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Item Navigating precarity : Korean migrants’ experiences and resilience within formal and informal systems in Aotearoa New Zealand : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Psychology at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand(Massey University, 2025) Shin, Eun-HyeMigration has occurred throughout human history for a range of reasons. Today, various cultures and persons continue to come into closer proximity with one another through their migratory journeys; and the resulting complexities of resettlement warrant further investigation. This thesis explores the lived experiences of precariat Korean migrants in Aotearoa New Zealand, focusing on how participants navigate formal (government) and informal (community) support systems to obtain necessities of life. Drawing insights from Narrative Psychology, I investigate how Korean migrants story cultural values and systemic barriers that inform their strategies for addressing the socioeconomic adversities they face as members of the emergent precariat class. This study documents the experiences of three cases from Korean migrant women who were engaged through four waves of semi-structured enhanced interviews (n=12) using drawing and photo-elicitation exercises. Key findings reveal that barriers related to government policies and systems, such as visa restrictions, precarious employment, and limited access to welfare services can exacerbate settlement challenges. Although the extent of participant engagements with Korean community support systems varied, all articulated these cultural support systems as a key source of resources for their obtaining necessities of successful resettlement. This study contributes to knowledge regarding the nuances of migrant precarity by documenting how households obtained employment, housing, food and emotional support through the re-articulation of core Confucian and Christian cultural principles, 관계 (gwangye; 關係 guanxi; relationship or connections); 인 (in; 仁 ren; benevolence); 체면 (chemyeon; 臉 lian; face); 예 (ye; 禮 li; ritual propriety); 효 (hyo; 孝 xiao; filial piety); 충 (chung; 忠 zhong; allegiance); 정 (jeong; affection and attachment); 양심 (yangshim; moral conscience) and 자비심 (jabishim; merciful heart). The informal system formed within the Korean community emerged as a source for material, psychological, spiritual and cultural buffers against precarity, underscoring the significance of re-articulations of Korean cultural values and relational practices of mutual support in diaspora. Cumulatively, insights generated from research such as this can inform future research and policy developments to enhance support for Korean and other migrant communities navigating precarity in Aotearoa New Zealand.Item Life as a breastfeeding-working-mother : understanding challenges and support systems that contribute to the success of breastfeeding among working-mothers in Indonesia : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand(Massey University, 2024-12-16) Swastiningsih, NurfitriaBreastfeeding plays a crucial role in infants and children’s health and development. The success of breastfeeding in Indonesia is still below the expectancy rate set by Government Policy. Maternal employment is one of the reasons for breastfeeding discontinuation with mothers facing lack of support from the workplace. Despite the difficulties, there are mothers who successfully find balance while breastfeeding and working but research undertaken in this area is limited. This study aimed to analyse and better understand the lived experience of breastfeeding-working-mothers who successfully maintain long-term breastfeeding. Since mothers’ lives cannot be separated from their social context, a community psychology approach and ecological model is used to understand mothers’ experiences. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis is employed as a methodological and analytic approach to interpret lived experience from an emic perspective. Data was collected using the semi-structured interviewed which conducted online during the Covid-19 pandemic. Twenty-four interviews were conducted across three participant groups including nine mothers who met the criteria as active breastfeeding-working-mothers having breastfed their babies for a minimum of eighteen months or having experience as breastfeeding-working-mothers for at least two years; seven husbands whose wives met the criteria of the breastfeeding-working-mothers group; and eight co-workers/supervisors of the breastfeeding-working-mothers. Including husbands and co-workers/supervisors was crucial to understand their perspectives and experiences, providing insights into the daily dynamics between mothers and their microsystems. Using the strength-based approach, I focused on understanding mothers’ successful experience to enable and promote more positive and sustaining experiences for other mothers and their community in the future. From the research analysis, multi-layered systems from micro to macrosystems present both supports and challenges for the breastfeeding-working-mothers. Microsystem support was most important to successful breastfeeding journeys as the closest relationships provided a safe space and the sense of security that strengthen mothers against the multi layered challenges in breastfeeding. Findings from this study suggests the importance of enhancing systemic support from micro to macrosystem. Breastfeeding education should involve the husbands and the family members who closely connected with the mothers to enhance the family support. Moreover, improving the healthcare and workplace support is necessary as well as enhancing the provisions of the government policy to create environments enabling working mothers to sustain breastfeeding.Item Understanding why people stay : a case study on volunteer retention at Zealandia Te Māra a Tāne in Wellington : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Psychology at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand(Massey University, 2024) Foley, Natasha JaneConservation volunteering is a meaningful activity that thousands of people regularly participate in. Volunteers are a crucial part of environmental restoration projects, yet the motivational factors that retain this group are under researched. The present project sought to explore the motivations and experiences of long-term volunteers at Zealandia Te Māra a Tāne ecosanctuary in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. Using an online questionnaire with an environmental version of the Volunteer Functions Inventory scale and various open-answer questions, this study explored the motivations and experiences of 109 long-term current volunteers. The mixed methods analysis revealed three key motivations from