I am from Christchurch. I was born and raised here. I went to school and university here. I am not, however, going to offer a local rebuttal to criticisms from immigrants raised about this city. Quite the opposite: I agree with you; I do not like it here either. To all “Cantabs” (those are people who are from here and are proud of the fact) let me say this: you overestimate this city.
I moved here with my partner, a New Zealand permanent resident some two years ago. We had no employment before coming to Christchurch (a bad plan) but we assumed that the city would offer us both something worthwhile. Instead, we faced disappointment after disappointment. My partner eventually found some part-time work in a café and now part-time works for a catering company. This is after two years of looking for a proper job. She has a range of qualifications and work experience from the US and Australia in addition to a postgraduate degree. I accept that times are tough, that there are fewer jobs and that immigrants will feel this in particular. But prejudices among employers and job agencies in Christchurch against those from non-English speaking backgrounds are also apparent. After questioning her immigration status (due to her non-Kiwi accent) and probably not believing her answer, they would flip through her CV and state something like “not enough LOCAL experience” or “well, at least you have worked in a café in South Christchurch” (because nothing else matters). Nothing gained from abroad (even Australia) was relevant to these people. It was as if the world stopped outside the realms of this city.
I secured employment where I spoke to British working-holiday makers and immigrants every day. They never seemed to face such difficulties in gaining employment. This has led me to believe that there are some clear underlying prejudices in Christchurch towards those who are not Kiwi or British. At the end of the day, this city has a provincial mentality, a parochial and shallow culture and ultimately praises mediocrity. We are moving away. I do not want to live here anymore.

The phrase "Sell the sizzle not the steak" is an old sales aphorism. I can't help but wonder how long they can keep doing that before word seeps out.
The word IS getting out. I can't help but feel that NZ has fallen prey to that "empty capitalist marketing mentality" that trumpets but doesn't deliver and then moves on to the next good thing, leaving victims in its wake - yet generations ago it was not that sort of place(?). It has jumped on some sort of dumb bandwagon. It's a beautiful place and there are (a few) very cool, staunch and determined people here who keep the best part of it going and keep the faith. But NZ on the ground doesn't match its marketing "of the last few years", and it's unfair to the people who move here and ALSO to the Kiwis themselves to sell NZ as more than what it is - an overpriced remote fixer-upper "with potential" for those with the vision to see what it could be
(no visionary, me - but they are out there!)

_________________
"If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking."-Buddhist Proverb

(I see Alby has posted this story in one of the 'collections' threads, but I thought it should be posted here in the 'Racism in Christchurch' thread as well)

15-year-old Fijian-Indian boy, only just arrived in NZ 3 weeks earlier ("for a better life"), beaten up in a corridor of his new school, Linwood College, by a couple of students. I am so sickened by this story.





Full story at:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-...ure-racist-attack

As an aside, there are other issues besides the racist nature of the attack itself that are raised here, issues to do with how schools here operate in general (or perhaps more accurately, how they DON'T operate), particularly in the areas of safety/security/punitive measures, that have long caused me great great concern.



and

I have seen how they deal with bullies here - they slap them on the wrist, but there are no permanent solutions for them (where did all the reform schools go?) and the rotten kids return to the exact same behaviour after a few weeks, when they are not being watched anymore. All punishment of kids who act out is band-aid type temporary scolding. No "three strikes you're out" or anything of the sort or anything that would truly make an impression on them, and the rotten ones stay in the same schools year in and year out and keep bothering other kids. The onus wrongly seems to be on the targeted children to find ways to keep away from the bullies, or learn to deal with the situation.

They apply the same half-arsed measures to physical injuries. I think a kid would have to be dying for them to call an ambulance or get "real" medical care for him/her! And maybe not even then!

I won't be surprised if a kid actually dies after being beaten up in school.Actually i'm surprised no one has yet.That poor fijian boy could have easily suffered life changing injuries.not that he hasn't emotionally already.One of these days someone's going to end up losing an eye,maybe be in a wheel chair for life.Hope parents do all they can to minimize the risks.It feels much safer in universities i guess even with the drunk ones around.

