Waves to Aotearoa: who came, when and why

New Zealand is a country made by migration. Its population can't be explained just by births and deaths: wave after wave of people arrived, each for its own reasons.

The first arrivals

About 800 years ago, Polynesian voyagers sailed double-hulled waka thousands of kilometres across the Pacific, guided by stars, winds, currents and birds. Their descendants became Māori, tangata whenua, the people of the land. Every later arrival came to land that was already named, lived on and cared for.

Settlers and goldminers

After the war

From 1947 the Assisted Passage scheme paid most of the fare for more than 100,000 people, mostly young British workers, to fill jobs. From 1950 a Dutch scheme brought thousands more. At first, the government mainly wanted migrants who were British or 'of European race and colour'.

The Pacific

Factories and farms needed workers, and Pacific peoples came in large numbers. There were about 3,600 Pacific people in New Zealand in 1951 and more than 50,000 by 1972. Cook Islanders, Niueans and Tokelauans were New Zealand citizens; Samoans came under a 1962 Treaty of Friendship. In the 1970s, when jobs dried up, police carried out the Dawn Raids, targeting Pacific families they suspected of overstaying. The government apologised in 2021.

A new policy

In 1974 New Zealand began choosing migrants by skills and qualifications, not race or nationality, and in 1987 the rules opened further. Since then many people have come from China, India, the Philippines, Korea, South Africa and elsewhere. Today more than one in four people living here were born overseas.