Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T01:05:50.218Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Forty years in Aotearoa New Zealand: white identity, home and later life in an adopted country

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2011

MOLLY GEORGE  and
RUTH P. FITZGERALD
MOLLY GEORGE*
Affiliation:
Social Anthropology Programme, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
RUTH P. FITZGERALD
Affiliation:
Social Anthropology Programme, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand.
*
Address for correspondence: Molly George, Social Anthropology Programme, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article we recount some of the memories, hopes and strategies of 22 older migrants who are ageing in their adopted country of Aotearoa New Zealand. Having arrived as young adults in the 20 years after World War II, most of the immigrants have lived on ‘foreign’ soil for twice as long as their brief sojourns of childhood and early adulthood in their country of origin. Arriving from a variety of backgrounds in 12 different countries, they can all be considered ‘white’ immigrants in relation to New Zealand's indigenous Māori population and other non-European immigrant groups such as those from Pacific Island Nations or Asia. Their lives encompass the experience of globalisation and transnationalism in communication technologies and inter-country migration. As they recount the meaning of living through these changes, these older folk discuss the delicacies of assimilation in post-World War II New Zealand and the interplay between the daily life of New Zealand as ‘home’ and the homeland as Heimat. Their stories argue against the assumption that decades of residence, particularly for white immigrants in a white-majority nation, imply an ‘assimilation’ of cultural identity. Instead, the stories evoke recognition of the negotiation of gain and loss which continues as they, and their contexts, change over time.

Keywords

migrationglobalisationtransnationalismageing in placehome
Type
Articles
Information
Ageing & Society , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , February 2012 , pp. 239 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Akhtar, S. and Choi, L. 2004. When evening falls: the immigrant's encounter with middle and old age. American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 64, 2, 183–91.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Atchley, R. 2000. A continuity theory of normal ageing. In Gubrium, J. and Holstein, J. (eds), Aging and Everyday Life. Blackwell Publishing, Malden, Massachusetts, 47–61.Google Scholar
Beaglehole, A. 1990. Facing the Past: Looking Back at Refugee Childhood in New Zealand, 1940–1960. Allen & Unwin, Wellington.Google Scholar
Becker, G. 2002. Dying away from home: quandaries of migration for elders in two ethnic groups. Journals of Gerontology, 57B, 2, S79–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bönisch-Brednich, B. 2002. Keeping a Low Profile: An Oral History of German Immigration to New Zealand. Victoria University Press, Wellington.Google Scholar
Brooking, T. and Rabel, R. 1995. Neither British nor Polynesian: a brief history of New Zealand's other immigrants. In Greif, S. (ed.), Immigration and National Identity in New Zealand: One People, Two Peoples, Many Peoples? Dunmore Press, Palmerston North, New Zealand, 23–49.Google Scholar
Chaudhury, H. and Rowles, G. 2005. Between the shores of recollection and imagination: self, ageing and home. In Rowles, G. and Chaudhury, H. (eds), Home and Identity in Late Life: International Perspectives. Springer, New York, 3–18.Google Scholar
Ganga, D. 2006. From potential returnees into settlers: Nottingham's older Italians. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 32, 8, 1395–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gardner, K. 2002. Age, Narrative and Migration: The Life Course and Life Histories of Bengali Elders in London. Berg, Oxford.Google Scholar
Hall, S. 1996. Introduction: who needs identity? In Hall, S. and du Gay, P. (eds), Questions of Cultural Identity. Sage, London, 1–17.Google Scholar
Huber, A. and O'Reilly, K. 2004. The construction of Heimat under conditions of individualised modernity: Swiss and British elderly in Spain. Ageing & Society, 24, 327–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Izuhara, M. and Shibata, H. 2001. Migration and old age: Japanese women growing older in British society. Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 32, 4, 571–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaufman, S. 1986. The Ageless Self. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin.Google Scholar
Leavey, G., Sembhi, S. and Livingston, G. 2004. Older Irish migrants living in London: identity, loss and return. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 30, 4, 763–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacPherson, C. 2005. Reinventing the nation: building a bicultural future from a monocultural past in Aotearoa/New Zealand. In Spickard, P. (ed.), Race and Nation: Ethnic Systems in the Modern World. Routledge, New York, 215–38.Google Scholar
Marcus, C. C. 1992. Environmental memories. In Altwin, I. and Low, S. (eds), Place Attachment. Plenum Press, New York, 87–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morley, D. and Robbins, K. 1996. No place like heimat: images of home(land) in European culture. In Eley, G. and Suny, R. (eds), Becoming National. Oxford University, New York, 456–78.Google Scholar
Oliver, C. 2008. Retirement Migration: Paradoxes of Ageing. Routledge, New York.Google Scholar
Riley, R. 1992. Attachment to the ordinary landscape. In Altman, I. and Low, S. (eds), Place Attachment. Plenum Press, New York, 13–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rowles, G. and Chaudhury, H. 2005. Leaving home. In Rowles, G. and Chaudhury, H. (eds), Home and Identity in Late Life: International Perspectives. Springer, New York, 379–386.Google Scholar
Rubinstein, N. 2005. Psychic homelands and the imagination of place: a literary perspective. In Rowles, G. and Chaudhury, H. (eds), Home and Identity in Late Life: International Perspectives. Springer, New York, 111–42.Google Scholar
Rubinstein, R. and Parmalee, P. 1992. Attachment to place and the representation of the life course by the elderly. In Altman, I. and Low, S. (eds), Place Attachment. Plenum Press, New York, 139–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sokefeld, M. 1999. Debating self, identity and culture in anthropology. Current Anthropology, 40, 4, 417–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spoonley, P. and MacPherson, C. 2004. Immigrants and cross-border connections and activities. In Spoonley, P., MacPherson, C. and Pearson, D. (eds), Tangata Tangata: The Changing Ethnic Contours of New Zealand. Dunmore Press, Victoria, Australia, 175–94.Google Scholar
Strauss, A. and Corbin, J. 1998. Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. Second edition, Sage, Thousand Oaks, California.Google Scholar
Svasek, M. 2002. Narratives of ‘home’ and ‘homeland:’ the symbolic constructions and appropriation of the Sudeten German Heimat. Identities, 9, 4, 495–518.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tammeveski, P. 2003. The making of national identity among older Estonians in the United States. Journal of Ageing Studies, 17, 399–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Torres, S. 2001. Understandings of successful ageing in the context of migration: the case of Iranian immigrants in Sweden. Ageing & Society, 21, 333–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ward, C. and Lin, E. 2005. Immigration, acculturation and national identity in New Zealand. In Liu, J., McCreanor, T., MacIntosh, T. and Teaiwa, T. (eds), New Zealand Identities: Departures and Destinations. Victoria University Press, Wellington, 155–73.Google Scholar
Warnes, A., Friedrich, K., Kellaher, L. and Torres, S. 2004. The diversity and welfare of older migrants in Europe. Ageing & Society, 24, 307–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yeoh, B., Lai, K., Charney, M. and Kiong, T. C. 2003. Approaching transnationalism. In Yeoh, B., Charney, M. and Kiong, T. C. (eds), Approaching Transnationalism: Studies on Transnational Societies, Multicultural Contacts, and Imaginings of Home. Kluwer Academic, Boston, Massachusetts, 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar