Charlotte Bedford

This invited paper for the RSE Conference in Christchurch on 1 and 2 August 2023 reviews developments in the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) Scheme during the 2022-23 financial year. Record numbers of seasonal workers from the Pacific were recruited by growers and contractors in New Zealand's horticulture and viticulture industries between July...

This Research Note provides the first reliable figures on the numbers of seasonal workers from the Pacific Islands who participated in the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme between July 2007 and June 2022. The method for deriving these figures is explained briefly before examining the frequency of return by men and women for employment in s...

This invited presentation to the RSE Conference in Wellington in July 2022 reviews the recruitment and return of seasonal workers during the 2021/22 financial year when resilient relationships that underpin the RSE scheme were severely tested by on-going border restrictions and lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The RSE scheme is a com...

This is the third in a series of Country Reports dealing with participation of overseas seasonal workers in New Zealand's Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme. The Country Report on participation in the RSE scheme by seasonal workers from Papua New Guinea (PNG) contains previously unpublished data on three population universes: 1) the 134 PNG...

The Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) Scheme Country Report series is designed to make available a wide range of data from official sources to researchers and policy makers interested in New Zealand’s largest managed seasonal labour migration initiative to date. The reports are essentially data repositories rather than comprehensive academic analy...

Three blogs in the ANU’s DevPolicy series (August/September 2021) review the impacts of COVID-19 related border closures on I-Kiribati women recruited for seasonal work in New Zealand between September 2019 and January 2020. These women, most of whom have been in New Zealand for almost two years, have been unable to return to Kiribati because there...

The Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) Scheme Country Report series is designed to make available to researchers and policy makers interested in New Zealand's largest managed seasonal labour migration initiative to date a wide range of data from official sources that we have accumulated during our 13 years of research on the RSE scheme. The reports...

The Pacific region is prone to disasters linked to geo-physical and hydrometeorological hazards in relation to both sudden events and slow-onset processes – whether on a stand-alone basis or, as is often the case, as linked phenomena. Climate change will increase the frequency and/or intensity of these events and processes. Disaster risks are incre...

This is the first of three reports on research commissioned by New Zealand's Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment into the impacts of the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme which brings around 14,000 seasonal workers, mainly from countries in the Pacific, to assist with harvesting, packing and pruning in the hirticulture and vitic...

This is the third report from the impact study of the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme that was commissioned by New Zealand's Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment late in 2018. It contains a high-level synthesis of findings from the first (New Zealand comunity-based) and second (Pacific community-based) reports which detail find...

This is the second of three reports on a study of impacts of the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) Scheme that was commissioned by New Zealand's Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. It can also be accessed at the Ministry's website at https://www.immigration.govt.nz/about-us/research-and-statistics/research-reports/recognised-seasonal-...

This invited paper for the annual RSE Employers’ Conference in Blenheim in July 2017 reviews the origins of the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) Work Policy, summarises the innovative approach that was adopted to developing what became the RSE scheme that was launched in April 2007, traces the development of the scheme as an adaptive open system...

Between October 2014 and September 2016 data were collected on the earnings, deductions and remittances of 487 Samoan and Tongan men (2014/15) and 142 Ni-Vanuatu men (2016), who were employed continuously for 18 or more weeks as seasonal workers under the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme. The data were required for the RSE Remittance Pilot...

Circular migration was one of several enduring themes in Graeme Hugo’s highly productive research career. Although his specialist field was Asian population movement, during the 2000s he became increasingly interested in labour migration in the Pacific Islands. This paper reviews the development of two managed circular migration schemes targeting P...

Futures for countries comprised entirely of coral atolls and reef islands are looking increasingly bleak as governments across the globe struggle to address the challenge of reducing emissions of greenhouse gasses within a time frame that will allow low-lying tropical islands to withstand the degradation caused by slowly rising sea levels and incre...

During the second half of 2011 a reasonably consistent data set was obtained on wages earned by RSE and non-RSE employees over three seasons, (2008/9, 2009/10, 2010/11) from nine registered Recognised Seasonal Employers. These data, which relate to earnings during peak harvest or pruning seasons, have been aggregated and are examined briefly in thi...

This paper contains a progress report on research into the operation of New Zealand’s Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) work policy and it was used to inform the formal evaluation of this policy in 2009 that was carried out by Evalue Research and published on the Department of Labour’s website in January 2010 under the title Final Evaluation Repor...

This report, which contains a national labour migrafikon policy that has been adopted by the Government of Tuvalu, is one in a series that the ILO Office for Pacific Island Countries facilitated as part of its Climate Change and Migration programme. The first section of the report contains a review of Tuvalu's economic and demographic context, its...

Labour migration abroad has a long history in the Pacific and takes many forms, including seasonal migration in Australia and New Zealand through government organized programs; the employment of seafarers on foreign vessels; skilled migrants who spend anywhere from a year to their entire working lives in other Pacific Island countries or in other p...

It has been suggested that the seasonal work programmes New Zealand and Australia have introduced since 2007 can provide nothing more than "band-aids" in the provision of wage-earning employment opportunities for the burgeoning labour forces of participating Pacific countries. Given the small numbers involved in the schemes (7,500 in New Zealand an...

A mid-term evaluation of the Strengthening Pacific Partnerships (SPP) was conducted by an independent company, Analytic Matters Ltd. The purpose of the evaluation was to assess how well the SPP project is progressing (at its 18 month milestone) to achieve the development outcomes for Pacific States. Four criteria were used for assessing progress as...

New Zealand's Recognized Seasonal Employer (RSE) work policy is a managed circular migration initiative that is designed to provide benefits to employers in New Zealand's horticulture and viticulture industries, workers from Pacific states that have limited opportunities for wage-earning employment in their own countries, and the communities that t...

The outcome of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference was a great disappointment for many participating governments, especially those from the Pacific Islands. The atoll states of Kiribati, Tuvalu and Marshall Islands were all expecting some meaningful commitments to reduce emissions. The failure to achieve these meant more attention had to be fo...

The chapter reviews developments in New Zealand's immigration policy between 2003, when the innovative "expression of interest" (or "by invitation") selection system for skilled migrants was introduced. This system has been subsequently adoped by Australia (2012) and Canada (2015) with amendments to suit federal systems of governance and a variety...

This review covers literature published since 1990 that addresses social impacts of short-term employment-related migration in developing countries. Particular reference is made to research dealing with gender dimensions of this form of migration and short-term mobility in the Pacific region. Short-term employment-related migration is defined as a...

This is one of the first papers to review comprehensively the design and implementation of New Zealand's managed seasonal labour migration work policy that was implemented in April 2007. The authors include two of the senior policy makers involved in the launching and early administration of the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) work policy (Ramas...

FOREWORD This review of the literature represents the Mental Health Commission's first Asian-focused document. It emerged in response to the fast-changing shape of the New Zealand population over the last 15 years. To date, Asian people and their mental health concerns have not received much attention, yet this population comprises a significant an...

The post-September 11 rhetoric in the media, and the anecdotal evidence obtained from travel agents about bookings for travel into and out of New Zealand, suggested that the month of September 2001 would not be one when records were broken for international arrivals and departures. Yet, as this short up-date on New Zealand's international migration...

The composition of immigrant families is a topic which has attracted considerable public and political attention in recent years. In the late 1980s concern was expressed over the size of some households of Pacific Island peoples in New Zealand. In the 1990s a more persistent concern has been with the incidence of what have been called ‘astronaut’ f...