The Māori precariat: Excerpts from urban ethnography on precarity in Auckland city

Abstract

The article focuses on the everyday struggles of the Māori precariat in Auckland City. As an excerpt from urban ethnography on lived precarity in Auckland, New Zealand, it reveals structural constraints that Māori face on a daily basis. This includes unemployment, precarious work, poverty and precarious housing. Understanding precarity as a mode of domination, the article first looks at the history of Māori precarity that is strongly bound to colonialism and structural violence. Ethnographically, the article presents two Māori couples who are struggling with various dimensions of precarity such as intergenerational trauma, violence continuum and the accumulation of disadvantage. Being in survival mode, they seek ways how to cope with everyday struggles and trauma. The reader then visits the infamous K Road where two artists explain their experience of precarity. Finally, the ethnographic record reveals the everyday struggles of young Māori students, working up to three jobs to get by.

Living in precarity: An introduction to the Māori precariat

Since the British colonisation of Aotearoa New Zealand, the history of Māori has been marked by a struggle. Structured dispossession created a systemic condition of social vulnerability that put Māori communities onto the road of precarity and structural marginalisation (Poata-Smith, 2013; Walker, 1990). From the nineteenth century’s colonial violence to the contemporary era of neoliberalism, Māori have experienced a particular mode of precarity, characterised by relations of domination, inequality and the accumulation of disadvantage (Uerata, 2021; Wynyard 2017). This article explores Māori lived experiences of inequality within the framing of the precariat in contemporary urban milieu, emphasising the making of Māori precarity and the existence of the Māori precariat as such.

Today, Māori are overrepresented in precarious work – a waged work that exhibits income, employment or work insecurity – and social harms associated with it (Uerata, 2021). This is particularly evident in urban settings where past and present research indicate that, for Māori, the city is often felt to be an alien and colonised place (Gagné, 2004: 78; Curcic, 2019: 125). This experience does not refer primarily to the disconnection with traditional kinship structures (many urban Māori know their iwi-tribe genealogy and they might have a support network from extended family), but to everyday struggles and structural constraints that they face on a daily basis. These are both socio-economic and sociocultural, ranging from educational deprivation, racial profiling, discrimination and targeted criminalisation (McIntosh and Curcic, 2020), to neoliberal commodification, work precarisation and conditional social welfare (Hodgetts et al., 2017). According to the statistical silhouette on the Māori precariat that includes temporary workers, the jobless, the beneficiaries and the incarcerated, Māori are disproportionately represented in marginalised communities and negative statistics in relation to poverty, mental health, addictions and crime (NZCTU, 2013, 24). One in every four Māori is in the precariat (the most vulnerable strata of population living in precarity) compared to one in every six non-Māori (Stubbs et al., 2017: 117). The Māori unemployment rate is two to three times higher than the unemployment rate for Pākehā or New Zealanders of British/European origin (Statistics NZ, 2024). Māori poverty and suicide rates are twice as high compared to non-Māori (Shahtahmasebi and Cassidy, 2014), while Māori are also six times more likely to be imprisoned than Pākehā (Workman, 2017: 102). These social harms are further accompanied by ideological strategies of exclusion where racial discrimination and profiling become coded as ‘racial bias’ (instead of racism), and where stereotypes that habitually represent Māori as dole bludgers, gang members and criminals continue to be present in both mainstream media and everyday settings (Deckert et al., 2023; Mikaere, 2011).

The core purpose of this article is to illuminate everyday struggles and structural constraints of living in precarity that systematically create and reproduce the Māori precariat. Because most Māori live in urban areas, Auckland – the largest city in New Zealand – appears as important ethnographic setting in studying precarity in urban milieu. Following both Indigenous and sociological-anthropological premises of analysing the past in order to understand the present, we first look at the history of Māori precarity in New Zealand, examining how settler-colonialism and capitalism created the Māori precariat. After the section on research methods the article focuses on lived experience of precarity in Auckland Central, emphasising structural constraints of (urban) precarity and the making of social dispositions that interpellate Māori precariat into the process of internalising a state of insecurity and uncertainty.

The making of the Māori precariat: From colonialism to neoliberal dispossession

Precarity is a term that encompasses more than just precarious work. Whereas precarious work suggests inadequate working conditions and employment relations characterised by various forms of insecurity and uncertainty (Neilson and Rossiter, 2008: 52; Waite, 2009: 416; Casas-Cortés, 2014: 212), precarity is a much broader concept that signifies relations of domination and social control. According to Isabell Lorey, precarity “designates conditions of legal, political, economic and social inequality: hierarchizing categorizations, structural discrimination, belonging and exclusion. In short: precarity designates the conditions of domination that are divided up and distributed through protection, care, and safeguarding” (Lorey, 2017: 200). Pierre Bourdieu (1998: 85) understands precarity as a broader existential condition of social vulnerability that results from the structural process of precarisation, signifying a mode of domination based on the creation of a generalised and permanent state of insecurity. Precarity therefore serves “both as a basis of capitalist accumulation and social regulation” (Lorey, 2015: 1), ensuing the making of a pauperised sub-proletariat or precariat (Bourdieu, 1998: 83; Standing, 2011: 10).

One of the main characteristics of the history of precarity in capitalist and settler societies is that it disproportionately affects women, migrants, Indigenous communities and people of colour (Anderson, 2010: 300; ILO, 2016: 18). Historically, colonised peoples were first to experience a systematic imposition of precarity as a mode of domination and social control (Lorey, 2015: 22). Such examples included slavery (in certain contexts); material dispossession through large-scale confiscation where Indigenous lands became a source of capitalist wealth (Ropata and Grimes, 2022); and forced proletarianization, meaning a process of transforming peasants in self-sufficient communities into dispossessed workers who must sell their labour to owners of the means of production in order to survive (McIntyre, 2011; Wynyard, 2017). Considering capitalism as a mode of accumulation (Braudel, 1981: 230; Arrighi and Moore, 2001: 57) and colonialism as the structure of dispossession (Coulthard, 2014: 7), settler-colonialism created unequal capitalist societies based on strong division between settlers (consisting both elites and workers from colonial centres) and the precariat – marginalised Indigenous peoples and migrant workers (Quijano, 2000: 536). In political economy, this was also noted by Marx who analysed division between the primary and the secondary labour force (the relative surplus population), with the latter being systematically relegated into precarious work and life (Marx, 1976: 786–792). This division within the working class served both as the means to maximise profits (the extreme exploitation of the precariat) and the strategy of social control where the primary labour force (settlers) had interests in securing its position based on economic, political and cultural privileges in relation to dispossessed Indigenous peoples and non-European migrants (Quijano, 2000). In New Zealand, the making of the precariat appeared in relation to Māori who were seen either as a surplus-producing (precarious) labour force or an obstacle to the emerging capitalist state (Tauri, 2014: 22). ¹

