Creative Destruction in the New Zealand ‘Diaspora Strategy’

Abstract

In recent years a range of governments and state agencies have shifted from denouncing expatriates as deserters and traitors to celebrating them as heroes and model citizens. One of the trailblazers was Irish president Mary Robinson who, in the early 1990s, broke from precedent by declaring her wish to ‘represent’ the ‘vast community of Irish emigrants’ living beyond her state (Robinson, 1994), pointing out that ‘if we are honest we will acknowledge that those who leave do not always feel cherished’ (Robinson, 1995). Several years later, Mexico’s Vicente Fox drew much attention by overturning the traditional image of Mexican emigrants as pochos who have abandoned their roots, and heralding them as ‘the cultural engine, the permanent ambassadors of Mexican culture’ (Martinez-Saldana, 2003: 34). Robinson and Fox were by no means alone: around the turn of the millennium it suddenly seemed almost as if states had decided in unison to cast aside habitual suspicions of ‘their’ diasporas, and take a more upbeat approach.