Learning more about Asian languages and culture in schools would help New Zealanders to grow a more inclusive society, says a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland.
The Asia New Zealand Foundation released a report yesterday that found 63 percent of New Zealanders knew little or nothing about Asia, yet 51 percent of New Zealanders reported having at least a fair amount to do with Asian peoples and cultures -- up from 30 percent since 1998.
University of Auckland senior lecturer in geography Francis Collins says the increased connection comes from who people interact with in their everyday lives, while the lack of knowledge can only be abated in educational institutes.
"Addressing the question of knowledge is partly something that can be done in schools. Whether there's enough focus on our nearest continental neighbour, Asia, there could be more emphasis on that," Mr Collins says.
"Certainly there's always scope for more learning of languages in New Zealand. As a country we have relatively low levels of second language learning.
"Those are things that could be addressed quite easily. Arguably, knowing more about the continent would allow us to have higher levels of connectedness and that would lead to a more inclusive society."
Mr Collins also says New Zealanders' lack of knowledge of Asia can partly be explained by the ways in which they interact with people of Asian ethnicity.
"My sense is that that relates to the emphasis on economics in the relationship between New Zealand and Asia. I suspect that in many instances, people's connection with Asia relates to trade, investment and those sorts of issues. The idea of Asia as a place that we might know in terms of culture and people hasn't been emphasised as much as it could have been in New Zealand, I think."
The report's finding that New Zealanders are feeling more connected with Asian people than in the past can be put down to changes in our population make-up and an evolution in our perception of migration, says Mr Collins.
"It's two things -- the demographics of how the New Zealand population has changed, and how we're talking about the presence of people from Asia and also places in Asia as well.
"Twelve percent of New Zealand's population now identifies as Asian. That figure would've been much lower in the past, so more people are simply coming into contact with people who identify as Asian on a daily basis. That creates opportunities for people to know each other at a deeper level. Also, generally speaking, our thinking about migration -- from Asia in particular -- has matured over the last couple of decades. In the 1990s, Asian migration was often framed as negative and something that was happening too quickly."
As for the report's finding that nearly 50 percent of New Zealanders blame Asian people for rising house prices, Mr Collins places the responsibility squarely on the media.
"That has come up in the media a lot, and people have no other way of knowing about the housing market apart from what they read in newspapers, see on the internet or watch on TV. If the points that are raised by politicians or media commentators are around Asians pushing up house prices, then that's how we know the housing market. There's no information to know it otherwise."
However, Mr Collins says there are significant differences in the ethnicity of those surveyed for the report to that of New Zealand's population, and those differences have a substantial influence on the report's findings.
"The sampling of the survey, in terms of ethnicity, is quite different from the make-up of New Zealand generally. Only about four percent of survey participants identified as Asian and only one percent identified with a Pacific ethnicity. Those two groups normally would occupy about 20-25 percent of the New Zealand population," says Mr Collins.
"That has implications for everything we have talked about and all of the points made in the report. If you had a higher proportion of people who were Asian New Zealanders, the level of connectedness would have to be higher, as would the knowledge of Asia, as would all of the other issues."
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