Richard Bedford

The University of Waikato · National Institute for Demographic and Economic Analysis

This obituary is for (Leonard David) Brian Heenan, one of New Zealand's most eminent population geographers during the 1960s, 70s and 80s. He was the first New Zealand geographer to be invited to write reviews of research in population geography in Progress in Human Geography in the mid-1980s -- clear recognition of his standing in the field at the...

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 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Country Report on participation in the RSE scheme by seasonal workers from Papua New Guinea (PNG) contains previously unpublished data on three population universes: 1) the 134 PNG...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...

Late in 2019 the Minister of Labour in New Zealand’s Labour Government approved caps of 14,400 (2019/20) and 16,000 (2020/21) for recruitment of seasonal workers for the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme during the two financial years. The border closures linked with the COVID-19 pandemic meant that recruitment ceased on 19 March 2020 by wh...

This research note reviews the work of an independent panel of experts in the production and use of population statistics that was set up by Stats NZ in August 2018 to provide the Government Statistician with advice about methodological and substantive issues relating to the quality of the 2018 Census data. This advice was sought because of a much...

This is a review of a recent book, The New New Zealand. Facing Demographic Disruption (Massey University Press, 2020), by New Zealand’s most book-published sociologist, Distinguished Professor Paul Spoonley FRSNZ. The New New Zealand is not a demography of the transitions in fertility, mortality and migration that underpin the ‘unprecedented disrup...

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 article, written by former editors of the New Zealand Geographer, reviews editorial practice over much of the 75 year period the journal has been published. A range of initiatives taken by different editors or editorial teams are discussed in the wider context of the evolution of the discipline's leading journal published in New Zealand.

New Zealand’s most influential population geographer of the 20th century, Brian Heenan (as he was known to all) passed away on 23 April 2020 in Dunedin. At the time of his death Brian was working on a book regarding the country’s oldest water supply reservoir in the Ross Creek Reserve in Dunedin. Brian’s interest in aspects of Dunedin’s history dat...

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 report addresses six questions relating to recruitment of seasonal labour by Recognised Seasonal Eemployers (RSEs) in New Zealand in 2018/19: 1) When did the 147 RSEs begin their engagement with the RSE? 2) How big were the RSE workforces that were recruited in 2018/19? 3) Are more of the recently accredited RSEs recruiting women? 4) Is there...

It is well-known that there is a high incidence of return migration in any given financial year amongst the seasonal workers from nine countries in the Pacific and six countries in Asia which provide labour to Recognised Seasonal Employers (RSEs) in New Zealand's horticulture and viticulture sectors. What is not well-known is how often these worker...

Rachel Smith’s doctoral thesis, ‘The goal of the good house’: seasonal work and seeking a good life in Lamen and Lamen Bay, Epi, Vanuatu, contains a fascinating examination of “why people choose to leave their home to engage in often difficult work and seasonal absences in order to build a ‘good house’ and a ‘good life’ at home” (Smith 2016: 2). Sh...

China and India have the world’s two largest populations and have long been major sources of migrants to other countries. In recent years, movements of Chinese and Indians for study and work overseas have been affected by developments in policies at their chosen destinations as well as at home. The flows of Chinese and Indian students and skilled m...

Amongst other things, election year 2017 will be remembered for record levels of permanent and long-term migration. Immigration featured regularly in the media, both as a topic in its own right, as well as a factor associated with a deepening housing crisis in Auckland, increasing congestion on the roads in Auckland and in major tourist towns, and...

In the year ended 30 June 2017, 16,603 seasonal workers from nine Pacific countries (14,727) and seven Asian countries (1,876) arrived in Australia and New Zealand under the terms of the Seasonal Worker Program (6,166) and the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) Scheme (10,437). Just under two-thirds of these seasonal workers (10,833) came from tw...

Foreword In 2015, more than 244 million people resided in a country other than their country of birth; many migrated within their region or towards high-income OECD countries. Within this broader context, where migration is acknowledged as an ever-crucial parameter for development, this publication addresses the issue of the free movement of people...

Between late November 2014 and early June 2015 487 Samoan and Tongan men, employed as seasonal workers in the Hawke’s Bay for periods of between 22 and 30 weeks, earned just over NZ$10.053 million or the equivalent of $20,643 per worker on average. Just under one third ($3.197 million or 32 percent of the total) was deducted as tax or for shares of...

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...

This is a short preface to a special issue of the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand on the occasion of the Society's 150th anniversary in 2017. The special issue contains a number of review articles including "Changing perspectives upon Maori colonisation voyaging" (Atholl Anderson), "New Zealan's botanical heritage, subdisciplines and Le...

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...

Between late March and late September 2016 data were collected on the earnings and remittances of 142 Ni-Vanuatu men employed as seasonal workers in the Bay of Plenty (92) and Marlborough (50) for periods of between 18 and 22 weeks. During this time, collectively they earned just over NZ$2.264 million or the equivalent of $15,944 per worker on aver...

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...

A comment on the large net migration gains New Zealand has been experiencing in the past 12 months cautioning against a tendeny to regard such gains as evidence of extensive growth in numbers of new permanent residents.

