A paradigm of transnationalism for migration studies

What the paper says

This paper is both more theoretical and highly applied; both methodological and policy-oriented. Empirically until recently there has been little work on momentum effects. By way of case-studies on momentum effects, the paper reviews published policy-oriented work on New Zealand on national growth and age-structural transitions; on fertility patterns in New Zealand; and on survivorship and longevity, and the more local discussion of Maori-Pakeha differentials. The conclusion is that more attention must be paid to momentum. It calls for the demographic community to lead in moving policy analyses away from demography as a naive art form to one that is more multi-dimensional and sophisticated. Stories that Demography Tells Demography deals with the most central and intimate parts of the human experience: sex, conception and birth, socialization, marriage and family, work and changing places, and, finally, death, whether this occurs in bed or is due to violence, the external causes as violence is so cutely called. This is inherently interesting for it is the stuff of Soap Opera, but by presenting this in a very technical way some in our community manage successfully to make demography’s soap opera boring. So what, then, could be more exciting than the subject of my paper, momentum? I can see you waiting in anticipation as the very word grabs you and sends chills up and down your spine. But perhaps instead, you are wondering what in the heck is momentum, and what on earth has it got to do with all those saucy, vital subjects that I have just outlined. Well rather a lot as it happens, but in discussing this we have to go back to technical * Professor of Demography, University of Waikato and James Cook Fellow, Royal Society of New Zealand. Email pool@waikato.ac.nz