Kia ora, talofa lava, greetings! New Zealand Sociology (NZS) is an independent, open access, peer-reviewed journal published by the Sociological Association of Aotearoa New Zealand (SAANZ). NZS provides a place-based, independent, and supportive forum for sociological scholarship that speaks to Aotearoa New Zealand and the wider Pacific region. It aims to foster critical engagement with contemporary sociological debates and practice, while supporting sociological community, dialogue, and public relevance. NZS welcomes empirical, theoretical, comparative, historical, and policy-oriented contributions. We publish original research articles using qualitative and quantitative methods, as well as articles that advance sociological theory, research notes, and commentaries on timely issues. We also encourage dialogue through responses and debate-style contributions, and we invite book reviews. Reflecting the journal’s location and responsibilities, NZS is committed to improving equity in representation and access, including actively supporting M?ori and Pacific scholarship. We welcome proposals for special issues and special sections, particularly those that broaden participation and advance inclusive, culturally responsive sociological scholarship. The editors welcome submissions of article manuscripts all year round. Please go to ‘Submissions' or 'Make a submission’ to access the online submission portal.
Sociological Association of Aotearoa New Zealand
Iceland, J., Silver, E., & Redstone, I. (2023). Why We Disagree about Inequality. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 208. ISBN: 9781509557141.
Copyright (c) 2026 Valentine Ibeka https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Bourdieu, P. (2023). Politics and Sociology. Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 293. ISBN: 9781509526727.
“Invest your lunch money and feed your future”: Micro-investing apps, consumer responsibilisation and the frontiers of ‘asset-fare’
Digital ‘micro-investing’ platforms have gone from fringe to mainstream within a decade. Focusing on Sharesies, a popular New Zealand-based digital app, this paper examines the construction of the ‘micro-investor’. It makes three main contributions. First, the paper responds to an absence of critical analysis of micro-investing in consumer finance literature. Second, informed by calls to examine ‘downstream’ or specific market contexts of consumer responsibilisation, the paper shows how the construction of the micro-investor happens through discursive–technological work to shape understandings of the nature and benefits of micro-investing, as well as material–technological work to build attentive habits or routines among micro-investing app users. Finally, foregrounding the often under-acknowledged importance of asset acquisition and appreciation to consumer responsibilisation, the paper argues that micro-investment platforms operate at the expansionary frontier of asset-fare regimes.
Copyright (c) 2026 Tom Baker, Nicholas Webber, Ryan Jones, Laurence Murphy https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Rethinking transformative managed retreat: A sociological perspective
Transformative adaptation calls for fundamental changes to social-ecological systems in response to climate change and increasing disaster risks, with an emphasis on addressing underlying social inequalities. Managed retreat is often framed as a transformative adaptation strategy. However, despite its conceptual prominence, transformative adaptation remains under-theorised and insufficiently applied to managed retreat. While existing literature on transformative managed retreat focuses on socioecological dimensions that underpin key concerns such as justice, participation, community wellbeing and environmental restoration, the development of climate adaptation theory has been critiqued for its relative isolation from broader social science scholarship. This disciplinary disconnect is problematic, contributing to limited engagement with the social, political and cultural processes that shape how people perceive, respond to and experience managed retreat. This paper aims to fill these gaps by critically examining the concept through a sociological lens. In particular, we challenge static or essentialist notions of community, explore how power and privilege shape mobility and immobility, and interrogate the root causes of vulnerability deeply embedded in adaptation processes. By reframing managed retreat as a deeply social, cultural and political process, this paper advances a more grounded and justice-oriented conceptualisation¾one that better supports equitable adaptation outcomes in both research and practice.