Nevertheless, throughout colonial and neocolonial era, New Zealand built a reputation of being one of the richest, peaceful and most successful countries in the world. Being labelled as heaven on earth or Godzone (Mitchell, 1972) and “a glorious country for the labouring man” (Steven, 1989: 28), New Zealand adopted the so-called ‘egalitarian myth’: an image of a kind-hearted liberal democracy where every worker who works hard can succeed and live a very good life, and where social relations between settlers and Indigenous people flourish (Jackson, 2004; McAloon, 2004). Former prime minister John Key, for example, famously stated: “In my view New Zealand was one of the very few countries in the world that were settled peacefully. Māori probably acknowledge that settlers had a place to play and brought with them a lot of skills and a lot of capital” (as cited in Wynyard, 2017: 13).

However, according to Māori scholars Ranginui Walker (1990), Moana Jackson (2004), Ani Mikaere (2011), Poata-Smith (2013), Tauri (2014) and Wynyard (2017), this remarkable image has been carrying another, often unacknowledged part of the story: first, the history of colonialism or the structure of dispossession, based on expropriation of Māori land and structural violence that established the political, economic and cultural dominance of white settlers over the Indigenous peoples of Aotearoa New Zealand (the making of the Māori precariat); second, the ignorance of many New Zealanders over the oppression of Māori throughout the twentieth century (processes of forced proletarianization, urbanisation and assimilation that strengthened the cycle of precarity); and third, the conditions that enabled the contemporary neoliberal attack on workers and ‘undeserved poor’, particularly from Māori, Pasifika (Pacific Island) and migrant communities.

For white settlers or Pākehā, removed from Britain’s class system, New Zealand’s labour shortage enabled greater social mobility. Between 1840s (the beginning of a mass colonial settlement) and 1970s, many British workers who settled in New Zealand improved their living conditions, either by higher wages or becoming small business owners (McAloon, 2004: 13–14). However, the making of paradise and the ‘egalitarian myth’ for workers and small business owners was inversely equivalent to the making of precarious reality for Māori:

the settler colonists of Aotearoa wanted only one thing from the Maori people: their disappearance altogether, so that their land could be taken and converted into a source of bourgeois wealth which would provide even wage labourers with a standard of living unknown to that class elsewhere in the world (Steven, 1989: 29).

By disappearance, Steven primarily points to removal of Māori off the land in order to develop an extensive dairy industry, along with placing dispossessed Māori into the realm of capitalism’s surplus labouring population (precarious workers). Be it through the prevalence of odd precarious jobs that they had to do in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in order to survive, or through labour as political prisoners – building roads in the South Island as punishment for their resistance to land confiscation (Bull, 2004: 507), Māori entered the capitalist system as ‘less than working class’ or, as Māori scholars emphasise, the Māori precariat (Masters-Awatere and Tassell-Matamua, 2017: 111).

For almost a century, the making of the Māori precariat was supported by legislation, policy and interventions (Jackson, 1988; Van Meijl, 2020). The New Zealand state legitimised economic, political and cultural dominance of the white settler society through the imposition of British law and legal acts that systematically excluded Māori, both in terms of land confiscation and the repression of political action, language, culture and livelihood (Moewaka Barnes and McCreanor, 2019). With development of Western social institutions and the introduction of private property, Indigenous socio-cultural systems were eventually suppressed in order to open a space for capitalist accumulation and non-precarious life of selected social groups (upper, middle and working-class Pākehā). For example, progressive reforms by the Liberal Government (1891-1912) and successive Labour and National governments that draw an image of a successful and inclusive New Zealand systematically excluded Māori. One of the world’s earliest public pension schemes – the Old Age Pensions Act 1898 – only applied to ‘persons of good character’ (Palmer, 2012), which, at the time of strong racial stereotypes, systematically excluded Aotearoa’s Indigenous peoples. Those Māori who managed to get a pension received only two-thirds of the amount paid to Pākehā (Consedine and Consedine, 2005: 206).

The Native Land Act 1862 enforced commodification and conversion of Māori communally-possessed land into individual private property that could be bought and sold (Mikaere, 2011: 72). The implementation of capitalism through this legal act “necessitated Māori access to capital to pay the rates and taxes being levied on them by the settler society. Māori who did not have access to money often lost their land as payment of debts” (King et al., 2017: 128). Although most Māori lived in rural areas (until the great urban migration after the Second World War), increasing numbers had to rely on precarious work in order to survive, particularly seasonal, casual and public works (Walker, 1990). The Suppression of Rebellion Act (1863) made it legal to punish all Māori who were fighting against land confiscation with the seizure of their land (Poata-Smith, 1997: 173). This included punishment by death or incarceration, marking the beginning of Māori hyper-incarceration (Curcic, 2019; Jackson, 1988). The Native School Act 1867 – which included forced assimilation through the suppression of Māori language and the imposition of colonial social relationships of domination – further institutionalised precarity among Māori (Calman, 2012).

