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Accepted Paper:
Health research and the creation of a Pacific citizenry in New Zealand
Judith Littleton
(University of Auckland)
Paper short abstract:
The recognition of Pacific peoples in New Zealand as having legitimate rights to state health care occurred from the 1980s onwards. Using records of health research statistics and grants, I examine the complex relationships between Pacific and Maori health, Pacific states and the New Zealand state.
Paper long abstract:
Health research often reflects prevailing ideas but can also act as a vanguard for new perspectives on the part of the state. The period from 1950 to 1990 was a pivotal for the recognition of Pacific peoples as a population with a legitimate claim to state-sponsored health care in New Zealand. This process of recognition involved ideas of biological and cultural relatedness with Maori as well as the economic facts of labour migration. In this paper, I argue that over this period New Zealand-based Pacific health research moved from encountering ÍšPacific Islanders as the other to acceptance of Pacific peoplesÍ› active engagement in New Zealand: their health citizenship. This change is shown through analysis of demographic and health statistics and the grants awarded by the Medical Research Council of New Zealand. I examine the complex relationships between Pacific and New Zealand Maori health, Pacific states and the New Zealand state, and the intermittent recognition of transnationalism. Pacific peoplesÍ› active health citizenship from the 1980s onwards was a beachhead into a broader ranging mutual engagement with the state. In this process, however, the transnational nature of Pacific lives was ignored.