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Friday 1 November 2013 10:00am

Women and Migration in New Zealand History

Edited by Lyndon Fraser and Katie Pickles

shifting_centresThe book

New Zealand is an immigrant society, but little has been written about the diverse migrant experiences of women to and within New Zealand. Shifting Centres: Women and Migration in New Zealand History, edited by Lyndon Fraser and Katie Pickles, links the lives of very different women through their experiences of migration.

This is a multicultural study. It includes migration from north to south, from country to country and from rural areas to town. Much of the material is from the twentieth century. Subjects range from Māori urban migration, to refugees from Nazism, and recent Chinese migration. Some of the essays are life stories.

Although diverse, the lives of these women are linked through the common need to adapt to new lives. Shared themes include motivation for migration, the journey, attitudes they experienced in the new environment and the links they maintained with 'home'.

Shifting Centres recovers the voices of migrant women and will contribute to an understanding of cultural difference and ethnic origins in the hybrid society that is Aotearoa New Zealand.

The editors

LYNDON FRASER lectures in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Canterbury. His first book was an award-winning study of Irish immigrants in Christchurch and he is the editor of A Distant Shore: Irish Migration and New Zealand Settlement.

KATIE PICKLES is a senior lecturer in the Department of History, University of Canterbury. She is the author of Female Imperialism and National Identity (Manchester 2002) and editor of Hall of Fame: Life Stories of New Zealand Women (Christchurch 1998).

Contributors

Angela Wanhalla, David Hastings, Lyndon Fraser, Katie Pickles, Ann Beaglehole, Aroha Harris, Megan Woods, Emele-Moa Teo Fairbairn, Manying Ip

Reviews

'... each study makes a very readable self-contained story of cultural and ethnic understanding' – Dominion Post

'... essential reading' – the Press

Publication details

Paperback, ISBN 1 877276 32 4, 216 pp, $39.95
2002
Out of print

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