In Between the Boxes: Decolonising Research and Data from a Tangata Tiriti of Colour Lens

This webinar is presented by Bev Tso Hong (Community Research) and hosted jointly with Aotearoa Migration Research Network.

This interactive webinar takes an “in‑between” or third‑space lens to research decolonisation, grounded in the lived experience of a fourth‑generation Chinese New Zealander, Tangata Tiriti of colour, and social policy researcher. Reflecting across research and community engagement I have undertaken over two decades, we will examine how migrant and intergenerational realities collide with the way our systems define, measure, and respond to people’s lives. This includes how research and evaluation with ethnically diverse, migrant, and former refugee communities can make people both hyper‑visible and invisible in data at the same time – grouped together under broad pan‑ethnic labels or erased through small‑number suppression.

Using my experience in community and policy settings as a starting point, we will explore recurring patterns to consider what a third‑space approach to research and data might look like for ethnic, migrant, and former refugee communities in Aotearoa: noticing where standard boxes and timeframes fail intergenerational realities, designing from relationships and obligations, and treating community knowledge and lived experience as the starting point. Participants will be invited to connect these ideas to their own projects – as researchers, community practitioners, or analysts – and to consider what it would mean, in practical terms, to challenge the categories they use, the stories they tell with data, and the accountabilities they hold in an increasingly diverse Aotearoa.