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Paternalism and racism in pacific labour migration: A critical discourse analysis of the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme
No full textNeoliberalism and ‘race’ have become fundamental in the operation of migration regimes internationally. This is particularly the case in circular labour mobility schemes that involve the seasonal movement of migrants from the Global South into labour markets in the Global North in deeply racialized ways that are underpinned by neoliberal market rule. This paper explores the institutionalisation of racism in the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme in Aotearoa New Zealand (hereafter, New Zealand), a circular migration programme that has been promoted as a ‘best practice’ ‘global model.’ Using discourse analysis, we identify a strong emphasis on paternalism, managerialism, and racialisation, which shape the character of Pacific-focused labour programmes. Paternalism is expressed in the positioning of New Zealand as leading Pacific countries’ development and governance, and an emphasis on ‘co-development’ underpinned by claims of mutual beneficence. The RSE scheme is then managed through discourses and operational mechanisms that are informed by technocratic managerialism, rendering Pacific migrants able to be controlled through restricted rights and an emphasis on the maintenance of permanent circulation. Lastly, paternalism and managerialism take shape around the racialisation and stratification of RSE migrant labour as ideal workers for seasonal manual labour characterised by low wages, conditions and rights. This critical analysis reveals the deeply embedded coloniality of circular labour mobility schemes like the RSE and suggests the importance of wholesale transformation rather than a refinement of an unjust system
COVID-19, capital flows and sustainable development in Sub-Saharan Africa
No full textThe Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region suffered severe economic impacts from COVID-19, despite experiencing some of the lowest numbers of cases and deaths from the pandemic. The attainment of sustainable development in the region was significantly affected partly because of the region’s huge reliance on industrialised economies who were most hit by the pandemic. The SSA countries covered 33 of the 45 countries listed by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) as least developed countries (LDCs) requiring significant assistance. Moreover, the countries in the region experience some of the lowest inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI), both in comparison to other regions and to the flow of other foreign capitals into SSA. Again, as these countries were more vulnerable to economic shocks because of their lower resilience capacities, the attainment of sustainable development was significantly threatened when COVID-19 resulted in reduced economic activity, foreign investment and deteriorating socio-economic inequalities. Although earlier studies have concentrated on the impact of various cross-border capital flows on economic growth and some development indicators, those studies have not empirically evaluated how this global shock has impacted the inflows of foreign capital and their effects on sustainable development. In view of these, this thesis provides three empirical studies, using data from SSA countries over the period 2000 – 2022.
The first paper evaluated the impact of COVID-19 on the nexus between remittances and sustainable development. Relying on both static and dynamic estimation techniques, the study found that remittance is positively associated with sustainable development, both before and after the threshold, subject to the absorptive capacity of the SSA economies. In effect, there is a minimum level of institutional quality and financial development, below which their effects on sustainable development would be negative; at which the stimulating effect of remittances may be reversed. In addition, COVID-19 was observed to reduce the progress towards sustainable development, directly and when interacted with remittances.
In the second paper, the impact of the pandemic was estimated in the nexus between FDI and sustainable development. The empirical estimates showed that FDI does not exert a significant impact on sustainable development. When the effect of FDI was further analysed on economic growth, the environment, and human development, the estimates remained consistent. While COVID-19 was found to reduce the levels of economic growth, the environment, human development, and sustainable development, the interaction effect showed that FDI reduces the negative effect of COVID-19 on economic growth and sustainable development.
The third paper measured the impact of COVID-19 on the aid – sustainable development nexus. The findings revealed that foreign aid facilitates the attainment of sustainable development and many of its goals. Even though the pandemic was found to exert a diminishing effect, foreign aid was not only found to reduce the negative effect of the pandemic but to also enhance the complementary roles of financial and institutional infrastructures on the attainment of sustainable development
Revisiting deep hybrid models for out-of-distribution detection
No full textDeep hybrid models (DHMs) for out-of-distribution (OOD) detection, jointly training a deep feature extractor with a classification head and a density estimation head based on a normalising flow, provide a conceptually appealing approach to visual OOD detection. The paper that introduced this approach reported 100% AuROC in experiments on two standard benchmarks, including one based on the CIFAR-10 data. As there are no implementations available, we set out to reproduce the approach by carefully filling in gaps in the description of the algorithm. Although we were unable to attain 100% OOD detection rates, and our results indicate that such performance is impossible on the CIFAR-10 benchmark, we achieved good OOD performance. We provide a detailed analysis of when the architecture fails and argue that it introduces an adversarial relationship between the classification component and the density estimator, rendering it highly sensitive to the balance of these two components and yielding a collapsed feature space without careful fine-tuning. Our implementation of DHMs is publicly available
The Economic Contribution of Religious Charities to New Zealand.
