Situated meaning frameworks in ethnic policy communities: translating ‘engagement’ in Aotearoa/New Zealand

Abstract

Recent government-initiated efforts to foster an inclusive New Zealand society have focused on engaging minority ethnic groups in policymaking processes. Research suggests that the outcomes of participation are paradoxical; while they can be empowering, they can simultaneously regulate marginal groups. This paper examines the contradictions of participation through an analysis of the meaning-frameworks that policy actors bring to the process of engagement, and their translation into shared and divergent understandings of inclusionary outcomes. Based on interview data from six categories of policy actors, the paper initially sketches first-order ‘dialogical’ meanings reflecting particular institutional locations. We then map these meanings as ‘second-order’ articulations of social justice discourses that interpret inclusion either as surface accommodations of cultural difference or a process that requires deeper social and political transformations. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of pluralistic, if antagonistic, meanings for engagement in multicultural policy settings, and of the conditions that promote vibrant dialogue.