International movements (see below) are paralleled by intensified migration within particular countries. This migration has been characterised by movement away from remote islands and isolated rural areas to more accessible coastal locations and particularly to urban areas, which have usually grown steadily in recent years. Thus national populations have become increasingly concentrated on the more central urbanised islands, accentuating problems of service delivery in remote areas. This situation has in turn accentuated and accounted for further movement away from isolated areas.

The depopulation of small islands and remote mountainous areas is widespread. Employment opportunities and services are concentrated in the urban centres and on small island states; where manpower and capital are often limited, centralisation is inevitable at some scale. The more educated have tended to migrate first and migrants have left many rural areas to take advantage of superior urban educational and employment opportunities. In Blacksands settlement (Port Vila) some 7 per cent of families had moved there for better education for their children (Mecartney 2001). In other parts of Melanesia, migrants have moved away from inadequate rural opportunities, not because of the perceived superiority of urban opportunities, but out of increasing rural poverty.

In most Pacific countries, earning power is concentrated increasingly among urban bureaucracies while the absence of developed state mechanisms (such as progressive taxation, unemployment benefits and pension schemes) for affecting transfers of income minimises redistribution towards rural areas other than through personal remittances. Yet ultimately an economic rationale, real or latent, underlies most migration moves. Simply stated, in Port Vila, one of the most important reasons was ‘long winem smal vatu from no gat rod long winim vatu long aelan’ (to earn a little money since there’s no way to earn money on the home island) (Mitchell 2000: 172). For many that is reason enough. Growing inequalities, coupled with rising expectations, are the concomitants of increased migration.

Within the Melanesian states especially, remittances from urban to rural areas continue to play an important role, especially where migration is from small islands, such as Ponam or Ware in PNG. Otherwise they are of lesser economic significance, though they might be of considerable social significance (Mecartney 2001). Even for remote parts of large islands such as Tanna, Vanuatu, however, remittances from urban migrants are the single largest source of income in several villages (Winthorpe 2004).

Expectations are rising steadily but, at the same time, employment crises in many urban areas, growing populations, inflation, static (or even falling) commodity prices and the declining availability of land in some areas, slowly increase the gap between expectation and reality, at the same time as it becomes more visible. This increasing gap is a critical problem. Experiences and perceptions of the wider world, its values and its material rewards further underlie the migratory experience.

The existence of kin in urban areas is a major influence and support. Not only do they provide demonstrations, or create images, of an impressive lifestyle, they might also provide remittances (the visible monetary symbols of success), fares and accommodation for new migrants to the city. Indeed, migration is often best seen ‘as an almost inevitable decision that they [villagers] will have to make sooner or later and once this view is accepted a sort of migration momentum develops’ (Walsh 1982: 7). The spreading taste for commodities has influenced work habits and, for many in the Pacific, the largest cities and the metropolitan countries exercise a powerful allure, offer a sense of future and simply validate migration. In urban areas, especially in Melanesia and Micronesia, growing differentiation has occurred between those permanent urban residents who are relatively poor (including some long-established urban villagers and the migrants from poor rural areas) and others who are well off. The particularly disadvantaged had little or no support from the rural economy and no opportunity to move away from town when poverty, rising unemployment, old age or social disorder made urban life difficult, at least for those who were, in one way or another, ‘trapped’ in town. In Blacksands, insecurity over land tenure and employment ensured that migrants contemplated return, but most realistically believed they would remain in town for their children’s sake (Mecartney 2001: 80). As in many international contexts (see below) return migration is constantly deferred (‘until children leave school’, ‘until enough money is saved’, ‘until retirement’, etc.) until the point where it becomes implausible. The combination of growing urban permanency, high unemployment and increased expectations has put considerable pressure on urban services.

Until relatively recently, urbanisation in the Pacific was viewed positively, but since independence attitudes to urbanisation have hardened, through prejudice against squatter settlements. In PNG especially opposition to urbanisation has continued, from urban authorities and influential leaders (Connell and Lea 2002; Goddard 2001; Koczberski et al. 2001) in the guise of achieving order and cleanliness, reducing crime and unemployment, freeing land for business development and demonstrating that the State was not weak. Pervasive opposition to urbanisation has delayed and discouraged the development of coordinated plans for urban management, and hence the reduction of urban development problems. Ironically there is no evidence that it has slowed rural-urban migration.