Civilisation, settlers and wanderers: Law, politics and mobility in nineteenth century New Zealand and Australia

Mobility was constitutive of the 19th century British colonial period in the Pacific. The circulation of capital and commodities, technologies of transportation and communication, travelling ideologies and systems of governance and surveillance, as well as the movement of explorers, whalers, labourers, settlers, missionaries, colonial administrators, convicts, soldiers, sojourners, immigrants, and transnational and displaced indigenous peoples, all shaped the politics and the period (see Ballantyne 2009: 7-8; Seuffert 2006: 7-8; Arrighi 1994: 48-58). Highly mobile British and European immigrants with money or skills were termed 'settlers', with associated connotations of stabilising and civilising influences. Missionaries and colonial officials who were integral to colonisation were also often highly mobile, carrying policies and regulatory regimes with them, and their colonial roles as 'civilising' influences included 'settling' and advancing the position of indigenous and other colonised peoples. In contrast, the mobility of poor whites and racialised populations - such as 'Melanesian' indentured labourers (Banivanua-Mar 2007: 3-4)2, Indian workers, displaced indigenous peoples and 'sojourner' Chinese - attracted the attention of law (and policy) makers and institutional authorities and were subjected to various forms of surveillance, regulation and policing designed to constrain and contain them

Reflections on transgender immigration

Recently, the Human Rights Commission of New Zealand has conducted an inquiry that has officially documented ‘the obstacles to dignity, equality and security for trans people’. The Australian Human Rights Commission has also recently conducted a sex and gender diversity project, and in 2006 the Equalities Review in the United Kingdom commissioned the largest research project ever untaken globally on trans people’s lives, reported in Engendered Penalties: Transgender and Transsexual People’s Experiences of Inequality and Discrimination. This article reflects on the implications of the issues raised by these recent reports and research for transgendered people immigrating to and from New Zealand. It also raises some parallel issues for Australia

Introduction

This issue of Law Text Culture has its genesis in a research project on Mobile Peoples Under the Eye of the Law which was originally proposed by Associate Professor Cathy Coleborne at the University of Waikato. The project was supported with a grant for a one day symposium, held in December 2010, from the University of Waikato Contrestable Research Trust Fund, for which we are grateful. As guest editors we invited contributions of postcolonial analyses that investigated mobile peoples, in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, both historically and in the present. We were especially interested in the ways in which regulation and surveillance in all of its forms — legal, policy, administrative and so forth — produced and constructed mobile peoples, and how categories of gender and sexuality were shaped in relation to mobile peoples in and through these regimes

Sexual citizenship and the Civil Union Act 2004

This article analyses the parliamentary debates on the Civil Union Act 2004, which provides for legal recognition of same sex relationships, for stories of national identity. A close reading of the parliamentary debates on the Act suggests that although the supporters and opponents of the legislation seemed to be worlds apart, many told similar stories about New Zealand as a nation, and citizens within that nation, emphasising similar values and aspirations. Both sides told stories of citizens, of New Zealanders, as tolerant and fair, as forwarding-looking progressives who value stable long-term, committed relationships, warm loving communities for children, and strong families and family relationships. Both sides generally saw marriage as a positive institution, a cornerstone of society and a building block for society and the nation. While some talked of existing alternatives to marriage, such as defacto relationships, and there was some recognition that not all marriages are good ones, with a few notable exceptions, there was little mention of critiques of marriage as an institution and little or no positive mention of relationships outside of the paradigm of long-term committed monogamous relationships. Further, while there were arguments, reflecting aprivatisationparadigmt,h at the Civil Union Act 2004 was not necessary since the rights and duties of same sex couples could be structured using the private law of contract and trusts (a claim that was debated), there was no suggestion that state recognition of marriage should be abolished, or that long-term heterosexual relationships should be structured through private law

Introduction, contents and contributors LTC15

This issue of Law Text Culture has its genesis in a research project on Mobile Peoples Under the Eye of the Law which was originally proposed by Associate Professor Cathy Coleborne at the University of Waikato. The project was supported with a grant for a one day symposium, held in December 2010, from the University of Waikato Contrestable Research Trust Fund, for which we are grateful. As guest editors we invited contributions of postcolonial analyses that investigated mobile peoples, in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, both historically and in the present. We were especially interested in the ways in which regulation and surveillance in all of its forms — legal, policy, administrative and so forth — produced and constructed mobile peoples, and how categories of gender and sexuality were shaped in relation to mobile peoples in and through these regimes

