Kinship, whiteness and the politics of belonging among white British migrants and Pākehā in Aotearoa/New Zealand

In this article, we examine how white British migrants in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Pākehā New Zealanders understand the nature of their relationship to each other. We present findings from two qualitative studies conducted in Auckland, one with British migrants and the other with Pākehā. Drawing on Nash’s (2005, 452) argument that kinship is a selective process of performing the “relations that matter,” we demonstrate convergences and divergences in how British migrants and Pākehā conceive of relatedness between the two groups. While there is some overlap in naturalising a common ancestry, British migrants tended to have a greater expectation and experience of sameness whilst Pākehā were more likely to distance themselves from the British, highlighting cultural differences and an idiosyncratic Pākehā identity. Our unique comparative analysis of these discourses of relatedness brings together feminist understandings of kinship with critical scholarship on whiteness and settler colonialism to examine the functions such imaginaries of sameness and difference play in the context of negotiating dominant identities in contemporary settler societies. We argue that the way in which relatedness and kinship were mobilized reflected a desire to rightfully belong in place.