Excess aspirations: Migration and urban futures in post-earthquake Christchurch

Abstract

Migration and urbanisation are characterised by multiple temporalities: arrival, durations of migration, daily rhythms, migration regulation, aspirations for urban futures and the impacts of changing social, economic or environmental fortunes. In this paper, we address the temporalities of migration and urbanisation by focusing on the post-disaster context of Christchurch, New Zealand, which suffered destructive earthquakes in 2011 and 2012. While the immediate post-quake context was characterised by outward migration, rebuilding has occurred through the migration of thousands of workers and their families, particularly from Asia, Europe and the Pacific. The presence of new migrants has led to unexpected migrant-driven diversification that has potential to reconfigure Christchurch’s image as a city that privileges whiteness over Indigenous and non-white settler identities. The migration of rebuild workers, however, also occurs in a national context of increasingly stratified migration management with few opportunities for migrants to settle long-term. Drawing on interviews with stakeholders in central government, local organisations and migrants themselves we examine countervailing aspirations and responses that emerged within the earthquake rebuild: attempts by local organisations to reconfigure Christchurch as a diverse future-oriented city, migrant aspirations and tactics for long-term settlement and family stability and national government efforts to contain aspirations for a diverse future-oriented city that exceed the intent of migration management. Through this analysis our paper examines the discrepant temporalities of migration and urban futures involved in the rebuilding of post-quake Christchurch, as well as the multiple forces that impinge on the very possibility of migrant-led diversification of cities.