Copyright (c) 2026 Amy Allen, Shinya Uekusa, Bronwyn Hayward , Lindsey Te Ata o Tu MacDonald https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
“This impacts women more than men”: The (in)direct relationship of gender and medical registration for international medical graduates (IMGs) in Aotearoa New Zealand
This paper explores the gendered dimensions of medical licensing for international medical graduates (IMGs) in Aotearoa New Zealand. Using an exploratory sequential mixed methods approach, the research draws on 24 interviews with IMGs and 9 local experts, alongside an online questionnaire of 80 IMGs, to analyse disparities in licensing experiences and professional outcomes. While only 38% of questionnaire respondents who identified as women had achieved medical registration, 80% of men were licensed. Despite these disparities, the majority of participants did not explicitly perceive gender as a barrier, highlighting the indirect and often unacknowledged nature of gendered disadvantages. Women, particularly those who migrated as spouses, frequently delayed their medical licensing process due to caregiving responsibilities and inflexible registration requirements. Applying a capabilities approach to mobility justice, this paper argues that medical registration policies in Aotearoa New Zealand inadvertently reproduce gendered and racialised inequalities by privileging IMGs from high-income, Global North countries while overlooking the constraints faced by caregivers and those trained in the Global South. More equitable licensing processes would consider alternative pathways for those with career interruptions, greater flexibility in recent clinical experience requirements, and mechanisms to address structural biases in eligibility criteria.
Copyright (c) 2026 Johanna Thomas-Maude https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
“Am I obligated to help?”: Emotions in the transnational enactment of Filipino family obligation and utang na loób in remittance-sending
Much of what sociologists know about family obligation is derived from literature based on western populations and using a western lens, such as the study of Finch and Mason (1991, 1993). Although of some relevance to non-western families and individuals, this literature has limited utility when it comes to understanding the experiences of Filipinos and other migrants who emanate from collectivist cultures. To explore this gap in the literature, this article examines the remittance-sending practices of Filipino migrants in New Zealand to show how their ‘doing of family’ (Morgan, 2011) continues to be governed by traditional norms of family obligation from the home country. While the transnational context within which Filipino migrants do family affords the re-working of understandings of family and family obligation across spatial and temporal divisions (Yeoh, Huang & Lam, 2005), in this paper, we demonstrate that such re-workings are constrained by deeply ingrained Filipino cultural and family norms and the effects of governing emotions, like love, shame and guilt.
Copyright (c) 2026 Genevieve Grava, Vivienne Elizabeth, Moeata Keil https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
PhD Thesis Summaries 2025. This section showcases recently completed PhD theses in sociology and associated disciplines in Aotearoa New Zealand. Oliver Jules Birch, Joshua James, Roshana Kamran Ali, Kalym Lipsey, Brittany Palatchie, Dani Pickering, Emmy Rākete, Swakshadip Sarkar & Hafsa Tameez
Copyright (c) 2025 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Lauer, M. (2023). Sensing Disaster: Local Knowledge and Vulnerability in Oceania. University of California Press, 292 pages, ISBN 9780520392052
Copyright (c) 2025 Sultan Ahmed https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Copyright (c) 2025 Steve Matthewman https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Butler, J. (2024). Who’s Afraid of Gender? Allen Lane, 308 pp, ISBN: 0241595827
Copyright (c) 2025 Rebekah Galbraith https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
In a context of rising global fascism, Aotearoa/New Zealand has seen an emboldened far-right, led by the anti-queer Destiny Church. Writing as a collective of queer and trans scholars and activists, this article explores two case studies of anti-fascist organising, in response to Destiny Church’s attacks on queer communities and symbols in 2024 and 2025. It proposes a theory of anti-fascism based on mass politics. It analyses a barrier to this mass politics: safetyism. Safetyism refers to a politics that prioritises the immediate safety of protesters over the struggle for liberation and against fascism. The first case study, an attempted National Day of Action in 2024, was ultimately undone by safetyist logics. The article draws the key lessons from these experiences, including how time, structure and attempts at consensus can facilitate safetyist arguments. In the second case study, the article analyses how a different approach was taken to organise ‘Defying Destiny’. This approach attempted to pre-empt safetyism by relying on strong pre-existing relationships and organisational forms. Ultimately, the article contends that we need to combat safetyism, to build the anti-fascist movement to meet our current moment.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ti Lamusse, Emmy Rakete, Will Hansen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
The Tranz Liberation Framework was developed in response to the discourse in Aotearoa/New Zealand during the Posie Parker visit in March 2023. Although there was overwhelming support for trans folks, it did not translate into improved conditions for the community. The framework takes Nancy Fraser’s theory of justice and explains the specific aspects of life that need to change in order for transgender and non-binary people to be equal members of society. It includes three pillars that are required for acceptance of transgender and non-binary people within wider society: protection, access and recognition. The framework can be applied by a range of different groups to fight for a world where transgender and non-binary people have the same opportunities to participate in society as cis people experience, while being able to live as their authentic selves. Please note this article contains the author’s personal views in their personal capacity.