Hence, at the time of the making of a ‘glorious country for the labouring man’, Māori were subjected to colonial plunder and precarisation, along with being subjects of racist imaginaries of primitive and dangerous savages (Wall, 1997: 40–41; Hokowhitu, 2004: 259). The great urban drift after the World War II – when significant proportion of Māori moved to urban areas that offered industrial jobs – further dispossessed Aotearoa’s Indigenous peoples, whereas neoliberal cycle of accumulation by dispossession in 1980s and 1990s resulted in disproportionately high number of Māori unemployment and the rapid increase of precarious work (Bargh, 2007: 31–32). In 1992, the unemployment rate for Māori reached 27.3% (compared to 8% for Pākehā) and by the end of the century, hyper-incarceration and the penal welfare system strengthened the cycle of precarity in Māori communities (Poata-Smith, 2013: 151; Curcic, 2019: 21). According to King et al. (2017: 125–126),

Māori have experienced precariousness since at least the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, when increased European settlement and eventual confiscation of Māori lands resulted in oppressed and marginalised people /…/ For almost two centuries now, colonisation has created what we now term the Māori precariat, populated by whānau [extended families] who not only live with the loss of traditional lands, resources and social structures, but also suffer from insecure work and unemployment, as well as housing and food insecurities.

These structural constraints point to embedded structural violence in New Zealand society. In contemporary neoliberal era, structural violence – the violence produced by institutional structures such as violence of poverty and precarity (Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois, 2004) – coincide with a wider shift from protective welfare to corrective workfare under which any kind of social assistance is made conditional upon the submission to precarious employment (Wacquant, 2012: 72). This signifies a concrete political constellation of re-regulation that bolsters precarity as a political creation, particularly in already marginalised communities. Urban Māori – living in precarity from colonial dispossession onwards – are in contemporary neoliberal era marginalised even further, which has paved the way to the creation (and reproduction) of marginalised urban neighbourhoods, gangs and, consequently, everyday struggles of living ‘in survival mode’ (Galic, 2019).

Methods

For nearly 6 years, I conducted an ethnographic study on the urban precariat in Auckland City, New Zealand, that included semi-structured interviews with precarious workers and the autoethnography of being in the precariat. The former part of the research included 26 testimonies from workers (temporary, part-time, casual and informal) who volunteered to be interviewed after advertisements that were seeking for precarious workers were posted on social media outlets, university campus and two union offices. The latter part of the research – the autoethnography – included my reflection on precarity that I experienced together with my co-workers and neighbours who were mostly unemployed. While semi-structured interviews encompassed non-unionised working-students, unionised precarious workers and those who work informally, the autoethnography reached voices of the unemployed. Because of the overrepresentation of certain social groups in the precariat I ended up interviewing mostly Māori, Pasifika and migrant precarious workers.

The main focus of the interviews was to explore how workers and the unemployed get by, how precarity impacts their everyday lives, what are their struggles and what are their aspirations? I approached the semi-structured interviews through a particular sub-division of grounded theory – the problem-centred interviews (Witzel, 2000). Within this method, the researcher navigates the interview around the main research problem while leaving the space for participants to narrate their own experiences. Contrary to the traditional form of a semi-structured interview where researchers do not express their position, a problem-centred interview encourages a dialogue between the interviewer and interviewee, allowing the interviewer to state their position or experience (Witzel, 2000: 2).

Because I was a precarious worker with deep experience of precarity I approached research participants with a clear position of solidarity and care. I noticed that my combined outsider status as a non-New Zealander and insider status as a precarious worker resulted in forging a very good rapport with interviewees. Interview dialogues that lasted around 2 hours often led to mutual respect and solidarity. However, I was careful not to be suggestive. This trust sometimes led to a snowballing effect when participants suggested another precarious worker they knew (this is how I met Michael who appears in this article). Three participants also requested that I carry their voices forward: “Do something for us! Be our voice, because the majority of us don’t have a voice”, said Penina, one of research participants.

A thematic analysis was used to identify common dimensions of precarity experienced by interviewees. It was at this stage where the topic of Māori precarity became independent from common dimensions of precarity shared by Pākehā and migrant precarious workers. If the latter groups emphasised the issue of precarious work and life that the theories of precarity relate to the neoliberal restructuring of the labour market, Māori participants were referring to colonialism and its impact on contemporary social issues. Because of Māori experiences of precarity that illuminate a distinct and much longer genealogy of precarity compared to other social groups in New Zealand, the making of the Māori precariat became a separate topic within the ethnography on the urban precariat.

In the following paragraphs, the reader is placed to three Auckland City streets to meet the Māori precariat in the urban milieu. These uptown locations are connected due to the history of colonialism and the Māori struggle for self-determination, while being a spatial area for the contemporary urban precariat. We meet the ‘roof community’ in one of the CBD’s apartment buildings, a part-time teacher who shares everyday struggles of the Māori precariat, artists on uptown’s K Road, and a couple of students at the university campus. The ‘roof community’ is described through ethnographic notes from autoethnography, while the accounts of a teacher, artists and university students are based on semi-structured interviews. All names are coded to provide anonymity. Call for research participants, participant information sheet and consent forms were, together with ethics application that included interview questions, confirmed by the University of Auckland Human Participants Ethics Committee.

The ‘roof community’ in Central Auckland

In past decades, Auckland Central became an area with the highest population density in New Zealand (Statistics NZ, 2024). The central part of the city has represented the main site for the real estate sector to build multiple commercial and apartment buildings. Today, many of these complexes accommodate thousands of people, mostly students, migrants and people who work in the city. One of those apartment buildings is situated between two city avenues, Hobson and Nelson Streets. The apartment building where we ² lived for almost 3 years, is much smaller than neighbouring complexes. However, it represents an ideal place to meet people and become familiar with them. All people living in the building are paying weekly rents – namely, the owners of all apartments are two Pākehā men who own multiple buildings in the city. The apartment building does not have balconies and due to the noise from two city avenues and a nearby police station, windows are triple glazed but without the possibility to open them in any way. The air comes to the studio from the ventilation system and the whole structure of the building with tiny apartments reminds someone more of a semi-open prison than ‘city-living’ apartments. Nevertheless, the building does have a place where tenants can breathe fresh air – the rooftop. For tenants who like to spend some time outdoors, the roof is the only place to hang around. Moreover, it is also a site of the ‘roof community’, a small group of people – mostly Māori – whose precarity, culture and everyday struggles brought them together in sharing their stories of the present, past and the future.

