‘After all,I am partly Māori,partly Dalmatian,but first of all I am a New Zealander’

Abstract

This article explores the complexity of the processes of identity construction for ‘mixed-race’ individuals in New Zealand. It focuses on two life stories told by Māori-Croatian women in order to analyse how individuals of Māori-Croatian background constitute their own identity within the heterogeneous discursive practices (race, ethnicity, gender, class, nation) that have operated in New Zealand from colonial times to the bicultural New Zealand of the present. Experience of the hybridization of identity is placed within a framework of power relationships and the varieties of social struggles which help to constitute it from below.