Copyright (c) 2025 Charles Henry https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Cisheteronormativity and the Court: A Queer Criminological Approach
This article explores the experiences of takatāpui/LGBTQ+/queer people within Aotearoa/New Zealand’s courts, as defendants, victims and lawyers. Within this qualitative study, participants share stories filled with various challenges, including fears about engaging with the justice system, how gender and sexuality can affect a court case, and what support is available to takatāpui/LGBTQ+/queer people accessing justice. Underpinned by a queer criminological perspective, this article interrogates the latent, structural nature of cisheteronormativity as a form of harm, with particular consideration of its implications for access to justice in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Collectively, the findings of this study underscore the challenges faced by takatāpui/LGBTQ+/queer people when navigating the criminal justice system, particularly within the District Court of New Zealand.
Aotearoa/New Zealand criminal justice system
Copyright (c) 2025 Robert Sewell, Ti Lamusse, Fiona Hutton https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Pursuing Reproductive Justice for Rainbow People in Aotearoa/New Zealand through Research: Insights from the Field
Rainbow people experience unique challenges to equitable reproductive healthcare access and outcomes, resulting from entrenched norms and assumptions embedded in health services that anticipate, legitimise and privilege (White and able-bodied) cisgender, heterosexual women as the users of these services. This article presents a discussion of two recent Aotearoa/New Zealand research projects that have identified and addressed the effects of such norms and assumptions across two reproductive healthcare spaces: perinatal care and abortion care. The operation of cisheteronormativity within these services is explored through a reproductive justice lens that directs our attention to the broader power relations and social structures that shape and determine people’s control of their reproductive destinies. The need to address cisheteronormativity and its intersectional entanglement with other oppressive power relations, such as colonisation and racism, to secure Rainbow people’s reproductive self-determination is affirmed.
Copyright (c) 2025 George Parker, Chelsea R. D’Cruz https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Taking Comfort in the Binary: Examining Language, Gender and Sexuality in a Sports Organisation
Sport, like any social institution, plays a key role in shaping society. It has thus been a focus across many disciplines, including sociology and linguistics amongst others. Previous findings indicate a noticeable exclusion of the Rainbow community, with instances of homophobia, sexism and transphobia reported as widespread in most sporting contexts. To redress these recognised issues, sports organisations, as institutional guides in their respective codes, are increasingly expected to promote social inclusion by creating and enforcing diversity and inclusion policies and through leading by example in their own practices. As a sociolinguistic researcher, I investigate these everyday organisational practices through the lens of language, gender and sexuality. Using approaches from linguistic ethnography, in particular those developed by the Language in the Workplace Project, this research examines how wider social discourses are reproduced in a sports organisation. Working with a regional sports organisation in New Zealand over a period of five months, the analysis draws on a data set comprised of ethnographic field notes, workplace documents, and around 25 hours of audio-visual recordings of naturally occurring workplace interactions (e.g., office small talk and team meetings) alongside follow-up interviews with participants. By analysing talk in this setting, and by investigating interaction between society and language more broadly, we gain deeper understanding of how, and potentially why, discourses of transphobia, homophobia and sexism remain prevalent. The findings suggest that while the cooperating organisation makes a public commitment to inclusion in sport (e.g., by developing policies, publishing guidelines that emphasise inclusion, and investing in various inclusion initiatives), in their daily work practices they often revert to binary thinking in regard to gender, sex and sexuality identities. This leads to recurring discourses of exclusion and repeated microaggressions within the workplace, such as presupposing heterosexual relationship structures and using assumed pronouns. Despite talking the talk, this particular organisation is taking a few stumbles when trying to walk the walk.