Formerly a brothel, the apartment building has its own pace and soul: from young Indian males who confuse days with nights, listening to music and socialising until early mornings, to two young Vietnamese couples who live in one-bedroom apartment, working long hours and frequently activating a fire alarm while cooking dinner at 10 pm. Then there is a Filipino migrant worker who always greets everyone with a smile; a student from the Caribbeans who offers dance classes in his tiny studio apartment, and a Māori couple who just came out of the prison. To make everything complicated, there is a Pākehā drug dealer who frequently brings customers to the roof to take P (methamphetamine) in a police-free environment. He is usually accompanied by his girlfriend, a sex worker, whose marks of heavy drug addiction are very visible. For a couple of months, the apartment next door to ours hosted a second drug dealer who was very discreet and quiet. Not knowing at the time what was going on next door, we found out about the drug operation after the police raided the apartment and arrested people who were there on that particular morning.

Our neighbours and friends from the second floor are two Māori couples: Nikau and Rawiri are a gay couple who are struggling with different dimensions of precarity, particularly in relation to job insecurity, addictions and marginalisation. The second couple are Nina and Tamati: they moved from South Auckland to the City to start over, trying to get away from violence continuum and drugs that feature their criminal records. Nina just came out of the prison where she spent past couple of years due to drug related charges, during which time Tamati had been living off extortions and various forms of petty crime. They are optimistic to start over with their lives, being away from ‘the hood’ and specific social relationships that are embedded in marginalised urban areas. On evenings, six of us are hanging out on the roof of the apartment building, talking about life and everyday struggles.

“We were always less than working class”, says Rawiri, who refers to my question about common everyday struggles for precarious working class today. Tamati adds that he, too, does not identify himself as part of a broader precariat; he only does in ethnic terms (as Māori). Nikau, on the other hand, just finished a three-month work at a clothing store that had an option to end the contract without a reason after the 90-day trial: “They always do that”, says Nikau, referring to the policy that creates power imbalances and most often disadvantage the worker (NZCTU, 2013). “Yes, I’m in [referring to the precariat] but I’m gonna start my own business”, says Nikau who is always optimistic, even to the point where he convinces himself that Rawiri and him are soon going to live ‘like kings’. We always laugh at it but everyone on the roof likes Nikau’s positive perspective on pretty much everything.

In another world – at the university – I am conducting first interviews with precarious workers and the first one is with a Māori part-time teacher Kauri whose account of precarity coincides with ‘the roof community’:

It’s tough but I need to keep the feelings of anxiety down. We have to battle the anxiety and convince ourselves that everything is going to be okay even if we don’t believe that … I’m just scared of what is coming at the end of the day. It’s very much like living week to week. In saying that, I know it’s a lot more difficult for a whole lot more people out there. My friends have to make decisions, like, do you buy toilet paper or food? I’m painfully aware of the fact that my precariousness is no way precarious as other people’s but at the same time it’s still shit, it’s still a shit place to be. (Kauri)

Kauri and his wife Anika have three schoolchildren. He emphasises that Anika and him are trying to hide their precarious reality from them. Like other Māori families who are struggling financially, they do everything to provide a good life for their children, both emotionally and existentially. Despite the fact that they cannot afford a holiday Kauri decided that they should go anyway. He borrowed some money, topped up with hard-earning savings, for a trip to the National Park north of Auckland where they camped for a week:

Anika was like ‘what the fuck, we are going away on holidays? We are broke!’ But, you know, the kids don’t need to know that we are poor.

Because of extremely high housing prices in Auckland – the city has had one of the most unaffordable housing in the world (Howden-Chapman, 2015) – a person would expect that apartments and houses in Auckland City are of a high standard. However, the reality is different: many houses tend to be badly- or non-insulated. Workers and families are therefore struggling with mould, cold and other issues of inadequate maintenance by landlords:

Kauri: The reason our power bill is 600 dollars a month is because if we don’t use heating all the time in winter, the kids are all the time in hospital. That sounds more dramatic than it is but you have to take these things seriously. I mean, me and my wife could probably sleep in a miserably cold and a damp room and that would probably be okay; but I certainly will not put kids in the position where their health is at risk so I bought a heater and dehumidifier, everything to keep them warm. To be completely honest, fuck these 600 dollars! But having said that, it sounds like I’m kind of brave but I’m not. At the same time, I’m terrified.

Back on the roof, Nina and Tamati describe their former home in South Auckland. Similar to Kauri’s house, they had problems with mould and leaking but not enough money to afford a dehumidifier. Many reports and research show that inadequate housing signifies one of central problems the Māori precariat is facing today (King et al., 2017). Considering facts that almost three quarters of Māori live in urban areas and that the vast majority are paying rents, Lynley Uerata (2021) emphasises precarious housing and the anxiety of living in survival mode. This is accompanied by the urban disconnection to te ao Māori – a Māori world of specific social relationships and ways of living based on Indigenous epistemology and family structure. Both families – Nina-Tamati and Kauri-Anika – live within Western social structures of family, work and care, adopting social dispositions that include constant calculability (budgeting), ‘hustling’ for money and navigating the penal welfare system.

Nina and Tamati have children from previous relationships. Tamati has son and daughter who come to visit once or twice a month. Nina has a ten-year old son Kai. They begin to spend more and more time together, with Kai eventually moving in with his mother and stepfather. Being recovered drug addicts, Nina and Tamati try to stay away from drugs, going for long walks and cooking a lot of food that we sometimes eat together. However, you can feel that something is not right, especially when we notice Tamati’s dramatic mood changes and his everyday contact with a drug dealer and his friends who begin to visit our roof more often.

One morning, we came up with the idea to do something else that weekend: try to find a job for Nina or Tamati. “We should just go to Queen Street, K Road and Ponsonby [main city streets] and hand in CVs”, says Nikau. Except of Tamati, we all gathered in our apartment where we wrote and printed out CVs. Nina said that because of her lost tooth, she is not confident to go around, but my partner and Nikau convince her that she is ‘all good’. Also, at the age of twelve, Nina was expelled from compulsory education and her only credentials and work experience come from the prison. Nevertheless, we were all optimistic that we will find some kitchen work or cleaning job. While having a morning coffee on the roof, we asked Tamati to join us:

Tamati: (silence). You guys just go. I have some things to do.

