Factors influencing the electoral participation of Asian immigrants in New Zealand

ABSTRACT

New Zealand electoral data show that those identifying with an Asian ethnicity have the lowest electoral turnout of any of the broad ‘ethnic’ categories used by government statisticians. What accounts for this finding? Given a paucity of quantitative data with which to answer this question, we employ a qualitative, focus group-based research design to examine the electoral participation of first-generation Asian immigrants.¹ We ask, first, what are the main factors that lead Asian immigrants in New Zealand to participate or not participate in parliamentary elections and, second, do these reasons vary among immigrants from different national backgrounds? Our findings suggest that the low electoral turnout recorded among New Zealand Asians is likely to be at least in part an artefact of the recentness of much immigration from non-English-speaking countries such as South Korea and China. The paper also identifies the role government agencies, political parties and the ethnic media could play in communicating information about New Zealand’s electoral politics, with potentially significant dividends for future voting rates among Asian immigrants in New Zealand.

KEYWORDS:

• Voting
• turnout
• Asian
• New Zealand
• electoral participation
• immigrants
• barriers
• trust
• duty

View correction statement:

Corrigendum

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The research upon which this article is based was supported by a Faculty Research Grant from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington. We would particularly like to thank the participants in the focus groups as well as the community leaders who provided assistance in the organisation of the focus groups. We also thank Dylan Chambers for research assistance.

2. The ethnic category ‘Asian’ employed by Statistics New Zealand itself contains 33 subcategories, comprising a mixture of national, subnational, religious and ethnic identities originating from a land area that extends from Afghanistan in the West, Mongolia and Northern China to the North, Japan to the East and East Timor to the South, as well as Indo-Fijians from the South Pacific. Of course, even this large number of subcategories may underrepresent the linguistic and ethnic diversity present in many of the countries included within the Asian category (Statistics New Zealand 2016).

3. Permanent residence is the foundation of immigration policy in New Zealand. Since the 2000s, government planning has aimed at 45,000–50,000 permanent residence approvals annually (MBIE 2015).

4. Among the other main ethnic categories recorded by the census, between 1986 and 2013, Māori grew slightly from 12.4% to 14.9% of the population, while those identifying as of Pacific ethnicity rose from 4% to 7.4% (Statistics New Zealand 2014).

5. In the LisNZ data examined by Henderson (2013), ‘North Asia’ refers to China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and Tibet, while ‘South Asia’ refers to India, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and those of Indian ethnicity from Fiji. ‘South East Asia’ refers to the Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, Burma, Lao, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore.

6. Turnout among migrants from other source regions ranged from 63% among North Americans to 56% and 54% among those from the UK/Ireland and the Pacific, respectively.

7. Australian turnout data is not presented here as Australia’s compulsory voting system makes the numbers of non-voters in electoral surveys too small to analyse.

8. Heath et al. (2013) support this, finding turnout among Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis to be very similar to that of white Britons, although their levels of electoral registration were much lower.

9. The paper thus studies factors relevant to immigrants rather than New Zealand-born Asians.

10. As peak ethnic and immigrant organisations were used to recruit participants, and all participants were thus connected in some way to such an organisation, the sample cannot be considered random. The nature of any bias is difficult to determine, but it may mean that participants retain some degree of attachment to the cultural and linguistic traditions of their home country. Moreover, those who are engaged with community groups may also be more likely to participate politically.

11. Translations of cards were provided for the Chinese and Korean focus groups. Interpreters were provided for the focus groups in which a majority of members were not fluent in English. In other groups, participants with better English sometimes assisted those who were less fluent. The focus groups were recorded and subsequently transcribed.

12. Focus groups took place in 2014 and 2015, so participants discussed elections in 2011 or 2014, depending on the timing of the focus group.

13. Indeed, New Zealand’s electoral rules allow many different and relatively straightforward ways both to register as a voter and to cast a vote either on or before election day (Barker and McMillan 2016; Geddis 2014).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Victoria University of Wellington’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences [3387] and the European Commission [31895 EU Centres Network DG RELEX].

Notes on contributors

Fiona Barker

Fiona Barker is senior lecturer in the Political Science and International Relations Programme at Victoria University of Wellington. Her current research focuses on the political participation and representation of immigrants and ethnic minorities in advanced democracies.

Kate McMillan

Kate McMillan is senior lecturer in the Political Science and International Relations Programme at Victoria University of Wellington. Her current research focuses on immigrants’ social and electoral rights in New Zealand and Australia, and refugee politics in South East Asia.