Welcome to Our World?: Immigration and the Reshaping of New Zealand

New Zealand is one of the classic immigrant-dependent societies but the nature of those immigration flows have changed dramatically since the 1960s. The historic reliance on immigrants from the UK and Ireland was supplemented and then replaced by migrants from elsewhere in the Pacific and then globally, especially from Asia. These changes not only altered New Zealand's demography but also the nature of community life and cityscapes, how diversity has been understood and experienced, and the shape of economic participation - or exclusion. New Zealand is now one of the world's most superdiverse societies, with all the excitement and tensions that accompany immigration and population shifts. Paul Spoonley is Research Director for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Masssey University and he is the Programme Leader of the Integration of Immigrants Programme and Nga Tangata Oho Mairangi. Richard Bedford is Professor of Population Geography in the National Institute of Demographic and Economic Analysis at the University of Waikato and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research) at Auckland University of Technology.