Nina: You could go.

Tamati did not answer. His eyes said more than thousand words. It was very clear that he was not ready to receive help from anyone, let alone from any institution or organisations that offer reintegration programmes or minimum-wage jobs. Tamati knows the system very well and he sees it as foreign and hypocritical, including programmes for ex-inmates with drug-addiction problems or state social services in general. Nina visited a drug rehabilitation meeting only once, consequently adopting Tamati’s view that they cannot help her. A decade earlier, Nina experienced a significant trauma that was unresolved. It was a significant event that triggered her drug addiction. However, she was not confident to share her story in that meeting. She first told it on ‘the roof’.

After visiting dozens of restaurants, cafés and stores in Auckland City, we were waiting for a call back. Nina did not receive any. Having a criminal record turned out to be too much of an obstacle. Hence, it was logical that, in order to get by and provide for her family, Nina began to use cultural capital that she gained while growing up in the ‘hood’ (mostly advanced skills of petty crime). At the same time, because of violence, her son Kai was expelled from school. Being only ten, he was deprived from compulsory education which demonstrated yet another dimension of structural violence where Indigenous children continue to be deprived from education and secondary socialisation.

Back on the roof we noticed that some men who came by had a same distinct tattoo, a boot glove. Our friend Fred – who is an ex-inmate and former gang leader – told us that it represents a whakapapa, a history of that person who went through the system of boys’ homes and borstals. “It was the way to break you.” (see Curcic, 2019: 101). Between 1950 and 1999, more than 200,000 children, mostly Māori, were abused in state and faith-based care. Boys and girls were subjected to systematic abuse that ranged from educational deprivation and psychological violence where they were denied to practice culture, language and spirituality (forced assimilation), to brutal physical and sexual abuse that resulted in the making of violence continuum and intergenerational transmission of trauma (Stanley, 2016; Abuse in Care, 2024). Intergenerational or historical trauma occurs when “past traumatic events affecting a group of people (e.g., colonisation) become embedded in the collective, social, emotional and spiritual memories of the population, accumulating across generations” (George et al., 2014: 184, referring to Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, 2005). For Māori, the original layer of trauma occurred with colonial violence at the time of a settler-colonial plunder and dispossession, and by the structural/state violence in the second half of the twentieth century where thousands of institutionalised Māori children experienced systemic neglect and abuse. Similar to structural violence against Indigenous children in US and Canadian native schools, the abuse created trauma that has been passed on from generation to generation. To supress it, many survivors have been using various forms of ‘medicine’ such as alcohol, drugs and more violence (Duran, 2019).

Nina, Tamati, Rawiri, Nikau and Fred are all affected by intergenerational trauma of colonisation. Nina, for example, lost the connection to her whakapapa (genealogy) because her grandparents and parents were not allowed to speak te reo (Māori language) or practice te ao Māori. If they did they were subjected to corporal punishment in school. Fred was institutionalised in boys’ home that drew a path of violence, gangs and criminal life; while Rawiri was abused as a young boy and to this day, he continues to carry pain or, as he says, a “damaged wairua” (damaged soul). Nina and Tamati found their medicine in drugs, Nikau in wild partying and alcohol, Rawiri in food and music. It was on that roof in Central Auckland where the most beautiful voice could be heard. When Rawiri started to sing we were stunned. He was healing historical trauma by grieving and releasing the pain through music.

Unfortunately, after a couple of months, Nina and Tamati slowly drifted back to drugs. Everyday struggles and frequent visits of drug dealers, gang members and drug users in our apartment building became too much to handle. One night, in front of Nina’s son Kai, Tamati snapped and brutally assaulted Nina. Rawiri and Nikau, who lived on the same floor, called the emergency and the police arrested Tamati. Nina was taken into hospital, Tamati to remand. Days afters, when she came back, we all begged her to leave Tamati, both for the sake of Kai’s and her own life. She eventually decided to go back to him. Kai moved to his grandmother and the couple went back to South Auckland. We never saw them again.

Uptown on K road: Michael and Ria

Just a block away from our rooftop is Karangahape Road or simply K Road. Karangahape signifies a historical place in Auckland City. Located on the edge of Auckland Central, two km from the downtown’s harbour, Auckland’s uptown is the place where artists, activists, LGBTQ + community and freedom seeking people meet. For decades, K Road has represented the New Zealand’s most creative and famous art and red-light district street, being the place of peace and refuge for many who do not fit the society’s dominant imaginary and its symbolic order. The street also has a significant homeless population and currently, according to informants, no major gang claims the area. ³

In one of uptown’s music clubs, Michael, a Māori man in his early fifties, is taking care of the club’s gear and sound. Officially, he is unemployed but always keen to work. In the interview, he said: “I’m pretty much working in the informal economy, you know, the black market, working under the table. I’m doing all kind of jobs: painting, being a security guard, handyman.” Michael used to be on a benefit after he was made redundant from his job, but for many years now he has not received any dollar from the state: “I never really knew how to cope with structure, so I just went out of the system, to be free.” (Michael)

Michael is a second-generation urban Māori. He knows his tribe genealogy but he never really experienced the communal upbringing or wisdom from the extended family and its elders. He never even had a chance to learn Māori language. Michael comes from a critical generation: because the first generation of urban Māori was not allowed to speak native language, they tried to protect their children by raising them in English language. As we noted before, this was the result of a structural process that was enforced by the state. According to Waretini-Karena (2024), at the beginning of the twentieth century, 95% of Māori could speak their native language; by 1980s, only 5% could. Urbanisation created a path to ‘one New Zealand’, organised within capitalist market relations and social institutions of a dominant white-settler society (Mikaere, 2011). Following the logic of capitalism (where everything is turned into commodity in order to generate capital, including people), Auckland’s uptown and inner suburbs were first turned from colonial settlements to working-class neighbourhoods settled by Māori precariat and Pasifika migrant workers, but later (when real estate investors saw the opportunity) to gentrified hipster places where rules of rentier capitalism dispossessed Māori once again. Michael, for example, used to live in Ponsonby, the inner suburb that starts off K Road. Because of gentrification that began with the imposition of neoliberal commodification, Michael had to move out:

Twenty-five years ago, I was living in Ponsonby [once a working-class community, today one of the most expensive inner suburbs in Auckland]. I was paying 60 dollars a week for my room. Broadly speaking, that was about a third of my weekly income and I was working part-time. Today, more than half of your full-time income goes for rent. Because of gentrification in Ponsonby and Grey Lynn, I can’t live there anymore. It’s too expensive.

