Where You Feel You Belong: Classifying Ethnicity and Mixedness in New Zealand

New Zealand has a relatively long history of collecting data on multiple ethnic identifications, occupying a unique position by administratively privileging self-identified, socially defined ethnicity over race-based classification. Classification has reflected processes of social change within the country over time, and ethnicity has been measured as voluntary, individual, and multiple for over thirty years, making the country one of the first to do so. In recognizing the socially constructed nature of ethnicity, and officially recognizing mixedness for such an extended period of time, New Zealand provides a very valuable case study and point of comparison. However, care needs to be exercised because both the classifications and the socioeconomic environments in which the politics of identity sit are in continual flux, as debates about linguistic and sociological categorization affect not only what is collected but how the information is then packaged. The way forward requires cross-sector solutions as the emergence of new ethnicities frequently passes through a period of multiplicity of labels in the process of creating/constructing emerging identifications. The relationship between changing multiple identifications and social change requires consistent and robust measurement with an agreed nationally established and stable standard classification system, such as has been applied to the New Zealand census, with generally minor adjustments, since at least 2001.