Narratives and Passages: an Ethnographic Study of Recent American Immigrants in the Nelson and Tasman Regions

Abstract

This thesis is an ethnographic analysis of the migration narratives of American settlers in the Nelson and Tasman regions of New Zealand. It is based on in-depth interviews with thirteen recently arrived American immigrants conducted in 2004 in Nelson and Tasman. These interview narratives recounted the participants' experiences of leaving the USA, resettling in New Zealand and adjusting to local life. To understand these personal narratives the thesis utilises ideas derived from anthropological studies of rites of passage and sociological ideas of strangerhood. It focuses on the ways that migration is experienced and narrated as a life passage with stages that need to be traversed. It also addresses how the American settlers experienced their new land as strange and how it was made familiar. I argue that within the participants' narratives of the migration passage two seemingly contradictory processes and goals are expressed, involving both a sense of belonging and not belonging to their new homeland. In analysing the underlying narratives, the importance to the participants of creating 'narrative coherence' that justifies them leaving the USA and remaining in New Zealand is explored. How the participants positioned themselves in relation to broader social and political events and other American settlers is also examined. Fundamentally, the account addresses how people make sense retrospectively of the major life change involved in migration through personal narratives and how they meaningfully structure their stories as a series of passages.