Michael now lives in the basement of an old building off K Road. He restored the place into a nice studio apartment where he likes to enjoy music and drinks. Our conversation soon became political, with Michael emphasising the history of colonialism in New Zealand. It is important to note that Michael’s generation of ‘assimilated urban Māori’ was also a generation of critical socio-political and cultural Māori renaissance that brought significant changes to New Zealand society. Socio-political groups such as Ngā Tamatoa and Polynesian Panthers (both started on K Road-Ponsonby in 1970s) fought for recognition of Māori language, culture, better socio-economic conditions and political self-determination. In 1990s, Māori radicals continued their work by fighting racism and assimilation, while calling for bi-national partnership with Māori autonomy in education, culture and other social fields (Poata-Smith, 1997). Michael is proud that he was part of that history. Today, there are more than 25,000 children enrolled in Māori medium schools, with the number of Māori fluent speakers growing steadily (Education Counts Report, 2023). Hence, despite everyday struggles of precarity and continued state’s ignorance of Māori self-determination in certain areas of policymaking, Michael emphasises “the rise of political consciousness among Māori and allies of all colours”, optimistically pointing to younger generation who has language and sensitivity to continue their fight for decolonisation.

One of ‘those younger ones’ that we meet in a nearby café is Ria, a freelance artist. Ria has a clear political stance when it comes to the question of Māori self-determination and recognising the voices of other oppressed communities. However, as many others, she is struggling with structural constraints of precarity that systematically repress possibilities for systemic change. Her thoughts revoke what Bourdieu (1998) asserts in his late writings that ‘precarity is everywhere now’, including in previously non-precarious fields, which create conditions for violent imposition of Social Darwinist economistic utopia, insecurity, suffering and stress.

Ria: Everyone knows it is about who you know. Everyone is playing the game … It’s really hard … it all depends who gets funding. It’s stressful because it’s kind of a rollercoaster: you have heaps of work and then it’s massive debt … When the show ends you might not have another contract for another how many months, so while that show is going you still have to be hustling for other stuff because you know it’s gonna end soon. So you always have to be looking for work, you can’t ever just take a break. It’s hard.

Ria emphasises intense competition within the field and, in particular, the issue of state funding that almost exclusively goes to selected people who come from Pākehā upper and middle classes. For young and independent artists like Ria, trying to bring Māori, Pasifika and other voices to the field, it is very difficult to compete with them. In order to get by, young actors eventually accept ‘token’ roles (that often present their ethnicities stereotypically or solely from Pākehā perspective), while ‘playing the game’ that reproduces status quo.

Ria: There’s a lot of discrimination in the industry. If you pick up the programme on the way out you’ll see that all the shows are white, most of the casting is white. They don’t have any Māori or Pacific shows next year even though they are obligated to when they get funding. And how do they get around that? They will do community workshops, they will do stuff down in Mangere [South Auckland], but away from the mainstream. So the industry itself is generally run by white New Zealanders. They choose plays, they cast actors … And like the same people will get the same funding every time and those people are white people who are doing white shows for white audiences over fifty. They are casting /…/ the same white people all the time, with one or two tokens of Samoan or Māori actors. Talking about equal opportunities is just laughable. You look at the programmes of the last five years and it’s just, it’s perpetuating this horrible cycle of like, your stories are not important, you don’t mean anything to us; we don’t care enough about you to talk about you.

Non-Pākehā actors like Ria are struggling in a Pākehā-dominated social field of art where many actors, writers or directors come from wealthy socio-economic backgrounds. In this social setting where rules of the field are normalised, structural violence appears in the form of symbolic violence (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992) – a subtle form of domination where recognition, honour and prestige are embodied in relation to imposed categories of normality and pseudo-objective classifications. “It’s just this vicious cycle of the system”, says Ria, referring to structural inequalities within the field. As a young actress who does not come from a privileged family, she observes:

You have to prove yourself more. It’s luckier for me because I was raised white, so I have a white sensibility to go okay, these things are important. I understand the ways of working but if someone is from South Auckland, Māori or Samoan family, it’s harder because you have different ways of working and those ways are totally valid. So, you are already on the back foot. (Ria)

By ways of working, Ria’s testimony points not only to interpersonal relationships and ways of interacting that are homogenised and dominated by a settler-colonial taste, but also to the social field of the industry itself. Structural inequalities within the field determine what kind of relationships are in play, naturalising hierarchies to the extent that they become normalised and taken for granted. It is the state – in the forms of rituals (rewards) and financial grants – that canonises a certain class or cultural taste (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 111). Hence, artists who do not come from privileged backgrounds are disadvantaged in advance. For independent actors like Ria, whose ideas and stories do not comply with the dominant taste, it is a struggle to make their way in a competitive and Pākehā-dominated environment.

Trying to ‘sense the game’ and be one of the few who succeed in a social field where the privileged are ritually settled, Māori artists are forced to subordinate themselves to the rules of the field. The primary role of the actor becomes how to sell yourself instead of mastering your potentials and bringing forward non-censored ideas that do not always comply with the system’s dominant taste. In other words, the prevalence of commodification (capitalist relations that are incompatible with Indigenous traditions and epistemology) prevents an artist from being free, particularly in relation to political critique and oral history – social components that are essential in Māori culture and its tikanga (methods and practices) (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999).