No full textThis article considers religious charities from an original perspective, that of their economic contributions to society as an alternative argument to those who wish to see religious charities struck from the charity sector. This is timely because of recent national and international changes to charity law legislation and policies. In essence, the article has demonstrated that religious charities contribute significantly in economic terms to New Zealand society generally, and further, measuring the public benefit of religious charities through an economic lens may assist in determining the differing ways in which religious charities contribute to, and benefit, society
Te whakahaumanu i ngā taonga takatāpui: Belonging and thrivance for takatāpui
No full textThis thesis celebrates takatāpui belonging and thrivance; created by, with and for takatāpui. It is carefully crafted with an abundance of love for this community to which I belong. Informed by the overarching conceptual framework of Te Pū o te Rākau (pūrākau) methodology (Lee-Morgan, 2019), this thesis follows pūrākau of how takatāpui and queer Māori identify and express belonging and thrivance. The intention of this study is to privilege the voices and lived experiences of people who have been consistently subject to the systematic dehumanisation of Western research conventions.
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, anti-Māori racism, homophobia and transphobia have risen exponentially in Aotearoa, spurring an increase in aggressive violent attacks on marginalised communities. It is progressively evident that the fundamental right to tino rangatiratanga affirmed by Te Tiriti o Waitangi to express self-determination has failed to be honoured (Came et al., 2024; Mutu, 2011a). Therefore, it is paramount within this rangahau to give power to and centralise the voices of takatāpui as they express their experiences of belonging.
Drawing upon the springs of mātauranga takatāpui (re)generated by takatāpui academics, this rangahau is firmly grounded within a takatāpui worldview. Adapted elements from Te Pū o te Rākau methodological framework are implemented in this rangahau to (re)affirm the importance of takatāpui voices and interdependent relationships. Experienced through the ritualistic ceremony of wānanga, informed by Kaupapa Māori tenet - titiro, whakarongo… kōrero – I facilitated a wānanga for a group of kaipūrākau to share their pūrākau at Te Kohinga Mārama marae. Throughout the wānanga the kaipūrākau shared hilarious, heartwarming and painful pūrākau about their lived experiences as Indigenous queer people navigating a settler-colonial Western society and their encounters with belonging. These precious pūrākau are then translated into key themes that communicate the findings of this rangahau, that are described as Whanaungatanga, Tuakiritanga, Mana Motuhake and Te Hari Te Koa
Photography and placemaking
No full textThis essay delves into broad discussions around photography and place-making, with an emphasis on the photographs produced in the course of the A-Place project. As a starting point, the essay will introduce and discuss the intricate relationships between photography and place-making, establishing a historical timeline and contextual overview of pivotal moments. These contextual discussions serve as a foundation to subsequent discursive and visual analytical commentary on the photographs. In addition, the historical overview and contrasting views on place and ways of placemaking offer valuable points of reflection on how photography has become integrated into various projects, agendas, and modes of representing places. These reflections lead us to the present, a compelling period characterised by the interplay of various camera technologies and lens-based modes of representation which are in a constant state of visual flux and change, shaping our contemporary understandings and ways of perceiving the world.
From the outset, I explore key ideas related to the invention of photography and how it quickly became integrated into the agenda of place representation and making. Subsequently, I engage in discussions concerning the notions of place and placemaking. The term “placemaking” is critically examined in the context of photographic imagery and practice, emphasising the intrinsic connection to the subjective processes of perception and understanding. This exploration highlights how photographic practices and imagery are utilised to probe the various dimensions of place which are rooted in memory, affect, and cultural perception. I posit that photographic practices are inherent to our daily lives and also part of an agenda of understanding places as means to placemaking. In this context, placemaking encompasses various facets related to the process of developing, consolidating, and asserting understandings of a place through and with photography. In other words, placemaking intersects with photography through pathways of knowing, experiencing, disseminating, and making places. These contextual discussions serve as a foundation for subsequent analysis and commentary on the A-Place archive of photographs.
My focus is on a specific subset of images aiming to provide broader insights into particular aspects connected to the photographs, including their patterns, explorations, subject matter, approaches, and genres. Thus, the intention is not to critique every photograph but rather to present overarching critical reflections and discussions on a selected collection. I will begin by examining the relationship between photography, place representation, and placemaking processes
Kasaysayan at mga salaysay: A bibliography of research with Asian communities in Aotearoa (2000-2024)
No full textIn 2022, the Director of Asian Family Services commented, “Again, nothing about us”, after failing to lobby for the consideration of Asian needs in health structure reform. This exclusionary sentiment is not confined to the health sector but is also prevalent in public sectors and academia in Aotearoa New Zealand. The number of Asians employed as academic staff in tertiary education sectors falls behind the Asian general population estimates. The lack of equity-based funding for Asians is also evident in research sectors. The specific challenges that Asian researchers face in academia are rarely identified, discussed, or addressed through university policies that supposedly endorse diversity, equality, and inclusion. Try flipping through a university strategic document, and you will not be surprised to see no mention of “Asians”. Asians are caught in an awkward situation where they are occasionally showcased to fulfill the “diversity” quota but are otherwise largely invisible.
