From Immigrant to Overstayer

Abstract

During the late 1970s, thousands of—in many cases legal—Samoan immigrants were systematically evicted from New Zealand shores. Today, however, “Samoans” are an integral part of New Zealand's national rugby team, the All Blacks. Although this may, perhaps, be interpreted as evidence of a more progressive racial climate in contemporary New Zealand, this article argues that the All Blacks, in fact, serve to obfuscate the cultural politics of race and nation embodied in, and played out through, the game of rugby. In particular, the article examines the parallels of the exploitation of Samoan industrial and athletic labor, how the public discourses that surround players of Samoan descent raise increasingly complex questions of national eligibility and allegiance, and finally how newdiasporic affiliations such as the Pacific Islanders rugby team may provide an opportunity to build on an emergent “Black Pacific” culture that transcends the boundaries of nationality and nationalism.