ABSTRACT
Ma¯ori society was transformed in the second half of the twentieth century by an almost wholesale movement from rural to urban areas. In 1936 more than 80 per cent of Ma¯ori lived in rural areas – 50 years later more than 80 per cent of Ma¯ori were living in urban centres. This demographic shift prompted dramatic changes in the structure of many Ma¯ori social institutions, and much recent work has been concerned with exploring the implications of these changes. However, few analyses have explicitly sought to explore the linkages that exist between Ma¯ori migration and Ma¯ori political, social and organizational change, and none have specifically considered the role played by government policy. In line with approaches to the study of population mobility that stress the importance of understanding institutional and organizational influences (Swindell and Ford 1975), this chapter sketches out the nature of such linkages and then contextualizes its findings using the experiences of one tribe from the North Island of New Zealand – Nga¯ti Kahungunu – focusing particularly on the recent reconstruction of tribal structures and the related phenomenon of return-migration.1
