Identity, Agency And “Undervalued” Labour: Indian Immigrant Women in Aotearoa New Zealand

Abstract

When Indian women immigrate to New Zealand as skilled migrants, they are often unable to find jobs commensurate with their qualifications and are forced into low-wage and undervalued work. The toll that this pressure of gaining employment and the frustration of being put in such a position has not been studied adequately in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand. My thesis and creative project analyses and explores the complex interplay between work, identity construction, and agency for this demographic. It highlights the diversity of the women’s experiences and in doing so disrupts the notion of a homogenised or linear immigrant experience. Using narrative interview methods, I interview eight skilled Indian women who immigrated to New Zealand through the points-based system, to understand their experiences of working in undervalued labour and to interrogate how it impacts their identities and ability to navigate power structures in their everyday lives. Focusing on their personal narratives, I explore how their gendered and racialised identities are shaped by their labour market experiences. This PhD with Creative Practice presents an academic argument followed by a feature film screenplay. I argue that the relationship between work and agency is not linear; while in some situations it might offer women a greater ability to negotiate power, in other situations it can reaffirm their subordinate positions within a patriarchal domestic sphere. My feature screenplay Jyoti builds on this argument by reimagining research findings in a fictionalised context. Through Jyoti, the titular character, I examine and complicate the relationship between qualitative research and fiction; paying special attention to what is gained and lost in the process of dramatising real life.