New here, and I'm finding the site pretty interesting. Especially the subject of racism. I'm a european/maori student, and I have to admit I've witnessed racism. However, never physical racism. Infact, any physical violence I've ever seen has been administered by my own race, the Maori side. I do have to admit that I am slightly racist. I come from a family that is quite racist, but we're racist to our own fellow maori. I guess thats a seperate issue all on its own, but I was suprised that the racism you have all experienced seems to be coming from caucasians. Any violence/racism I or any of my friends have ever experienced has been from maori's. I was also shocked to hear thats its bad in Christchurch, I've only been there once when I was young though. Auckland is a very diverse place, so it doesnt surprise me to hear its apparently not so bad there. I lived in Auckland for 4 years. I don't think I'd describe Hamilton as being racist, but there's not much to offer here unless you're a farmer or like living in a hole....

It makes me sad to see so many people here who don't enjoy it. I didn't realise it was that way. I personally want to leave after university, but thats only because there is no place here for my type of degree and the career I'm interested in. Also I love cities and lots of people... NZ seems too small for me. I never considered leaving just because of the people.

Anyway, this is just an outsiders 2-cents worth. Hope I didnt offend anyone, just suprised by all your findings.

The Europeans and Asians in Auckland are OK, but we get **** by the rest of the country.

NZ would survive perfectly without migrants.

Being such an agricultural country IMO NZ is one of the most self-sustaining countries on earth.

That's where the advertising campaign of the government goes wrong. They make you believe that NZ actually needs you. When the opposite is true:

Manager Joe Bloggs doesn't need migrants. He prefers Kiwi Experience, and jobs for Kiwis anyway.

As a migrant, if you really really REALLY have to come here, well you're only allowed in if you have actually done something useful with your life. You, and your skills, are not needed, but you are given an OPPORTUNITY to come here if you really feel you need to. It's all your choice, your responsibility, your problem.

That NZ gives you the opportunity to live in this great country doesn't mean you're welcomed with open arms. You have to prove yourself, start all over from the bottom again, and even then probably won't climb up to the level you had before you came here. Tough, YOU wanted to live here, then live with it or get lost.

Without migrants, NZ would go back to an agricultural village life, and I think most New Zealanders would not mind, they would probably actually prefer it.

If all migrants would realise this isolationist attitude before deciding to come here, it would help them make the right decision. As in any country, don't believe anything the government says

_________________
Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want

This is a very true observation. In so many words I have actually been told this by Kiwis themselves. Translated it also means that migrants are a way for them to get a slice of the pie (money) from those outside New Zealand. They really are not ashamed of it.

It helps to know this. If you want to make it in New Zealand you have to start from the bottom, be very careful and somehow employ yourselves and then even the odds stacked against you are still enormous.

Yet I find living here very interesting, because I would not have learned as much of human nature (and control mechanisms) as here...

_________________
I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind, yet strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.

Last edited by PeterArtsound on Sat Aug 22, 2009 7:47 pm

This really depends on what perspective we are looking at. The billions of dollars migrants have brought from overseas over say last 10 years has helped NZ immensely from housing boom to a certain extent to direct cintribution to New Zealand GDP by these migrants. The marketing was worth the effort for NZ Govt.

New Zealand has tall poppy syndrome that is if migrants are better educated or better in anything kiwis feel insecured and jealous probably (cause they were led to believe through NZ media propoganda that kiwis way is the best way). New Zealand employers and businesses will not give a good position like managers and alike to a migrant easily. First preference will be given to local born and bred kiwis here even if they are less competent and less educated. Second will be given to migrants who came here at young age like 12-16 years probably and have NZ accent.Lastly migrants chance comes even if migrants have better qualification. Numerous research has been done in this phenomenon. These keeps happening year after year and have human consequences. The affected migrant does develop inferiority complexes and moral becomes really low unless of course your characteristic is like Howard Roark from Fountainhead( Ayn Rand). These gaps in the migrants CV becomes a big disadvantage for applying for jobs in other countries.

I peosonally feel through my observation (I may very well be wrong) New Zealand needs migrants to do unskilled jobs like gas station, car park attendant, fast food and call centres among others and probably fruit picking and taxi drivers.Even if you get office jobs or call centre jobs migrants will face immense trouble getting promotion and will be stuck in the same job for donkey years.Thats what you see visible migrants do in Auckland. The pay is so low that kiwis dont do it or there is not enough population to do these jobs.

