Immigration policy in New Zealand: divergent narratives, shared assumptions and national identity

Abstract

Policies can be analyzed as stories about who and what is valued within society. Immigration policy (and immigration policy narratives) offer particularly clear renderings of such stories. This article critically adopts the approach of narrative policy analysis to explore the core assumptions that are shared by apparently opposed policy narratives of immigration policy in contemporary New Zealand. It theorizes these shared assumptions as a policy (pre) meta-narrative that is logically related to discourses of national identity, and that effects specific silences and exclusions. These public silences, it is argued, serve to damagingly limit and distort the field of policy debate.

Keywords:

• narrative policy analysis
• immigration policy
• national identity

Acknowledgments

This article arises from a paper presented at the Sixth Interpretive Analysis Conference, at Cardiff University in 2011. I should like to thank conference participants and two anonymous referees from this journal for their insightful comments.