Very different women are represented in the pages of this book, yet their lives are linked through the experience of migration. Most moved from their homelands after the Second World War, many as single women in search of work. Their stories are explored in a series of essays, some of which are life stories that link global forces to local and individual experience. Shifting Centres recovers the voices of migrant women and will contribute to an understanding of cultural difference and ethnic origins in the hybrid society that is Aotearoa-New Zealand.