So the next issue is what kind of migrants New Zealand really need. Not people with qualification and ambition. In New Zealand non of these will be valued or well paid. I think this is what the world should know. If you are happy to start from scratch and ready to do the above mentioned jobs with low pay and (mind you cost of living is similar to Australian cities but pay is 30% low and tax is high) then NZ is fine. And of course with rich migrants too who doesnt have to bother with work.

New Zealand Govt will need migrants because its population is ageing and it needs working age people to pay tax to fund its retirement populace. But Acceptance of migrants by kiwis and employers are not there. That is the reason I am planning to leave New Zealand soon.

_________________
NZ atttitudes sucks. Big time Village attitude.

Last edited by alby on Sat Aug 22, 2009 11:35 am

I agree with you that it's an interesting learning curve here as far as checks and balances and control mechanisms (both at the level of society and "within the person". It's like a course in cultural anthropology from the perspective of sustainability, and supply/demand at the survival level.

They are rather open about migrants being cash sources. Basically, mobile troughs. I have heard some very open conversations about it (as if a migrant would not even be around to overhear - or am I "passing" as a non-migrant these days and flying under the radar ) They would like us to just drop money on them and then go away.
Note: The freedom with which they feel free to show contempt for Yanks shows a certain sense of invincibility. On their own turf, they can say what they like and have no need to be polite. They can Kick da Man if they find he has foolishly strayed from his illusory fortress. It's a long and expensive escape to civilization..."The Pa's have Eyes"!

I was on the South Island listening to the radio when a real estate agent advertisement came on. The guy basically said "The British are coming with money to spend, now is the time to sell your home or business." Even after 3 years here, I was still a little taken aback by how blatant the here-come-the-cashed-up-foreigners message was.

They disgust me, do they think we have money trees in the UK, or something that prints us money for free.

I guy I work with, a most bitter and twisted individual, who earns twice as much as me, has inherited a multi-million dollar home, in one of the best Auckland suburbs, never misses an opportunity to give me heaps about how much money I, as a rich Pom supposedly have. With constant and petty references to my being one of the bourgeoisie who gained my vast my wealth from exploitation of the masses. Yeah right, whatever?

I thought they need migrants to replace the one leaving?

You can't blame them though. If we're stupid enough to come here in the first place we deserve all we get. We lost £22,000 on the house when we came to sell up and go back. They probably have the same attitude as the bandit chief in the 'Magnificent Seven'
If God did not want them sheared he would not have made them sheep.Yes we're certainly 'stinking gringos' as far as the kiwis are concerned.

_________________
I never knew what true happiness was before I came to NZ. And then it was too late.

They don't seem embarrassed to talk about foreigners that way. Like wee children who point embarrassing things out about other people in the food store before they are taught to edit their speech.

Migrants are geese who lay golden eggs.

NZ is dirt poor. Sure, there's a few rich farmers. That does not mean the profits are filtering downwards. There is hardly any industry here other than farming. That's why they need tourist dollars so much. Once they've milked the cash cow, **** off, we're not interested in you anymore. Get a job driving a taxi and be grateful. We have skill shortages but those positions are for Kiwis.

I don't believe they want migrants in NZ. They want overseas money to inject into the housing market etc and then they want us to **** off. Most people don't realise how small NZ is. 4 million people. Most of 'em in Auckland. The south island is like stepping back into the late 1800s - after the gold rush. Imagine Deadwood without the fun. It has its appeals, but I don't think life there is very easy unless you enjoy a hand-to-mouth existance.

Most migrants will end up worse off than where they came from imho.

_________________
branded on the tongue

"Yet I find living here very interesting, because I would not have learned as much of human nature (and control mechanisms) as here..."