Down at the university: escaping precarity or just another dream?

Examples of Nina, Tamati, Rawiri, Nikau and Michael signify a particular layer of the precariat. David Neilson (2015) calls it ‘the precariat: falling into the abyss’. He points to the working poor, the unemployed and informally employed whose only goal is to get by. This vulnerable section of society also includes the homeless. Neilson asserts that “the circumstances of these desperate strata of the relative surplus population are characterised by extreme material precarity combined with almost non-existent opportunities for upward mobility” (Neilson, 2015: 13–14).

On the other end of the precariat are young workers, freelancers and working students who want to escape precarity by obtaining educational credentials and invest in their careers in order to find a non-precarious job and enter the securiat or salariat. ‘The precariat: moving up’ represents precarious workers whose aspiration of upward social mobility stands against the opportunity to achieve it (Neilson, 2015). Because most Māori do not come from privileged socio-economic backgrounds, they have to work even harder to compete for secure jobs (the example of Ria). We find the aspiring precariat also in schools and universities – in the case of Auckland City, just a block away from K Road where we meet two Māori-Pasifika students – Ngaire and Penina.

While studying at the university, Penina works in one of the city’s fast-food restaurants, whereas Ngaire works three jobs, ranging from customer service to care work. Penina lives with her parents and siblings half an hour away from Auckland Central, while Ngaire lives with roommates in one of South Auckland’s marginalised suburbs. On her street, she observes many social harms associated with precarity:

A lot of typical things you see as a result of colonisation, like broken families, poverty, fighting culture, gangs, drugs and alcohol abuse, physical abuse, domestic violence. Just walking through the streets feels unsafe, a lot of dogs, lack of community engagement, not many people know who their neighbours are. Not much dreams or aspirations for your future, a lot more living day-to-day. (Ngaire)

Ngaire wants to change that. Her love for Māori and Pasifika people in South Auckland convinced her to pursue university studies in order to become an expert in Māori development. However, it is a difficult journey. She works three jobs in order to pay rent and have enough to get by:

Ngaire: I’m anxious because I never know what next week will look like in terms of work which is annoying and a bit scary too … One of my jobs [care work] is casual so it’s just whenever they want someone, they just call. It’s probably the most difficult one because they can call like at midnight or they can call while I’m working another job which they often do. My other two jobs, in one I’m an assistant which is also casual. One week I can get like 2 hours of work or I can get 10 hours which is the max. And then the third job is just like receptionist kind of stuff. It’s different all the time [in terms of working hours]. It varies from zero to 30.

Marko: How do you cope with that?

Ngaire: I have no idea [laughs]. Money is pretty tight at the moment. Just like weekly rent and stuff, it’s pretty tough, especially because I wasn’t working for 6 weeks because I was waiting for the crossover between one of my jobs. I quit the job in retail and then the new job didn’t start until 6 weeks later so I was eating all of my savings. Right now, they are really, really low, almost non-existent. It’s pretty stressful because there’s no stability when I can pay rent. I mean, I always pay rent because I also get living costs [from the state] but if I wouldn’t have that I would be dead [laughs].

For many young Māori, paying rent signifies the main concern and a top priority, even at the expense of food and health (King et al., 2017). Ngaire does not want to be kicked out from her home and be forced to move from one hostel to another or even end up on the street. Constant thinking about rent and bills while studying already puts her on the disadvantaged position in relation to securiat or salariat: “Sometimes I do sacrifices with other things so that I can pay rent and live”, says Ngaire. She studies hard, being only a year away from graduation. However, because of over-working and constant stress, Ngaire says that she often feels exhausted or even burned-out: “When I have a really intense week, when I’m exhausted, that kind of drains me. And the last three months I have been really sick and the doctor thinks it’s stress” (Ngaire). She is only in her early twenties.

Ngaire’s peer Penina works for a famous fast-food corporation, coded as ‘Kentucky McKing’. The fast-food industry signifies one of central places of precarious work characterised by low pay, irregular working hours and both work and employment insecurity. Because her parents are battling physical and mental illnesses, Penina’s job is the critical source of income for a family of five. Her younger siblings are still in school and the low financial help from the state for burned out parents does not suffice to cover rent, bills and other necessary things. Penina started to work as soon as she finished high school.

Average week I just work. I’m too tired because of work so I end up either oversleeping or I just can’t make it to go to uni. I miss so many classes because of work. I feel like my main priority is work … my boss is always asking me to come in, to come in. I’m too scared of losing it ‘cause I really need the job and I really need to have some money to help out my family situation and stuff. (Penina)

Working for Kentucky McKing reveals the main features of precarious work that leads to precarity. Penina highlights low pay, fluctuating hours (being on-call and available anytime), high work intensity (constantly being under-staffed), unsafe work environment, and an abusive manager who misuses his power by favouring workers based on ethnicity in order to suppress solidarity. For example, working fluctuating hours on the minimum-wage rate, Penina constantly experiences high work intensity or doing a lot of work in shorter time. This results in high productivity but also in over-working. Although she is employed through a part-time contract, she is constantly called into work:

Penina: This week I work from Tuesday to Monday … I don’t have time to sleep. Literally, I only had two hours of sleep and then I had to come early ‘cause I have an early class … Last night I worked from 5pm and I finished at 12.30 and I got home around 1am cos I live kinda far from where I work. From then on, I’d do some work, do some studying and go to sleep and then come back to uni if I have early classes … On my contract it says I can work 29 hours. They offered me 29 but the fact that we are short of staff, we don’t have a choice but to come in and cover for people … They don’t know how to manage. I asked them if they’re hiring but, I don’t know, they just say yes but I don’t see any interviews there. Our managers are abusing their power, their status and stuff … It’s hard, especially because you don’t have people to talk to.

Penina further emphasises ethnic tensions, racial stereotypes and violence that she and her co-workers experience on a daily basis by managers and supervisors:

Penina: They abuse us big time. One of my supervisors once asked me, you know, when you get drinks from Kentucky McKing and you press it?

Marko: Yes.