As the effects of climate change on island states in the Pacific region begin to be experienced there is growing awareness and acceptance of the possibility that large-scale relocation may be required. Resettling communities experiencing environmental or socio-economic stress within the Pacific region has occurred in the past and Fiji's Prime Minis...

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 keynote address to the 13th Annual Immigration Law Conference addressed four questions relating to contemporary immigration in New Zealand in the wider context of global policy trends: 1) Record levels of immigration? 2) A world leader in terms of skilled migrant selection? 3) Competing for talent -- what can we learn from others? 4) Attitudes...

This short paper reviews the capacity for cross-border mobility between states and territories within the Pacific region. Adaptive voluntary migration across international borders will be a critical component of an ovrall adaptation strategy for at risk individuals and houoseholds in the Pacific in order to increase their resilience to natural disa...

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...

In 2003, New Zealand introduced a novel “expression of interest” (EOI) system for selecting skilled migrants. In 2012, Australia adopted a similar approach while the Canadian government is proposing to adopt a variant of the EOI system in 2015. From being a follower of Canadian and Australian immigration policy initiatives, New Zealand has become t...

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...

Two characteristics of the Pacific Islands region (Oceania) are high levels of exposure to environmental extremes and a long tradition of population mobility. Accordingly there are a number of examples of community relocation following natural disasters. Small island developing states have been identified as likely to have high levels of exposure t...

Pacific peoples have had to contend with and adapt to a multiplicity of disruptive and destructive geological and extreme weather events for centuries. While temporary internal migration and displacement have featured as a response to the events in many instances, the current concern about the effects of climate change in the region has generated d...

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...

Oceania was the last major region to be settled, and recently the dates of earliest continuous settlement in many of the islands in the eastern Pacific have been shown to be four centuries later than was thought (Wilmshurst et al. 2011). From the outset of human settlement mobility has been a constant feature of life in this “sea of islands” (Hau'o...

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...

In July 2012 a radically different system for selecting parents under New Zealand’s policies relating to family sponsorship of immigrants came into operation. This paper assesses the impact of the new selection system on approvals for residence of parents from eight countries that together account for just over two-thirds of all parents admitted ov...

This is a book review of John Connell's (2009) "The Global Health Care Chain: From the Pacific to the World", Routledge, London. It is essential reading for anyone seeking to come to grips with skilled migration of Pacific health workers in a region when attention usually focuses on the movement of low-skilled workers into seasonal work in the agri...

This is a short review of a book about a New Zealander, Donald Gilbert Kennedy, who served with a curious mix of distinction and notoriety in the British Colonial service between 1921 and 1946 in Fiji (1921), the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony (1922-1940), the British Solomon Islands Protectorate (1940-1944), and Fiji (1944-1946). He then spent...

A wide-ranging review of contemporary population movement in the Pacific is contained in this report which was commissioned by the New Zealand Department of Labour and Australia's Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs as part of their on-going reviews of and consultations over immigration policy and development assistance in the regio...

Since the late 1940s, the Pacific islands have had a special place in teaching and research in New Zealand's university geography departments. This paper recalls some dimensions of a ‘golden age’ in the study of Pacific peoples by New Zealand geographers between 1945 and 1970. Attention is focused on the ‘Cumberland’ school of regional geography an...

David) Ian Pool's research career began in New Zealand but took off in west Africa in the 1960s. His research on population dynamics in New Zealand, and most recently his major contributions to demographic theory about age structural transitions (ASTs), are frequently cited in the contemporary literature. Less frequently mentioned is his extensive...

Seventeen years ago, in a landmark USP publication on Oceania, the late Epeli Hau'ofa reminded us that Pacific peoples used to range widely across their ocean in search of resources and opportunities for a better livelihood. In his celebrated essay "Our sea of islands" he cautioned that the requirement to request permission to enter a neighbouring...

In May 2008, a major controversy about the participation of Pacific Islanders and their descendants in the New Zealand economy was initiated by the release of a report claiming they were “a drain on the economy,” were becoming an “underclass” and displayed “significant and enduring underachievement.” This report received considerable media attentio...

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...

Questions concerning the widening disparity in numbers of males and females in the prime working age groups in New Zealand's population have attracted attention from researchers and the media in recent years. This paper reviews some of the findings from research for a FRST-funded programme that has been investigating several inequalities based on g...

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...

The first decade of the 21st century was characterised by a succession of years of net migration gains in New Zealand -- the first decade since the 1950s when every year ended March 31 had a net gain. The period was characterised by successive years of sustained economic growth and record levels of arrivals and departures for periods of 12 months o...

Rowan Callick’s (1993) deliberately provocative ‘doomsday scenario’ for an increasingly impoverished and marginalised Pacific by 2010 was primarily designed to challenge a prevailing tendency at the time towards complacency about medium-term prospects for a region where the great majority of the population remained ruralresident.

New Zealand, or Aotearoa as these antipodean islands are called in the indigenous Maori language, is a country of both extensive immigration and emigration. This chapter addresses the considerable "churn" in the country's contemporary international migration system. New Zealand has an extensive diaspora of expatriates, and contemporary immigration...

