When the State Tries to See Like a Family: Cultural Pluralism and the Family Group Conference in New Zealand

Abstract

In 1989 New Zealand legislators revised their child welfare legislation, partially in response to Māori and Pacific Island critiques that the previous state‐centered regime had failed to take into account their culturally distinctive techniques for being a family and had failed to support culturally specific practices of decision making and conflict resolution. Legislators instituted a new and increasingly popular form of alternative dispute resolution—the family group conference—in an attempt to create a bureaucratic response to family dysfunction that was capacious enough to allow for any and every family's involvement. In the process, however, they continued to understand what counts as a family along nuclear family lines. Against the New Zealand lawmakers’ assumptions, this article illustrates how, in the context of transnational migration, Samoan families experience tensions between the nuclear family unit that lawmakers envision and their lived extended kinship groups. As extended families, Samoan migrant families’ goal is not to produce socially productive citizens for the nation‐state, but rather to produce a transnational family reputation. Thus, despite the legislators’ efforts to create culturally sensitive forms for family conflict resolution, Samoan social workers and community counselors had to translate the legislative act for Samoan families, negotiating and managing the conflicting presuppositions of what it means to be a nuclear family embedded in the act and what it means to be an extended family for Samoans.

Is Family Group Conferencing a Culturally Adequate Method outside the Origin of New Zealand? A Systematic Review

“…However, McCrae and Fusco (2010), found that caregivers felt no more involved in the decision-making process with child welfare services when participating in FGC. Cohen and Gershon (2015) demonstrate that the idea of a "family" in FGC is not representative for all cultures and contexts. Barn and Das (2016) argue that cultural competence with FGC requires reflection and understanding of family context; including both culture, religion and language in addition to macro-structures such as poverty and discrimination.…”

“…Seven studies addressing culture surmise that FGC is culturally adequate (Fulcher, 2001;O'Shaughnessy et al, 2010;Joan Pennell & Burford, 1994;Roby et al, 2015;Sheets et al, 2009;Valenti, 2017;Waites, Macgowan, Pennell, Carlton-LaNey, & Weil, 2004), while three studies found FGC promising, but do not offer any definitive conclusions on cultural adequacy (Chand & Thoburn, 2005;McCrae & Fusco, 2010;Rauktis, Huefner, & Cahalane, 2011). Finally, three studies, Cohen and Gershon (2015), Herzberg (2013) and Barn and Das (2016), assert that FGC is not directly culturally adaptable being implemented as a manual-based method.…”

“…The ongoing debate about re-colonizing or decolonizing in FGC research is not so palpable. There are two exceptions to this overall picture, namely Moyle and Tauri (2016), who warn about the danger of re-colonization, and Cohen and Gershon (2015), who highlight cultural differences in the construction of families.…”

A Therapist’s Mandate?: Integrating an Ethics of Care into Custody Law by Recognising and Responding to Post‐separation Parental Loss of Connection with Children

“…As a consequence it may be appropriate to include grandparents and other members of the extended family/whanau in post‐family story project groups. Organisers of such groups might be well advised to reflect on the implications of the critical literature emerging in relation to Family Group Conferences (see for example, Cohen & Gershon, ; Kaho, ).…”

Creating Kin, Remaking Kinship: An Exploration of Queer Experiences of Motherhood in Aotearoa New Zealand

“…A collection of longitudinal studies suggest that less than half of young New Zealander's live with both of their parents for their entire childhood and that many are raised in blended and step-families (Flynn 2016), with over 24 percent receiving significant care from their grandparents (Statistics New Zealand 2017). Those who identify as Pasifika, Indian, and Chinese (all demographics that have grown significantly in Aotearoa New Zealand over the past 20 years), are also more likely than Pākehā to conceptualise their primary family unit as being over multiple households, and as multigenerational and extended, rather than nuclear (Cribb 2009;Cohen and Gershon 2015). Additionally, despite the increasing urbanisation of Māori, and the resulting shift away from communal living (Mikaere 1994, 130-134), whānau remains the primary way of understanding relatedness, which transcends biogenetic connectedness and household organisation (Mckenzie and Carter 2010).…”