A lifetime of Pacific study earns top medal

Media Release

November 11, 2010

A lifetime of Pacific study earns top medal

A Waikato University geographer who has spent most of his working life studying migration flows in the Pacific region has been awarded the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Dame Joan Metge medal.

Professor Richard Bedford, a former Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research at Waikato and currently Professor of Population Studies at Waikato and Pro VC Research at AUT, was presented with the medal on November 10 for his long and valued contribution to social science.

Dame Joan Metge, anthropologist, author and social scientist carried out extensive research into Māori urbanisation.

Professor Bedford’s Pacific research began with a holiday in Kiribati in 1965. “I was going to be a hydrologist, but instead of studying the flow of water, I switched to researching the flows of people, in Tuvalu and Kiribati in the first instance.”

He feels honoured to be receiving the medal, given every two years. It’s given for three things; contribution to building capability in research, mentoring early career researchers and for his own research contribution. “The criteria for the medal reflect what Dame Joan was all about. She was supportive of students and staff, a great mentor dedicated to helping people become better researchers and to increasing our understanding of the communities we work in.”

Professor Bedford’s work took him to communities all over the Pacific, where several islands and atolls had experienced large population growth after World War II. He looked at how these islands could sustain growing populations, issues of resettlement and the barriers to relocating. “Many of the people living in villages or on threatened coral atolls had no desire to move to bigger islands or into towns to live and work. We were trying to plan ahead, predict what the situation would be like in 50 years, and that was difficult to forecast.”

What was clear was that New Zealand had a key role to play in the economic future of Pacific nations and while some countries had, and still have, migration quotas, others have no migration outlets and it becomes a matter of negotiation as to how New Zealand will respond. “New Zealand’s Pacific population will continue to grow quite rapidly, both as a result of immigration as well as natural increase. Already more than half of the Pacific peoples living in New Zealand were born here.”

More recently Professor Bedford has been studying the Recognised Seasonal Employer scheme that sees workers coming to New Zealand for the harvest seasons and for a maximum of seven months a year. “It’s been working since 2006 and cross party support is critical for its success. The scheme is Vanuatu’s second biggest employer and since the RSE has been operating, it’s been refined and in most cases is working well. It’s definitely reduced the number of illegal workers coming to work here and is having positive financial benefits for Island economies.”

Over the years Professor Bedford has been a director of Building Research Capability in the Social Sciences Network, a mentor for MoRST-funded He Waka Tangata and been part of Pacifica and new settlers’ networks. Officially, he retired from full-time work in April. He’s at Waikato one day a week and in Auckland three days a week. He still goes back and forth to the Islands and is working two books about migration.

His daughter Charlotte said she’d never be a geographer like her father, but his love of the Pacific rubbed off and Charlotte is now studying for her PhD in Adelaide. The topic for her thesis is The RSE scheme and its impacts on workers, employers and the source communities in the islands. Her father would be a fairly useful contact.

The other recipient of the Dame Joan Metge medal is Professor Richie Poulton, Director of the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Research Unit at Otago University. As it happens, Professor Bedford is currently working with Professor Poulton on an HRC-funded project linked with the world-famous longitudinal study of 1000 people born in Dunedin in the early 1970s. Professor Bedford is examining the mobility experiences of the cohort with special reference to their residence overseas between the ages of 20 and 38 (their current age).

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