Engaging with New Zealand's Recognized Seasonal Employer Work Policy: The Case of Tuvalu

Abstract

New Zealand's Recognized Seasonal Employer (RSE) work policy is a managed circular migration initiative that is designed to provide benefits to employers in New Zealand's horticulture and viticulture industries, workers from Pacific states that have limited opportunities for wage-earning employment in their own countries, and the communities that the workers leave temporarily for work in New Zealand. Tuvalu is one of five Pacific countries where the New Zealand Department of Labour has been facilitating participation in the RSE scheme since the policy was formally introduced in April 2007. Tuvalu is by far the smallest of the participating countries, with a population aged 15–49 years of around 4,600 in 2008. It is the Pacific country where the RSE scheme could potentially make the greatest difference to provision of temporary wage employment for the country's labor force. However, there is little evidence to date that Tuvalians, despite their extensive experience of overseas labor migration, have maximized the potential for temporary work that the scheme offers. This previous experience is examined briefly, followed by a discussion of the terms under which Tuvalu has agreed to participate in the RSE scheme, with reference to the Inter-Agency Understanding (IAU) signed by New Zealand's Department of Labour and Tuvalu's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Labour. The first two years of Tuvalu's involvement in the program are then examined, drawing on information obtained during field work in Tuvalu in January 2008, January 2009 and April 2010, with particular reference to the perspectives of the different stakeholders involved. We suggest some ways of improving Tuvaluan participation in the RSE work policy at a time when the country's engagement in the scheme appears to be at risk.

Unilateral Facilitation Does Not Raise International Labor Migration from the Philippines

“…2 A wider range of countries have also attempted unilateral policies to ease the barriers preventing their citizens from migrating. For example, several Pacific Island governments such as Tuvalu have provided financing for seasonal workers wishing to migrate abroad (Bedford et al, 2010). A number of countries have made it easier for their citizens to obtain passports; Nepal, for example, decentralized the passport issuance process so that citizens no longer had to travel over mountain ranges to Kathmandu to obtain a passport (McKenzie, 2007).…”

The big smallness of Tuvalu

“…Of course, if they had remained part of the GEIC, as they were in their guise as the Union Islands from 1916 to 1926, then they would comprise a far more central part of this discussion. One imagines they would have sided with Tuvalu in seceding in 1975, but as it is, through the strokes of an administrative pen that first included and then excluded them, they simply illustrate the contingency of colonial history Kiribati, despite a colonial history shared with Tuvalu, lacks the migration links that its former associate has managed to cultivate Bedford, Bedford and Ho, 2010). Though it has mounted an increasingly sophisticated campaign to draw international attention to its situation, Kiribati has yet to achieve the same level of public awareness as Tuvalu and, because it is so much larger, it has the added burden of appearing to be a less tractable problem.…”

Rural Economies in the ‘Age of Migration’: Perspectives from OECD Countries

“…Regionalised approaches to immigration policy involve both temporary and permanent forms of migration. Policies that facilitate temporary immigration into rural regions include seasonal guest worker programmes, like New Zealand's ‘Recognised Seasonal Employer’ Work Policy (Bedford et al, ; Connell, ; Hammond and Connell, ; Spoonley and Bedford, ) and Canada's range of temporary migrant worker programmes (Preibisch, ) and working holiday visas (Hanson and Bell, ). They can also include Australia's Temporary Protection Visa Programme for recognised refugees (Colic‐Peisker and Tilbury, ).…”