Números decimales y expresiones decimales

As noted earlier in this section, research on international migration is thriving in New Zealand (Trlin et al., 2005:v). The extent of this research activity reflects not only the intense public interest in migration issues, but also the high level of significance accorded the subject at a political level (Trlin et al., 2005:v). Although South Africans have featured in the top four source countries for international migrants to New Zealand for the last ten years (Bedford, Lidgard et al., 2005:64), they appear as a group in relatively few research projects. This may reflect the fact that South African migration has not been problematised in this country in the same way as migration from Asia, and has therefore not been subject to the same research scrutiny.32 Similarly, the paucity of research on this migrant group may be related to the general perception that South African migrants are somehow more linguistically and culturally ‘like’ than ‘unlike’ Pakeha New Zealanders.33 Because the recent focus of migration policy has been migrants’ successful entry into the labour market (Bedford, Ho et al., 2005:27), the limited focus on South African migrants may be also be due to the fact that research

31 Latinas are women of Latin American origin. 32 See Spoonley (2005), and Spoonley and Trlin (2004).

33 South African migrants may be considered similar to Pakeha New Zealanders because the vast majority are White (Walrond, 2006), and English-speaking (Statistics New Zealand, 2002:147).

efforts have concentrated on those groups of migrants whose language and culture make their economic (and social) integration more problematic.34

Individual South African migrants have indubitably been included as subjects in various large-scale, New Zealand-based research projects focusing broadly on issues such as migrant employment (C. Boyd, 2003; Ethnic Affairs Service, 1996; Barnard, 1996; Oliver, 2000; Watts & Trlin, 2005; Firkin, 2004) and settlement experiences (Benson- Rea & Rawlinson, 2003; Dunstan, Boyd, & Chrichton, 2004; New Zealand Immigration Service, 2003; Wallis, 2006). The personal narrative of a South African migrant was also included in an edited collection of stories written by New Zealand migrants and refugees (Schoonees, 2005). The small body of research that focuses on South African migrants as a specific group falls into two main categories: that produced as part of the New Settlers Programme;35 and other, individual efforts.

With respect to the New Settlers Programme, the first objective of this project is the longitudinal study of the settlement experiences of three groups of migrants to New Zealand: Indian migrants, South African migrants, and those from the People’s Republic of China. This work has focused on the importance of personal connections in these migrant groups (Trlin, Henderson, North, & Skinner, 2001), their mental health (Pernice, Trlin, Henderson, & North, 2000), representations of these communities in the New Zealand media (Spoonley, 2005; Spoonley & Trlin, 2004), and their experiences of housing and settlement (Johnston, Trlin, Henderson, North, & Skinner, 2005). Data for these projects were collected via in-depth interviews36 with a sample of approximately thirty new settler families from each group. In terms of individual research on the South African community, this work includes a project on the maintenance of the Afrikaans language in New Zealand (Barkhuizen & Knoch, 2005), and an article that examines the relationship between tenure, stress and South African migrants’ coping strategies (Bennett & Rigby, 1997). Although gender was included in some of these projects as a male-female variable, none of them were undertaken from a gendered perspective.

34 According to Watts and Trlin (2005:107), evidence has been mounting that some migrants, particularly those from Asia, experience considerable difficulty finding New Zealand-based employment commensurate with their qualifications and experience.

35 The New Settlers Programme is concerned with the settlement of immigrants in contemporary New Zealand. See http://newsletters.massey.ac.nz.

Conclusion 

In this chapter I have reviewed and evaluated international and national scholarship on women, gender and migration. I began by outlining the three distinct phases of gender and migration research, listing the defining features of each stage, and describing contemporaneous developments in the conceptualisation of gender. After noting that gender is theorised in this thesis as both structure and process, I suggested that despite the veritable tidal wave (Donato et al., 2006:7) of gendered scholarship on migration since the 1970s, it continues to be marginalised within the broader field of migration studies. In the second half of the chapter I argued that gender fundamentally affects the migration process, and presented a range of studies which have contributed significantly to the way we understand the migration experience. I then discussed two important themes in gender and migration scholarship, before turning to the issue of migration theory. Lastly, I reviewed New Zealand work in this area, and examined the small body of local work on the South African migrant community. By way of conclusion, I present the main research question that motivated this thesis, and then situate my research within the small body of contemporary work on gender and skilled migration in the developed world.

I began this project with one broad research question: in what way/s does migration impact the gendered practices and discourses of South African migrants to New Zealand? I was particularly interested in the way that migration might affect those gendered practices and discourses that occur around parenting, paid employment, household labour, interpersonal dynamics, emotional adjustment and family obligations. Questions about these gendered practices and discourses constitute the foundation of my thesis. In the process of answering them, my work has contributed to a number of gaps in the literature that have been identified throughout this chapter. With respect to New Zealand research, for instance, this project contributes to the small body of work on gender and migration, and to the limited number of studies on the South African migrant community. In terms of the wider field of international scholarship on gender and migration, this research adds to the small but growing number of studies on skilled migrants moving to the developed world. Moreover, its analysis of both productive and reproductive spheres (Ackers, 2004:378), and its particular focus on gendered family

relationships (Kofman, 2004a:249), contributes to the largely employment-focused studies in this area.

Several characteristics of this thesis locate it firmly within the context of contemporary gender and migration scholarship. Firstly, by focusing on the complete migration biographies of South African migrants, it treats gender as constitutive of the entire migration process (Mahler & Pessar, 2006:28; Curran et al., 2006:200-204; Donato et al., 2006:4-6). Secondly, by theorising gender as both process and structure, it conceptualises it as contextual, relational, power-laden and dynamic (Donato et al., 2006:13). In line with this conceptualisation, the thesis analyses the migration biographies of both women and men. Thirdly, its biographical approach acknowledges the impact of both structure and agency on the experience of migration. As a consequence, migrant women (and men) are presented not as passive victims of circumstance (Anthias, 2000:35), but as active participants in their own lives. Further, this balancing of structure and agency offers the possibility of theorising migration in a way that accounts for the constitutive gendered effects of institutions and individuals. Lastly, although it examines migration from a gendered perspective, the thesis acknowledges the impact of many other axes of social stratification, as well as the heterogeneity of both ‘men’ and ‘women’.

Chapter 2