Copyright (c) 2025 Stephanie Foxton https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Trans Film and Theatre in Practice: Emerging Artists in Aotearoa Speak to Industrial Challenges and Opportunities
This article summarises discussion points raised at a recent Rainbow Studies panel between trans scholars and creatives from across Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. In discussing their work in various local film and theatre projects, trans creatives Jules Daniels, Seren Ashmore and Willem Koller—in a discussion led by Missy Molloy and Paige Macintosh—shed light on the industrial realities, opportunities and challenges that inform contemporary trans film and theatre in Aotearoa. What trends do these creatives see in emerging local trans media and what do they consider critical to contemporary depictions of gender diversity? How do their trans and genderqueer identities impact their creative practice? And what might their experiences reveal about a nascent trans culture in Aotearoa?
Copyright (c) 2025 Paige Macintosh https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Folding in Performativity: The Utilisation of Western Gendered Theory for Māori Gendered Reality
Judith Butler’s influential work on gender performativity has been praised for cutting to the heart of the formation and deployment of gender in the modern world, but its academic popularity has been accompanied by critiques on its applicability to discourses of race and Indigenous perspectives. The article proposes a Māori theory of gender that draws on local contexts and challenges some of Butler’s more universalist, Western notions, not necessarily discounting performativity, but treading around its more Eurocentric elements. While performativity offers valuable insights into the function and purpose of gender, it must evolve beyond theoretical abstraction to address material and ontological realities, especially concerning Indigenous communities’ experiences with colonialism. This article advocates for Indigenous-led gender theories that take performativity further, to embrace community-aligned research that focuses on the impact, practice and politics of gender in New Zealand.
Copyright (c) 2025 Maia Berryman-Kamp https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
What Homophobic Thinking Looks Like: Insights from New Zealand’s Homosexual Law Reform Debates of the Late 20th Century
“… wide range of homosexual manifestations … effeminate attitude, a mincing walk, the typical fairy … at the other extreme are the sodomites, and I do not believe that the majority of New Zealanders wish to be forced by law to accept a sodomite into houses that they own or even into their workplaces. …” Hon. Peter Tapsell (HRAB, 2R, NZPD, 27 July 1993) [voted against] This excerpt from a well-known and widely respected parliamentarian is indicative of deeply entrenched homonegative attitudes that were not unusual for the time—in fact, an accurate reflection of the mindset of many individuals throughout Aotearoa/New Zealand. In this article, I examine the Hansard transcripts of the New Zealand parliamentary debates around three parliamentary Bills: the Crimes Amendment Bill of 1974/75, the Homosexual Law Reform Bill of 1985/1986, and the Human Rights Amendment Bill (HRAB) of 1992/1993. From our contemporary vantage point, it is strange to reflect on a period when homonegative sentiments were so easily articulated, so diverse in content, and so seemingly correct in the mind of those who uttered them. The passage of time helps us to overlook much of what has happened in the past, but when we choose to focus on particular aspects of historical interest, forgotten details emerge with clarity. My objective in this article is to help us remember—or discover —the sorts of things that were said about ‘our people’ by members of parliament who opposed the legislation. In revisiting twentieth-century parliamentary discourse relating to homosexual law reform, we may find it surprising to apprehend the intensity and pervasiveness of societal homonegativity in Aotearoa/New Zealand last century. Applying the lens of Systemic Functional Linguistics, analysis of the text elucidates a homonegative discourse, with arguments based on ignorance and emotion, rather than logic or empirical evidence. This article contributes to our understanding of historical homonegativity in New Zealand, providing important implications for contemporary perspectives on LGBTQ+ issues.