This section of your post, Peterartsound, caught my eye... I come from an upper middle class background, and much of my family (including parents) is involved in a house church cult... I do not regret having left the States because even a village mentality is a step above the latter, and my boyfriend was worth coming so many miles, but as for the former...It is very educational actually to meet ordinary working people and to learn the little loopholes by which the petty bourgeoisie and above take advantage of them. Just tonight, for instance, a chef at the restaurant where I wash dishes commented -- as she has in the past -- about the overtime which she and the other chefs have had to work this week: six hours. She had previously mentioned to me that at her previous job her wages were below even the dish hand. Now, as a dish hand I had already noticed that except for a small minority of chefs I was getting the better deal overall -- I would occasionally comment on not wanting to be 'demoted' to chef -- but I did not really realize that this situation extended to the pay as well! I was, you see, thinking in terms of the fitness and the absence of various hassles -- a holistic consideration of the low estimation in which my 'monetary adjunct' is held versus the 'paid gym exercise' and the paid 'foreign language training / study time' I wallow in -- while all along assuming that chefs were at least better off in terms of pay... In reality they often make less due to the overtime. At the moment I am still hazy as to the average amount of overtime chefs work at my job -- employers are very tightlipped, & fellow workers are not necessarily any more helpfully educational, but six hours of overtime is not the upper limit. This is, of course, just scratching the surface.

_________________
You are deaf, O metropolitans, yet heed the news I bring: In the lands of those who think they're free the oligarchs are king.

How very easy it is, in our Babelist era, to label the desire to maintain a particular demographic status quo 'racist'! How very easy it is to assume that one can simply cut and paste different races -- even, and I stress this, peoples of roughly equal stature -- into one place & demand that they get along with each other...

Now, I learned about this sort of thing in school! Not the classroom, of course -- which had as one of its functions the propagation of the blank slate meme -- but the playground, where a bit of pizza could become a magical ark which transported dozens of ants of one type into contact with the soldier ants of another colony. What do you think happened?

They fought. They were obliged to fight. No amount of tiresome "Let's all get along" could possibly have altered their behavior. By the same token, if those ants had not been transported into contact which could only have led to the above result, then both groups would have been better off. =

Let us be clear on another thing... If the United States, Europe, Australia, & New Zealand are obliged to accept ever increasing numbers -- thank the gods for this deepening recession, may it shake the stardust from our eyes! -- of immigrants from races & cultures from whom they do not wish to accept them, then a double-standard is in operation. Japan -- for instance -- pulls no punches about maintaining its demographic status quo, & it has the low crime rates & social cohesion to prove it. I admire this, I view it as an achievement. I only ask that White people be allowed the same freedom without being smeared as 'racists' for, in effect, putting a fence in-between their pitbulls -- who are inevitable, & like those soldier ants -- & those whom the 'pitbulls' are by nature, by Ma Nature herself, programmed to attack.

I swear to you, that if you take a country like Germany & a country like Japan -- countries chosen precisely because both are intelligent, dynamic peoples (in the aggregate) with attainments to their credit -- and then put half of each population in the other person's country, you will create misery. Still more if you multiply the groups. You will create Fiji. You will create Sri Lanka. You will create Los Angeles, NYC, Detroit, & Calcutta again & again, all in the name of blank slate egalitarianism. The intelligence & educational attainment of an immigrant matters little in the context of group cohesion & intergroup boundaries which have arisen over time as any adaptation which favors the survival or success of a group arises.

The average White Kiwi is, compared to many immigrants -- White or Asian -- often a bit of an inert lump, I admit this... but I get along with these inert lumps even though they keep my abstractness at a distance, even though the smallpoppyism is still present & they probably prefer to ignore my talent for languages or my emphasis on poetry or even my getting along with Maori. In any case, I receive markedly different treatment from non-White immigrants precisely because I am considered to be culturally & racially compatible. This criterion used to be the law of the land in the USA -- until 1965's Tower of Babel immigration reform law, that is.

So, please. Forgive Kiwis if they do not wish to live in a dump like Calcutta or Rio.... or Auckland. Japanese apparently don't want Babel in their own back yards! Forgive Kiwis if they would rather hang a Chinese lantern in their house than put up with Auckland. Japanese can learn from Chinese just fine at a distance without importing tens of millions of Chinese & simply accepting the 'racism' charges of those immigrants lying down. The same is true of Kiwis.

Sure, I think there is a pecking order, but it's very hard to prove. Anecdotal evidence is quite convincing though.