Resisting ‘class’-based distinctions in a ‘classless’ society? Talking to New Zealanders about social citizenship
Louise Humpage
University of Auckland
Contact Email:   l.humpageauckland.ac.nz

As part of a broader project documenting public attitudes to social citizenship rights in New Zealand, 87 focus group and interview participants from a wide range of backgrounds were asked to respond to the statement: ‘People receiving social security benefits are made to feel like second class citizens’. This paper discusses participant responses to this statement and follow up questions which asked why beneficiaries might feel ‘second-class’, whether participants themselves felt ‘first class’ and what citizens might need to feel ‘first class’ in New Zealand today. In addition to considering the policy implications of these responses, the paper compares the discourses draw upon by New Zealand participants with those identified when British participants discussed the same statement. This comparison highlights many overlaps as well as significant discursive differences in the New Zealand context. Overall, it is argued that the participant’s responses reveal interesting and, at times, troubling tensions between the reality of significant class-, ethnic- and gender-based divisions in New Zealand today and the continuing myth that New Zealand is an ‘egalitarian’ or ‘classless’ society.

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