Copyright (c) 2025 Quentin Allan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Can Universities Be Considered Queer Institutions?
Universities have Queer staff and students and conduct Queer research, so are they Queer institutions themselves? Can universities be ‘safe spaces’ for Rainbow Communities? Unfortunately, there is insufficient data in Aotearoa/New Zealand to be able to conclusively test that, so the historical and contemporary relationships with and treatment and experiences at university of women, Māori and Pacific Peoples are considered as alternatives for those with Rainbow Communities. For each of these marginalised groups, similar patterns of oppression and discrimination present through consistent lack of career progression, pay equity and representation in senior leadership, short-term and precarious employment, harassment and violence, and sidelining into small and out-of-the-way departments and disciplines held in lower validity to ‘traditional’ subjects. However, scholars from these communities are forming their own research and support networks which are inclusive, intersectional and interdisciplinary. Within this framework of bottom-up initiatives, universities could be Queer institutions in the same way that they could be feminist and Indigenous institutions. It is entirely possible—but may involve rebuilding our institutions from the ground up rather than applying a new coat of paint.
Copyright (c) 2025 Scott Pilkington, Tof Eklund https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Ensuring the Family Home: The Responsibilities of Queer Scholarship
This article is an updated synthesis of the opening keynote address presented at the inaugural national Rainbow Research symposium Rainbow Studies NOW: Legacies of Community, on 23 November 2023 at Te Herenga Waka | Victoria University of Wellington. It examines the experience of queer silencing as a cultural phenomenon and a condition within and beyond the academy. After considering an example of self-selective silencing within New Zealand’s queer history that caused us to lose our subcultural language, it examines instances of repressing queer research both nationally and internationally. Such silencing has included arson attacks on queer archives and the practice of banning queer literature. The article then considers the design and development of Ia~, a research dissemination portal recently launched at Te Wānanga Aronui o Tāmaki Makau Rau | Auckland University of Technology. It argues that such initiatives constitute an act of resistance against queer invisibility. The importance of such projects lies in meeting the requirements of New Zealand’s Education and Training Act 2020 and in countering national and global acts of suppression that continue to target the generation and dissemination of queer research.
Copyright (c) 2025 Welby Ings https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Queer in Aotearoa/New Zealand: Research, Theory, and Practice
Copyright (c) 2025 Rebekah Galbraith, Ti Lamusse https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Flak on the Frontline: How dissent was suppressed in early-neoliberal Aotearoa
In April 1990, an episode of the Television New Zealand current affairs programme Frontline which criticised the fourth Labour government's close relationship with big business became the centre of an extraordinary scandal. Its makers were the target of fierce flak, as TVNZ was sued by the incumbent Prime Minister and three other Cabinet ministers, whilst the Broadcasting Standards Authority upheld complaints made by the Treasury and the New Zealand Business Roundtable. This article considers this episode to be a critical and overlooked flashpoint in the history of neoliberalism in Aotearoa, as it demonstrates how contestation in the media was a crucial ideological dimension of class struggle during the inception of the neoliberal regime. Using a Marxist and political economic theoretical framework, this article details how the early proponents of neoliberal reform marginalised dissent. It also outlines how a Marxist approach is needed in order to produce a more systematic critique of government-business relations, as the programme’s relatively unsophisticated analysis made it an easier target for the backlash it received.