The debate about immigration and its role in transforming populations has become very contentious in recent years. One of the paradoxes of globalisation has been the tendency towards much greater regulation of migration flows into countries at the same time as the international movements of labour have intensified and opportunities for people with...

Between March and May 2002 a wealth of information has been released on internal and international migration in New Zealand. Statistics New Zealand has established a very useful series of "2001 Census Snapshots" which summarise key trends in some of the major characteristics of the population. To date nine of these "Snapshots" have been released an...

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...

Migration is challenging in many different ways: conceptually, methodologically and as a process that is fundamental to the lives of everyone. Of the three demographic processes that change populations (fertility, mortality and migration), migration is the least amenable to definition and analysis. Yet despite considerable debate among researchers...

Since the 1990s, Asia has emerged as the major contributor of migration flows into New Zealand. Settler migration, tourism, international business and more recently, international education make up the diverse flows of Asian peoples into the country. This paper explores the changing dynamics of Asian transnational families over the last two decades...

ABSTRACT‘Brain drain’ has been one of the abiding topics of public debate during 2000. Emigration of New Zealanders much more than immigration of new settlers has dominated discourses about international migration, even though for much of the year the country experienced overall net migration gains rather than net losses. This paper addresses the m...

Contract labour migration between countries in the South Pacific and New Zealand was the subject of considerable debate among academics and policy makers in the mid-1970s. The primary objective of this paper is to review the operations of work permit schemes linking employment in New Zealand with labour in Fiji during the 1980s. Administrative arra...

The resignation of the Hon. Lianne Dalziel as Minister of Immigration in March 2004 marked the end of an era in transformations in migration policies, flows and outcomes in New Zealand. In this Research Comment I review briefly three dimensions of immigration during the period between November 1999 and March 2004 when she had the immigration portfo...

The well-established linkages between the fortunes of agriculture and rural communities that have characterised the histories of rural areas in New Zealand and elsewhere have been severely challenged over the past two decades. Some commentators have posited a de-coupling of the two sectors. This paper explores evolving farm and rural community inte...

At a huihuinga organised during the Conference on Pacific Studies at the University of Auckland in August 1985, there was a spirited exchange of views among participants on residence of Pacific Island Polynesians in New Zealand. As part of a wider critique of Pakeha cultural hegemony and superiority several Maori speakers stressed that Pacific Isla...

In this paper we examine some characteristics of Hong Kong Chinese transnational families in New Zealand in the 1990s. The information presented here is' designed to contribute to the "cultural processes" topic in the secondary school geography syllabus, with particular reference to processes of adaptation by immigrants in New Zealand. Data and ins...

Migration to the peri-urban fringe is common in all of New Zealand's larger cities, and in the case of Auckland neighbouring 'rural' Districts such as Franklin to the south and Rodney to the north are the destinations for many of the people leaving that city for rural areas. However, movement into the countryside near large cities is clearly only p...

The aim of this paper is to describe the rise and fall of Korean short-term arrivals, which we will term tourist flows given that most of those entering for stays of less than 12 months during this period were tourists. The first section provides an overview of inbound Korean tourism over the past 20 years. This is followed by an outline of some ch...

Tourism as a cultural process is a popular option in the Seventh Form Geography syllabus. This short article provides teachers with a statistical snapshot of changes in the flows of international visitors into New Zealand between October 1997 and January 1998. During these four months there has been extensive media comment on the 'Asian financial c...

Our discussion is organised into three sections. The first introduces the major sources of data and outlines some of the characteristics of two types of information on international migration: approvals for residence and arrivals/departures. In the second section we provide two contexts for the review of immigration in the last three election years...

New Zealand, like Australia and Canada, has long had an active policy of seeking immigrants to "grow" its population and economy. Unlike the other two countries, New Zealand does not have a federal system of government, and the absence of a state or provincial level of legislative authority has meant that policies to promote immigration and to meet...

Our contribution to the International Conference “Connecting Worlds: Emigration, Immigration and Development in Insular Spaces”, held in the Azores between 28 and 30 May 2008, examines contemporary mobility of Pacific peoples in a transnational context with reference to processes of out-migration, return, re-migration and the complex systems of cir...

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...

This chapter addresses several aspects of contemporary mobility of Pacific peoples. The first section sets the scene by introducing general features of Pacific mobility ‘worlds’ and the debate that has arisen around population growth and access to formal sector employment in the region. This is followed by three sections that address dimensions o...

Australia and New Zealand tend to view development issues in the Pacific, including labor mobility, in different ways. This paper compares the different policies of Australia and New Zealand on the migration of Pacific peoples. Both countries used to have colonies in the Pacific in the 20th century, but while Australia ceased to continue its specia...

This report outlines a framework for assessing Niue's contemporary population dynamics in a transnational context. The findings are based on interviews carried out in Niue and new Zealand in November and December 2005, a review and assessment of recent literature, and an analysis of a range of published and unpublished statistics. By far the most i...

In New Zealand, in all age groups under 20, and in key working age