public realm and so therefore distinguishes between those actions that are part of this ordering and those that transgress and contest it. The foreclosure of the political is revealed in the examination of discourses and policies and documents and how they constitute both migrants and relegate them a place in the social order limiting the possibility for political voice and action. Political participation is when migrants contest the allocation of roles and spaces demanding to be counted as equals within the order. In New Zealand neoliberalism characterises the overarching ideological dimension and within that policies and discourses of multiculturalism and diversity operate. Social cohesion has also been an official policy platform particularly directed towards ethnic and migrant populations. Migrant participation and place has also been shaped in relation to existing models of biculturalism and Maori demands for autonomy. The conclusions reached in this thesis are that overwhelmingly migrant participation is shaped by state led marketization, multicultural discourse and social cohesion policy. Importantly global discourses regarding migrant underpin motivations and shape these discourses and policies which play a central role in how migrants are integrated and notions of migrant citizenship. It is evident that these discourses and policies interact to shape participation and have a limiting effect on migrant agency. Migrants organisations and groups conveyed an acute awareness about the limits they experience in having a voice and access to the same rights as others in the society. Overwhelmingly the migrant organisations examined were attempting to confront those difficulties within the same paradigm as these problems were occurring. However there were a number of a mix of migrant voices on how best to approach this inequality with some not wanting to draw attention to themselves and others are rumbling about the need for more radical action.