Copyright (c) 2026 Barnaby Watts https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
“We all need to work together on this”: Collectivised approaches to care in Pacific post-separation families
Parental separation has become a common occurrence across the Anglo-West, including New Zealand where this study is based. Much of the literature on post-separation care of children relies on nuclearised understandings of family, focusing on how separated parents care for children and experience post-separation family life. There is limited research on the experience of caring for children in collectivist cultures, including Pacific cultures. Collectivist cultures often adhere to extended family structures and hold communally based understandings of care. In such contexts, caring for children both pre- and post-separation often involves children moving, living and being cared for across multiple households and family members, including their parents, grandmothers, grandfathers, and other family members. Yet, there is a dearth of literature that examines how culturally distinctive modes of doing family that vary across culture and context impacts on how and by whom children are cared for following separation. Drawing on talanoa with 30 Pacific family members involved in children’s everyday post-separation care, this paper examines the actions that Pacific family members undertook to manage and mitigate the challenges experienced by children and parents in post-separation families. In pursuing this inquiry, I pay special attention to how collectivised approaches to caring for children translate into practice, shaping how children are cared for following separation and the meanings that family members attach to their care.
Copyright (c) 2026 Moeata Keil https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Tseris, E., Hart, E. B., & Franks, S. (2024). Psychiatric Oppression in Women's Lives: Creative Resistance and Collective Dissent. Palgrave Macmillan Cham, 228 pages, ISBN 978-3-031-65067-3
Copyright (c) 2025 Sarah Morrison https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Sustaining Anti-Hindutva Activism in Aotearoa: Strategies, Challenges and Way Forward
In this paper, I will discuss how Hindutva operates in a small country like Aotearoa New Zealand, through various socio-cultural and religious organizations. The fieldwork for this paper is a part of my larger doctoral research that focuses on anti-Hindutva activism in Aotearoa. The study relies on ethnographic fieldwork and semi-structured interviews to understand the presence of Hindutva and anti-Hindutva activism in the country. I engaged in ethnographic fieldwork and conducted semi-structured with around ten anti-Hindutva activists. Compared to the copious work on Hindutva in the diaspora in other multicultural countries, there is comparatively less literature on the presence of Hindutva in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and even less on the organizations that work to challenge Hindutva in diasporic spaces. In the US and UK context, the progressive literature that challenges Hindutva has focused on sustaining Dalit activism (ACDA, 2009), exposing the organization and scope of Hindutva activities abroad (Sabrang and South Asian Citizen Web, 2002), and protests against welcoming Modi in other countries (Mandavilli and Swamy, 2019), raising awareness and understanding about Hindutva ideology beyond the South Asian diasporic spaces (Narayanan, 2015). Such literature is particularly sparse in the New Zealand context. Dutta (2021) has done some excellent work on the rise of Hindutva in Aotearoa through Hindu cultural and religious organisations; however, it does not focus on the practices of activist organisations in the Indian diasporic communities. As such, this paper will make a valuable and timely contribution by exposing the veiled presence of Hindutva in Aotearoa and then looking at the anti-Hindutva activism that challenges Hindutva in New Zealand. In this paper, I will discuss the methods, challenges, and aspirations of one such organisation called the Aotearoa Alliance of Progressive Indians (AAPI) operating in New Zealand. It has become one of the most prominent organisations (and perhaps the only one in the country) that exclusively focuses on the rise of Hindutva in India and the diaspora.
Aotearoa Alliance of Progressive Indians
Copyright (c) 2025 Sneha Singh https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Built Beyond American Borders: Comparing the Construction and Maintenance of the School-to-Prison Pipeline in the United States and New Zealand
The school-to-prison pipeline (STPP) is the process by which children of colour are disproportionately funnelled from education institutions into the criminal justice system. This article investigates how the STPP was developed through unfolding systems of oppression in both the United States and New Zealand. Harsh disciplinary measures and zero tolerance policies were implemented in both countries, facilitating a rise in exclusionary discipline for minority youth. Compounded by negative police contact, state care involvement, and structural inequality, children who face disciplinary measures in school are significantly more likely to become justice involved. The analysis presented here displays how minority children in the United States and New Zealand experience long-lasting detrimental outcomes due to the systemic racism and ongoing oppression embedded within education systems in both countries. By uncovering the underlying contributors to the pipeline, options to dismantle it can be explored.
