Abstract
Studies of migrant wellbeing often lack an integrated approach that contextualises migrants' experiences within social, ecological, and cultural transformations. Especially discussions around embodiment of their adaptations, values, and creative practices related to placemaking are missing. This qualitative research project examines the experiences of 38 individuals who deliberately chose an eco-creative life after migrating to Aotearoa New Zealand. Spanning three years (2021–2024), this ethnographic, multimethodological study explores how these migrants—facing post-pandemic and climate uncertainties from their new embeddedness in an island geosystem—engaged with their ecological surroundings through artistic and everyday practices to pursue self-sustaining, regenerative lives. Recognising these individuals as 'eco-creative practitioners' or 'migrant eco-creators', I ask: In what ways do the eco-creative practices of migrants in Aotearoa New Zealand embody their pursuit of geographic happiness?
To answer this question, I employed sensory ethnography and sensuous geography with a phenomenological approach, investigating how eco-creative migrants use their bodies to interact with natural forces and materials in their local environment while navigating social challenges. Snowball sampling identified eco-creative migrants who self-reported a sense of belonging to Aotearoa. Participants were aged between 20 and 70 years old and from various migration backgrounds. I gathered data through 24 in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted in participants' homes, studios, or practice sites, along with multimedia field notes, artworks, and poems. Conducting immersive fieldwork in Dunedin, Wanaka, Christchurch, and Auckland, I observed their socio-spatial mobility, sensory experiences, and creative practices to explore how they establish emplacement, social connectedness, and wellbeing. Data analysis was iterative and interpretive, using NVivo for emic and etic coding to establish emergent codes and themes between data sources to analyse. Focusing on interpretive framework, I triangulated meaningful place, mindful body, and sensory experience, drawing on affordance theory.
The study reveals five key findings. First, eco-creative migrants' sensuous engagements with natural environments fostered relational taskscapes, supporting identity transformation as part of coping with individual and social suffering. Second, land-body intimacies reflected the accessibility of New Zealand's urban spaces, generating security and trust in human-environment relationships, providing emotional values and enhancing community resilience. Third, eco-creative migrants' temporal-spatial and cultural experiences reshaped Aotearoa landscapes, creating a fluid sense of home through geographic happiness. Fourth, connectedness with nature through creative placemaking embodied their pursuit of authenticity, deepened social bonds, fostered socio-political changes through regenerative education, and thus strengthened geographic happiness among the migrant eco-creators. Finally, the migrants' emplaced eco-creativity enabled self-healing through material and spiritual exchanges with the Aotearoa landscape, embodied in both artistic and practical forms.
In conclusion, eco-creative migrants in Aotearoa pursue geographic happiness as a means of adapting to migratory mobility and navigating the challenges posed by the power geometries they encountered. New Zealand's nature-connected urban spaces foster a deeper relationship with the environment, strengthening these migrants' hybrid identities and enhancing their social resilience. Through sensuous engagement with the environment, the migrant eco-creative practitioners cultivated what can be described as a 'native body', contributing to both ecological and planetary health and thus shaping the ecology of their geographic happiness. I argue that environmental care and a deep connection with nature are central to the migrant eco-creators' wellbeing. Moreover, land-body connectedness plays a crucial role in building resilient communities by fostering eco-creativity and ecological-cultural solidarity. These findings offer valuable insights for supporting migrant health and wellbeing to combine natural care and social care, and creative strategies while informing immigration policymaking that integrates ecological, social and cultural dimensions.