Haunting National Boundaries: LBGTI Asylum Seekers

Two areas of scholarship on asylum seekers and detention camps rarely consider the position of LBGTI asylum seekers: the first is legal scholarship on asylum seeker non-entr e regime policies of \u27excision\u27 and \u27exile\u27, and the second is scholarship theorising the \u27bare life\u27, or lack of political and legal rights, and related issues encountered by asylum seekers at the boundary of the nation. This article contributes to and extends these bodies of scholarship by reading LBGTI asylum seekers into Australia\u27s recent asylum seeker non-entr e polices of \u27excision\u27 and \u27exile\u27. Using scholarship and reports produced internationally, it raises issues for LBGTI asylum seekers in the implementation of these policies. These analyses highlight some of the different forms in which \u27bare life\u27 might be manifested in the space of inclusion/exclusion at the boundary of the nation: \u27bare life\u27 is not a monolithic category

Colonising concepts of the good citizen, law\u27s deceptions, and the treaty of Waitangi

The dominant story of the founding of New Zealand is a simple one of cession of sovereignty by the indigenous Maori people to the British in the Treaty of Waitangi 1840. One notable aspect of the dominant legal portrayals of the Treaty signing, and subsequent legal cases, is their repression of the glaring discrepancies between the Maori version of the Treaty, signed by most Maori leaders, and the English versions. Historical arguments suggest that this discrepancy is the result ofdeliberate deceptio.n on the part of British missionaries translating the Treaty into Maori (Walker 1990: 9L Walker 1989: 269, Ross 1972: 20, Ross 1972 NZ]H: 140-141). I argue that this act ofdeception was necessary to the colonisation of New Zealand, and to the formation of New Zealand as a unified nation-state. The deceptive, or \u27appropriative\u27 mistranslation (Constable 1996: 634635), of the Treatywas the performance of an ideal of the forwardgazing (white, male) citizen who has successfully shed his history (Davidson 1997: 19, Bernal 1994: 125-127); it served both the individual interests of the citizen/subject translator and the interests of nation-building

Shaping the Modern Nation: Colonial Marriage Law, Polygamy and Concubinage in Aotearoa New Zealand

Feminist scholars and critical theorists have critiqued marriage as a tool for the creation of a private sphere in which women are subordinated to men, and have critiqued the public/private dichotomy (Olsen 1983, 1985, Pateman 1988, Smart 1992, Seigel 1996). Marriage jurisdiction and law also participates in the creation of the public order, including the production of a homogenous nation opposed to cultural and racial difference, and embracing particular notions of gender (Cott 2000: 1–8, Franke 1999, Dubler 1998). Throughout the 19th century colonisation of Aotearoa New Zealand the jurisdictional boundaries of colonial marriage law were increasingly constructed and policed to assimilate the indigenous Maori people to a centralised jurisdiction while simultaneously producing race and gender difference within the nation-state. This boundary maintenance operated through a series of statutes and cases that participated in the production of a raced and gendered nation in two ways. First, this article discusses the cases and statutes that extended the jurisdiction of the colonial courts, and colonial marriage laws, over the indigenous Maori people, assimilating Maori to a centralised, homogenous set of laws and practices, and excluding Maori marriage laws and customs from that jurisdiction, and from the emerging nation-state. These laws were increasingly rigidly applied to fix the boundaries of the nationstate. Second, this article traces the racing and gendering of marriage jurisdiction as a process of the creation of internal difference within the emerging nation-state. As colonisation proceeded, Maori marriage laws and customs were increasingly excluded from the jurisdiction of the colonial courts by associating those laws and practices with pre-modern concepts such as concubinage and polygamy and opposing them to raced and gendered notions of civilisation and progress associated with the modern nation-state. The result was the production of a vessel of marriage jurisdiction that aspired to modernity, purity and whiteness and that was shaped and filled with Victorian notions of gender

Same-sex immigration: domestication and homonormativity

LAW- AND POLICY-MAKERS in New Zealand have taken what might be seen, from a conservative/liberal divide, as two contradictory stances on aspects of border control over the past decade. In one move, they have progressively tightened and whitened immigration policy generally, making the criteria and process for gaining residency more restrictive. At the same time, they have progressively opened the borders in relation to the immigration of same-sex couples, aligning immigration requirements for these couples with those of heterosexual couples. I argue that New Zealand\u27s recent liberalisation of immigration law and policy for gays and lesbians aligns with, rather than contradicts, notions of neoliberal politics, progressive modernity and the current tightening and whitening of immigration