Housing Experience and Settlement Satisfaction: Recent Chinese, Indian and South African Skilled Immigrants to New Zealand

Abstract

Relatively little work has been done on the housing experience of recent migrants from cultural backgrounds different to that of their host society. This absence is particularly marked for relatively high socio-economic status skilled migrants, many of whom have to negotiate housing markets significantly different from those in their countries of origin. Data obtained from a panel study of recent immigrants from three separate sources—China, India and South Africa—to New Zealand's main cities (primarily Auckland) are used to explore the nature of their housing experiences. Over a four-year period these migrants moved towards the New Zealand norm of owner occupied, detached dwellings, although more rapidly in some cases than others; the pace of movement reflected not only cultural differences among the three groups, relative to the New Zealand norms, but also experiences in the labour market. These differences are reflected in levels of satisfaction with the decision to move to New Zealand.

Keywords:

• Housing, migrants,
• New Zealand

Acknowledgements

The data used here were collected as part of the New Settlers Programme at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand, a seven-year (1997–2004) programme funded by the New Zealand Foundation for Research, Science and Technology, whose support is gratefully acknowledged.

Notes

 ¹ A review by Black et al. (2003) outlines data collection on immigrant careers now being undertaken in a number of countries, including New Zealand. These datasets are not yet ready to illustrate any trends.

 ² The majority of Chinese and Indians who left New Zealand returned to their home countries, with only a minority (1 Chinese out of 10, and 2 Indians out of 5) proceeding to Australia. However, 3 of the 4 South Africans who left New Zealand proceeded to Australia, and the fourth did not return to South Africa.

 ³ According to the 2001 New Zealand census just under two-thirds of all households lived in owner occupied homes.

 ⁴ The data in Tables 4 refer only to the 81 respondents who were interviewed in all five waves.

 ⁵ Many of the Chinese and Indians were concerned about the wooden dwellings that are common in New Zealand, and were not aware of their relative resilience to earthquakes.

 ⁶ At interview, it was clear that many of the Chinese who were sharing their accommodation with their co-ethnics who were neither kin nor personal friends were acting as landlords, renting rooms to others (especially students) for economic reasons.

 ⁷ As well as the economic issue regarding the letting of rooms mentioned above, it is of significance to note that whereas the great majority of the Indian and South African immigrants entered New Zealand with at least one other individual, usually a family member, almost one-third of the Chinese came alone. In such situations, it is not surprising that more Chinese shared accommodation that did those in the other ethnic groups.

 ⁸ A few had moved more than once between interviews, but we only have data for the type of dwelling occupied at the time of each interview.

 ⁹ There were strong relationships among the three variables. Those who were satisfied with their current accommodation were also very likely to rate their current area either excellent or very good. Similarly, those who rated the quality of their accommodation highly also tended to rate their neighbourhood in the same way, suggesting that people were not trading-off dwelling quality for neighbourhood quality or vice versa.

¹⁰ Because of the predictive failure of the regressions, the full results are not reported here: copies of the tables can be obtained from the first-named author.

¹¹ The fifth wave of interviews were, of course, dealing with the ‘survivors’, those who remained in New Zealand. Those who felt unsettled earlier in the period were likely to be among those who left New Zealand before the end of the panel study.