Copyright (c) 2025 Emily Beck https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Recrafting career selves: International relocation and accompanying partners
This article examines the experiences of 21 women and men in dual career couples whose intimate partners relocated to Aotearoa/New Zealand for professional and managerial work. It investigates the challenges they encountered, the strategies they adopted and the impacts of international relocation. Thematic analysis, utilising NVivo software, enabled the coding of interview material to identify trends in the accompanying partners’ narratives. The research was informed by theorising about the recrafting of selves, especially career selves, and intersections of governmentality and participants’ perceptions of agency during the transition to life in a new country. As transnational mobility of highly qualified women employees intensifies, this investigation extends literature about the experiences of accompanying partners, the complexity of contemporary gendered practices and the sense making of those involved in international relocation.
Copyright (c) 2025 Mohini Vidwans, Rosemary Du Plessis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Precarious Habitus: Insights from working and living precariously in Auckland, New Zealand
The following article introduces a new concept of precarious habitus. Based on workers-centred responses from the qualitative research on work and precarity, situated in Auckland, New Zealand, the paper focuses on a relationship between precarious work and precarious life that creates the state of precarity – a mode of domination and structural marginalisation on the one hand, and a broader existential condition of uncertainty and social vulnerability on the other. The article reveals both structural constraints that precarious workers, particularly the Māori precariat and migrant workers, face on a daily basis, and the making of certain social dispositions that workers internalise in order to get by. The paper emphasises three dimensions of precarity that create precarious habitus: structural constraints of precarious work; the making of precarious habitus in relation to migrant worker exploitation and marginalisation; and the price of escaping precarity by adopting certain social dispositions.
Copyright (c) 2025 Marko Galic https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0
Depression, Capitalism, and Radical Care
This article discusses depression as inherent to current western society, framing it as both a reaction to and a construct of late capitalism and neoliberal ideology. I expand upon Mark Fisher’s calls to depoliticise depression, drawing on Marxist, critical mental health, and anti-psychiatry scholars. It is theorised that depression, as defined and treated by the psy-professions, was created to further a neoliberal agenda. Sadness, or the lived experience of depression, is a deeply political phenomena that cannot be reduced to an individualised ‘disorder’. However, the undeniable lived experiences of ‘depression’ demand care. This article explores alternatives to psychiatric ‘treatment’, finding glimmers of hope in notions of radical therapy, or even more so in the calls for abolition of psychiatric hegemony and the establishment of radical forms of caring.
Sentencing the ‘Psychopath’: How Labelling Affects Judges’ Decision Making in Aotearoa/New Zealand
Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) and psychopathy are constructs that are associated with ideas of dangerousness and criminality. Current international literature suggests that these labels may have an adverse effect on criminal justice outcomes for offenders, including harsher sentences and a higher likelihood of being civilly detained. This study is the first to be undertaken on ASPD, psychopathy and judicial decision-making in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The research was executed through the extraction of judicial decisions (for the period 2003–2022) from the Judicial Decisions Online database, which resulted in the identification of 87 cases which mentioned either or both labels, and 265 cases where both labels were absent. Comparative analysis of similar cases found a significant difference in the average length of sentence imposed on offenders, with those without a label receiving a sentence of 81.4 months compared to those labelled receiving a sentence of 135.8 months. It is concluded that the use of ASPD and/or psychopathy within the Aotearoa/New Zealand criminal justice system is deeply problematic; offenders are subject to more punitive sentences due to diagnostic classifications of spurious efficacy and based on the idea of future dangerousness—a construct that cannot be adequately predicted.
Copyright (c) 2025 Gayle Jones, Bruce Cohen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0