Penina: So it was out [of work]. The supervisor yelled at me and she was like “Can you not hear, it is finished!” /…/ She came up to me, she pulled my shirt, she pulled me all the way to the back and she shoved me. She was like “Listen!!!” I was so close to punching her but I was like, naah, I can’t do that. I feel like we get abused at work but we choose not to speak … There’s also favouritism at work. My managers favour workers from their own ethnicity. It’s annoying. It’s all ethnicity based.

Penina’s words indicate an important issue that arises as a result of precarity: the inability to recognise the precariousness of others (Lorey, 2015). Because of racial stereotypes about Māori-Pasifika that new migrants hear on a daily basis, particularly on TV programmes such as Police Ten 7 (Deckert et al., 2023), and the process of xenophobia that simultaneously occur against Asian migrants, both oppressed groups often see each other through colonial imaginaries of dehumanisation. It is therefore not uncommon that Penina notes numerous racial stereotypes that she hears from her Indian supervisors who, in the quest of escaping precarity, adopted them. “And then I have to lift all the heavy stuff”, says Penina, counting stereotypes that range from being lazy and slow to violent and strong.

These forced identities that are reproduced by embedded racism often become normalised. But not only that. Ngaire emphasises that they can also become internalised. For example, in the past, she was not as strong and proud as she is today:

Ngaire: Like for years I hated being Māori because of what everyone said Māori was, like what being Māori means, so I hated that.

Marko: For example?

Ngaire: Like druggies, criminals, unemployed, poor, high-school drop-outs, pregnant, drunk all the time.

Marko: Where did you hear that?

Ngaire: in school.

Marko: From Pākehā or also non-Pākehā?

Ngaire: Both. I think the worst is when you hear from Māori who believe that. That actually breaks my heart when I hear Māori saying stuff about them because it’s sad. It’s coming to the point when they just accept it that that’s who they think they are. But it’s so not true. And the church is another one, and comedy, like humour and stuff on TV. It’s always masked so it’s not like really racist but it is. All this contributed that I hated to be Māori in the past.

As we noted before, many politicians and media have for decades systematically represented Māori as criminals, notorious gang members, dole bludgers and, in the best-case scenario, comedians and noble savages (Deckert et al., 2023; Wall, 1997). Following old colonial times, these representations continue to serve as strategies for social divide (also between Māori and new migrants) and social control (within the community). It is not a coincidence, therefore, that many Māori internalise these imaginaries and adopt a forced identity that is created by the outsider group (McIntosh, 2005).

Being preoccupied with study and precarious work, Penina feels a constant pressure to keep up and work. Although she does not drink, smoke or take drugs, she finds her comfort zone in another addiction – food: “I just go drag my sorrow in food. I just have to eat, eat it away. I just eat and deal with it by myself” (Penina). She emphasises that she cannot afford to be stressed, even when she is sleep deprived: “There’s no time for me to be stressed, to be honest. The moment I stress is when I break. But it’s hard being tough.” Penina’s seemingly never-ending drive in a circle of precarity results in her pessimism about the future. Although she is a fighter she does not have any personal goal in her life except for taking care of her family and surviving. Her story becomes a testimony about the working poor from deprived communities who are trapped in a cycle of poverty and low-paid precarious work. She is aware that many people who graduate find it difficult to get a decent job. Thus, Penina does not see the point to continue her studies anymore. She is ‘falling into the abyss’ of precarity:

Marko: What are your goals?

Penina: [silence]

Marko: Do you have some goal?

Penina: No [starts to cry]. Whatever comes up I just go with it. I don’t really have a goal. I only came to uni for my parents’ sake. I don’t like studying, I don’t like uni at all. Other than that, I don’t know what I’m gonna do. Just pray to god that I’ll find something better, something that will pay better. I just want to help my family.

Marko: What about you?

Penina: I don’t care. I don’t have time to think about myself. I’m just worrying about my parents … I don’t really care for myself.

Being overworked and tired (along with significant student loan), Penina eventually dropped her studies and focused only on work. She is one of many precarious workers that we meet daily on drive-throughs, in restaurants, hotels, supermarkets and so on. Their lives are characterised by a permanent state of insecurity and uncertainty, destroyed work-life balance, anxiety and a lack of hope.

Concluding thoughts

The history of precarity in New Zealand is the history of Māori precarity. For almost two centuries, Māori have been struggling with structural violence and systematic condition (and processes) of precarity and structural marginalisation. Coupled with historical trauma and ongoing neoliberal state of generalised insecurity and instability, this article understands precarity as a mode of structural violence that systematically creates the Māori precariat. It signifies a broader social harm issue that must be addressed at all levels: economically, politically, socially and culturally.

Through urban-ethnographic record of Māori precariat we grasped critical knowledge of lived precarity in urban milieu: from structural constraints that include precarious work, unemployment and precarious housing, to sociocultural issues such as symbolic violence that systematically repress the possibilities to live te ao Māori (Māori worldview and way of life). ‘Everyone is playing the game’ further reminds us that the process of internalising neoliberal social dispositions is in play, whereas stories of everyday struggles by Nina, Tamati, Rawiri and Penina point to the cycle of precarity for everyone who does not ‘sense the game’.

Our journey through Auckland City streets ends up in Albert Park, a central city park between the university campus and Queen Street. Statues of British monarchs, park’s flora and names of surrounding streets reminds us of the history of New Zealand that is not as ideal as certain politicians still want to describe. On a daily basis, the park itself shows us both symbolic order and eruption of reality: from being a vibrant place where students and tourists like to be during the day, to a no-go zone during the night where physical violence and petty crime frequently occur. It is in the eye of the beholder to identity both processes.

By acknowledging historical structural inequalities while fighting embedded precarity, there is a well-grounded hope for socio-economic, cultural and political transformation. Such examples include the Living Wage Campaign (a common struggle for decent wages and work-life balance) and Māori social services in disadvantaged urban areas. However, there is need for more – to reach those who are often invisible to institutions and wider public. The Māori precariat continues to be in the making – but this also means that it can be unmade, particularly by strengthening communities with economic security, inclusive social participation, cultural autonomy and political sovereignty.