ABSTRACT
Our chapter takes its lead from a seminal study by Ron Skeldon (1997). His book Migration and Development: A Global Perspective, devotes more of its review of theories and approaches to “transition theory,” especially Zelinsky’s classical mobility transition frame-work, than to any other theoretical perspective. Skeldon (1997: 37) argued, “transition theory . . . has served, and continues to serve, as an adaptable and valuable framework for the investigation of population mobility”.1 Similarly, Taylor and Bell (1996) articulated a clear case for an “Indigenous mobility transition”. Using the example of Australia’s Aborigines, they argued, inter alia, that a history of land dispossession, and the subsequent existence of Indigenous peoples on the margins of colonial and post-colonial settler societies, created a unique social and economic context for Indigenous mobility (Taylor and Bell 1996: 154). We thus ground our analysis of the geographical mobility of the Indigenous Maori population of Aotearoa (the islands that became New Zealand) in transition theory as it provides a useful framework for examining systemic shifts in both patterns of movement as well as the spatial distribution of Maori.
