Kate McMillan

Introduction: researching immigrant and emigrant voting

ABSTRACT This article introduces the papers in this Special Issue on immigrant and emigrant voting. The article discusses theoretical and empirical themes regarding immigrant and emigrant voting, including turnout among immigrants and emigrants, partisanship among immigrants and franchise rules for immigrants and emigrants. It outlines existing findings and gaps in the literature on these themes, and then explains how the articles in this Special Issue advance knowledge in this field. The case studies examined in this Special Issue – Canada, Australia and New Zealand – are also introduced.

Factors influencing the electoral participation of Asian immigrants in New Zealand

ABSTRACT New Zealand electoral data show that those identifying with an Asian ethnicity have the lowest electoral turnout of any of the broad ‘ethnic’ categories used by government statisticians. What accounts for this finding? Given a paucity of quantitative data with which to answer this question, we employ a qualitative, focus group-based research design to examine the electoral participation of first-generation Asian immigrants.1 We ask, first, what are the main factors that lead Asian immigrants in New Zealand to participate or not participate in parliamentary elections and, second, do these reasons vary among immigrants from different national backgrounds? Our findings suggest that the low electoral turnout recorded among New Zealand Asians is likely to be at least in part an artefact of the recentness of much immigration from non-English-speaking countries such as South Korea and China. The paper also identifies the role government agencies, political parties and the ethnic media could play in communicating information about New Zealand’s electoral politics, with potentially significant dividends for future voting rates among Asian immigrants in New Zealand.

Moving Freely, but Taking a Different Route: Comparing Trans-Tasman and European Union Norms of Human Mobility

Human mobility is central to the European project of economic and political integration. This chapter examines the ‘exportability’ of two central aspects of the European Union’s (EU) human mobility regime and the norms that underpin them: the removal of border controls within the Schengen zone and the EU Social Security Coordination system. It looks to the highly liberalised human mobility regime found in the free travel area between Australia and New Zealand and asks when, why and how Australia and New Zealand have adopted, adapted, resisted or rejected these two aspects of the EU’s mobility regime. It finds that although trans-Tasman policy-makers have reshaped historical Australasian practices of human mobility in line with the norm of liberal market integration, the border control and social security policies they have developed to support human mobility are markedly different to those employed in the EU. Four inter-related variables are explored below to explain these differences: the origins and timing of the Australasian model; the institutional arrangements guiding its development; power asymmetries between Australia and New Zealand; and geography in the form of a sea border.

Racial Discrimination and Political Bias on Talkback Radio in New Zealand: Assessing the Evidence

Talkback radio has the reputation of being dominated by politically conservative hosts with a penchant for using controversial and divisive issues – particularly those relating to racial or ethnic conflict – to maximise audiences. This has led some analysts in Australia to see talkback as providing a vehicle for the anti-immigration, anti-multicultural politics of populist right-wing parties. In this paper the validity of these claims in the New Zealand context is assessed by examining complaints lodged with the Broadcasting Standards Authority in 2004-2005. While analysis of these cases reveals that New Zealand places a laudably high value on freedom of speech, it also highlights those peculiarities of the talkback genre which make academic research on it particularly challenging. The article thus concludes with some methodological suggestions for research designed to furthe R our understanding of the relationship between talkback and contemporary New Zealand politics.

From “the Commonwealth’s Most Dutiful Daughter” to “Young Multicultural Nation”: Non-citizen Voting Rights and New Zealand’s Citizenship Regime

In the mid-1970s, New Zealand, Canada, and Australia all ceased using “British subject” as a criterion for national voting rights. In all three countries, this represented a decisive step away from the British imperial model of political community towards a nationally constituted one. Unlike Australia and Canada, however, New Zealand did not replace “British subject” with national citizenship criterion; it simply removed “British subject”, leaving the existing residency requirement intact. New Zealand became – and remains – the only country in the world to allocate national voting rights to all permanent resident non-citizens after one years’ residence. This was a radical decision with far-reaching implications for the incorporation of immigrants into the national political community

‘Affective integration’ and access to the rights of permanent residency: New Zealanders resident in Australia post-2001:

What impact does access to the rights associated with formal permanent residency status have on immigrants’ sense of integration in their country of residence? I explore this question with a focus on ‘affective integration’, an original measure developed to refer to immigrants’ sense of belonging, recognition, equality, optimism and loyalty in, or to, their country of residence. Original data are drawn from an online survey and a series of in-depth interviews with New Zealanders resident in Australia. As some survey respondents were affected by 2001 changes that withdrew New Zealanders’ entitlements to welfare and citizenship in Australia and others were not, levels of ‘affective integration’ among the two groups were able to be compared. The data reveal that many New Zealanders without access to the welfare and citizenship entitlements associated with permanent resident status had a highly ambivalent sense of affective integration in Australia. Many reported being economically, socially and culturally well integrated in Australia but also reported strong feelings of exclusion, rejection, exploitation and discrimination. They identified these feelings as being the result of their ineligibility for welfare assistance and citizenship acquisition. For some such migrants, these feelings have led to a decision to migrate back to New Zealand in the near future. For others, however, a high degree of structural integration into Australian society has deterred return migration, creating a significant population of long-term residents whose generally favourable structural integration into Australia is undermined by their growing sense of disadvantage, marginalisation and exclusion. These findings contribute to our understanding of the relationship between access to the rights of permanent residency and affective integration. They also contribute empirical data to policy debates about the consequences of treating those who move under human mobility regimes as temporary migrants.

Book Review: Robin Gauld and Shaun Goldfinch, Dangerous Enthusiasms: E-government, Computer Failure and Information System Development (Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2006), pp. 160, paper

government are frequently divided into two broad camps: the ’cyber-optimists’ and the ’cyberpessimists’. Let there be no confusion over where the authors of this book pitch their tent; the book’s concluding sentence reads ’Above all, be pessimistic about information technology’ (p. 136). This theme of pessimism and ICT failure is introduced at the outset, where the claim is made that ’success is not the norm in computer developments. Indeed, the great majority of information system developments are unsuccessful. The larger the development, the more likely it will be unsuccessful’ (p. 11 ). For the most part the book is devoted to outlining an explanation of ICT failure, and illustrating it through a very detailed examination of three large-scale government ICT projects assessed by the authors to have been either total or partial failures. A final chapter draws some lessons from these public service ICT system failures. The book’s theoretical contribution is found in its model of four ’pathological enthusiasms’. The first of these enthusiasms, ’idolisation’, exists when politicians and public