Abstract
Indians are New Zealand's second largest immigrant group after Chinese. Children and youth
make up a sizable share of the Indian community in New Zealand, and their life journey
includes integrating into the host culture while maintaining their native culture. As immigrants,
part of this experience includes bullying and victimisation in schools, much of which is the
result of ethnic stereotyping. Previous research documents that Asian youth in New Zealand
schools face bullying, but little is known about how bullying affects Indian students. This study
contributes to this area of scholarship by examining the bullying victimisation, witnessing, and
perpetration experiences of Indian immigrant adolescents in New Zealand. A pragmatic
transformative paradigm and the ecological framework guide the study. Influenced by an
insider positionality, it uses an explanatory sequential mixed-methods approach, drawing on
survey and focus group data from Indian high school students to gain a deeper understanding
of the issue.
The survey findings revealed that the majority of participants have been victims of or witnesses
to bullying in the previous school year. Verbal, social, and racial bullying are the most prevalent
forms of victimisation and witnessing. More than half of the participants identified themselves
as verbal perpetrators. The bullying experiences were associated with family, school, and social
factors, including gender, birth country, school type, low self-esteem, limited conflict
resolution skills, low parental support and a poor school climate. These imply that the numerous
socioecological factors have an effect on students' bullying experiences. The focus group
results show that Indian students' victimisation experiences are influenced by cultural
stereotypes like skin colour, food, language and accent, popular culture, and employment type
(like dairy owner). The study discovered that while students are aware of the systematic
measures in place in schools to address bullying, the majority of them do not feel confident
about reporting incidents of bullying. The research recommends a culture-based approach for
school stakeholders and policymakers to address the issue of bullying in schools directed
against Indian immigrant pupils.