the VFI were ‘Helping the environment’, ‘Get outside’ and ‘Community’, supporting previous findings in Aotearoa and abroad. Participants were not motivated by ‘Career’, and various organisational or changing abilities impacted their participation over time. Qualitative analysis of open-answer responses highlighted the emotional and relational ways volunteers experienced their motivations for volunteering long-term. Participants contributions were value based, in that they were deeply committed to the restoration goals of Zealandia. They were motivated long-term by a connection to the sanctuary that grew over time and various relational factors that made their contribution meaningful.Item Exploring the experiences of young Afghan men living in Aotearoa New Zealand : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Psychology at Massey University, Aotearoa New Zealand(Massey University, 2024) Saleh, AbrarullahPeople of Afghanistan for many decades travelled to a neighboring country for safety before seeking refuge in other nations with ambitions for a promising future for themselves and their families who have faced famine and tribulations of war. Many have resettled in Aotearoa New Zealand. However, very little is known about young people and their experiences in the Afghan diaspora particularly young men. This research project is an in-depth exploration of the experiences of six young Afghan men living in Aotearoa New Zealand. The narratives and timelines of events shared by these young Afghan men highlight the adversities they experienced alongside their strengths and resilience. The interviews were conducted as research conversations enabling a dialogue between myself and the six participants and this format was driven by the principle of halaqah. The combined theoretical framework for this research was informed by narrative inquiry and Islamic principles of halaqah. I identified several themes related to the experiences of these young Afghan men. Firstly, collective trauma was prominent amongst all participants and had a domino effect on their everyday practice of life. Trauma was also shared by participants and their families, often unconsciously. The various complex negotiations that participants discussed included the parenting and protection they received, issues of masculinity and responsibility, as well as balancing their felt cultural identities as Afghans living in Aotearoa New Zealand. Participants also highlighted experiences of transformation and rites of passage achieved through attending university as it became a platform for development of their independence and reconnection to their faith and culture and finding peace. This research shed light on a rarely discussed phenomenon – the enduring impact of, and the spillover of collective trauma for those living outside of Afghanistan, and how these young people learned to cope with these dynamics.Item Men's work : narratives of engaging with change and becoming non-violent : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand(Massey University, 2024-07-26) Kean, Matthew JosephFamily violence continues to be a harsh reality for many families, whānau and communities around New Zealand. The primary aim of this project is to produce new possibilities for the violence prevention sector by linking theory and community practices supporting men, and their families, with pathways of change in relation to their cultural, gendered, socio-economic, and religious experiences of the world. In partnership with Gandhi Nivas, a community-based organisation providing early intervention support services to families in the Auckland region, I collaborate with men accessing Gandhi Nivas for support to bring to the fore an ethics of care empowering non-normative processes of change towards non-violence. Informed with the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, I provide an autoethnographic analysis of fieldwork experiences, 1:1 interviews, and a weekly men’s social support group, expanding on Rosi Braidotti’s nomadic theory to privilege narratives of events, felt experiences, and embodied memories of different institutional, legal, political, and socio-cultural forces conditioning men’s every day social worlds. With narratives as a form of re-remembering men’s sticky networks of affective memories, I experiment with nomadic subjectivity as a cartographic methodology capable of tracing sensorial data with enlivening moments of bodily sensation. This is not a straightforward task. A complex project, I craft a mosaic of affective connections with selections of notes, transcripts and events reverberating flows of materiality that produce changes to specific social, political, gendered, and cultural locations, enabling me to reflexively analyse what experiences follow me, what social processes I have articulated, and what processes are left off the page. I elaborate an understanding of nomadic subjectivity as a tactic enabling me to bear witness to both men’s capacities for violence and non-violence within men’s social world, by unfolding affective memories with a series of textually connected hesitations, pauses, and irruptions of social forces conditioning how we experience the world. Informed with Deleuzian political thought, nomadic narratives help me materialise different, unpredictable arrangements of fluxes, flows, and forces with indefinite processes of individuation, providing different potentials, capacities, and limits past the limits of normative knowability. Retrospectively evoking the complexities of following the affective movement of men, which we bring out into the community and to others, this research positions non-violence not just as the absence of violence, but as an iterative process of embodying variations in arrangements and connections of thought processes, propelling alternative modes of relations empowering an ethics of care and concern for others through which violence becomes less possible, reduced, and mitigated. Engaging with an organisation that celebrates difference within ethical frameworks of care informing a diversity of professional practices and experiences, this collaborative, community-oriented research project embraces embodied understandings of change processes men experience whilst in the care of Gandhi Nivas, and puts to work DeleuzoGuattarian non-normative subjectivities of affectivity and intensity as entry points to resonate embodied materiality I cannot know—but feel. With men invoking becomings of non-violence unable to be represented with normative masculinities and hegemonic notions of violence and non-violence, writing a nomadic subject enables me to attend to how different experiences of forces act on and through us, affirming empowering productions of a self with the material and discursive possibilities of men’s daily life.