The bibliography is a wero (challenge) to the invisibility of Asians in research. It is a collection of pivotal contributions made by researchers advancing knowledge for Asian communities. This body of evidence demonstrated our resistance to model minority expectations and assimilationist pressures by continuing to draw on Asian philosophies and epistemologies, engaging with Asian communities, and writing about the subjective experiences of “Asians” as we defy being generalised under the “one New Zealand” narrative. It also constitutes a response to the call for compiling existing Asian research into a bibliography (Tasker & D’Silva, forthcoming), which will serve as an academic reference for researchers and others to identify research gaps
Is fish food from aquarium suppliers a vector for non-native zooplankton to New Zealand?
No full textThere have been a number of recent records of non-native zooplankton invasions in New Zealand, but the transport vectors leading to their introduction are not well understood. Commercially available fish foods containing zooplankton are widely used in home aquariums and the aquaculture industry. These foods are either imported to, or cultured within, New Zealand, and sold as freeze-dried, sun-dried or frozen adults, as capsulated or decapsulated cysts, or as live individuals. In this study, fish food containing Daphnia O.F. Müller, 1785 (Cladocera), Artemia (brine shrimp) and Brachionus (rotifers) were bought from a variety of commercial suppliers within the North Island, New Zealand, which were cultured and manufactured domestically or internationally. Live Daphnia samples were identified morphologically and were found to contain a variety of both native and non-native Daphnia species, as well as copepods, ostracods, rotifers and other non-Daphnia cladoceran species. Freeze-dried and sun-dried diapausing eggs of Daphnia and the rotifer Brachionus were incubated in artificial pond water, Aachener Daphnien Medium (ADaM) and filtered pond water, but hatching of these were unsuccessful. In contrast, Artemia bought as both capsulated and decapsulated cysts were successfully hatched in water with a salinity of 25 ppt and temperatures of 20 °C. The resulting Artemia populations were either parthenogenic or sexual, varying by manufacturer. Frozen whole adult Artemia were found to carry eggs but could not be hatched. Due to the risk of misidentifications from morphological identification, a 658-bp fragment from the 5ʹ region of the COI gene was amplified from tissue samples. The phylogenetic tree constructed from the COI gene sequences identified distinct clades corresponding to four species: A. franciscana, A. parthenogenetica (both hatched from eggs as viable populations), A. sinica, and A. salina (both identified in food, but not viable). The BLAST analysis indicated that the capsulated cysts from USA and German manufacturers contained Artemia franciscana, while the Chinese supply contained A. parthenogenetica. Decapsulated cysts from a Chinese manufacturer hatched into A. parthenogenetica. While A. franciscana can be legally imported into New Zealand, A. parthenogenetica is not listed in the Import Health Standard for ‘Fish food and fish bait’ under the Biosecurity Act 1993. The morphological identifications matched the BLAST analysis data for Daphnia. Non-native Daphnia pulex was recorded from live samples from Te Aroha, Hamilton and Wellington (LID5). An Auckland sample and another Wellington sample comprised of native D. carinata s.l. Overall, commercially available fish food from aquarium suppliers can act as a vector for non-native zooplankton to New Zealand
Wonder and empathy in environmental ethics
No full textMy aim in this article to argue that wonder is a basic moral capacity, akin to the capacity for empathy, that is required for the virtue of environmental benevolence. I begin by examining Geoffrey Frasz’s account of benevolence as a set of environmental virtues, and I identify a gap that not only threatens the coherence of Frasz’s theory, but also points to an important cause of our widespread apathy toward the environment: the inherently limited and biased nature of the capacity for empathy. My proposal is that the capacity for wonder can fill this gap, that is, I think wonder can play the role in environmental benevolence that empathy plays in interpersonal benevolence
Yield of cyclic vs heat-and-hold induction sintering on the mechanical behaviour of the low-cost Ti-5Fe alloy
No full textThe high cost of Ti alloys is hindering their industrial implementation and, therefore, the quest for low-cost Ti alloys entails lowering the intrinsic cost using cheaper alloying elements and developing more efficient manufacturing methods. In this study, the yield of manufacturing the novel low-cost Ti-5Fe alloy via heat-and-hold and cyclic induction sintering around the allotropic α→β phase transformation was compared as the latter is expected to enhance densification. It is demonstrated that induction sintering is extremely efficient due to its characteristic high heating rates and simultaneously permits to obtain homogenous chemical compositions at low homologous sintering temperatures. Cyclic sintering yields faster sintering kinetics, which results in higher densification with respect to heat-and-hold, achieving uniform residual porosity distributions within the microstructure, comparable relative density, and on average smaller and more spherical pores. Consequently, higher strength but not necessarily higher ductility is obtained for the cyclic sintered Ti-5Fe alloy as the failure mode entails crack propagation through irregularly shaped pores