Since the 1960s there has been accelerated migration from the Pacific region, as Islanders begin to seek employment and access to services in the metropolitan states on the fringes of the region: mainly New Zealand, Australia and the USA. International migration remains primarily a Polynesian phenomenon, and a phenomenon of the past half-century. Many people from Niue, the Cook Islands, American Samoa, Tonga and Samoa have moved either to New Zealand (whence some have gone on to Australia) or, increasingly, as the New Zealand economy has stagnated and immigration restrictions have become tighter, to the USA (Connell 1987a) — legally or illegally. For the smallest states, including the Cook Islands, Niue, Tokelau and Pitcairn, migration has been particularly dramatic since a majority of the ethnic population live overseas. Niue, Tokelau and the Cook Islands have experienced declining populations in the past quarter of a century, while it has long been forecast that the smallest state, Pitcairn, might simply disappear as its population falls below what is sustainable (Connell 1988b). Niue too is presently seeking immigration from Tuvalu as its population has declined sharply in the recent context of Cyclone Heta and a long-term ‘culture of migration’ (Connell 2006). Larger states, such as Samoa and Tonga, have experienced very limited population growth as emigration has become something of a ‘safety valve’ for high population growth rates (cf. Ware 2005), but more obviously for, at best, slowly growing economies.

In the larger countries of Melanesia, economies have perhaps been more viable, political ties less effective and emigration conspicuous by its absence, though there has been significant emigration from Fiji, especially of Indo-Fijians. This dramatically accelerated after the 1987 and 2000 coups, with migration to Australia, New Zealand and also Canada. Quite new patterns of skilled migration have taken nurses from Fiji to a diversity of destinations from the Marshall Islands and Palau to New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates (e.g., Rokoduru 2002; Connell 2004b), and took rugby players beyond the ‘traditional’ destinations of New Zealand and Australia to Japan and the United Kingdom. Even newer patterns of emigration have become particularly important in the past couple of years with a new structure of migration to the Middle East, emphasising the manner in which new and highly paid overseas employment opportunities are being grasped firmly, even in a threatening security and social context.

In mid-2005, some 134 Fijian soldiers were deployed in Iraq, and the Government was contemplating sending another 90 to join the peacekeeping forces, continuing a long-existing policy of Fijian soldiers working for the UN, for example, in Lebanon. A second group of Fijian soldiers was in Iraq as members of the British Army, with one estimate putting this number as high as 1,000 (Pareti 2005a). Others were peacekeepers in the Solomon Islands (as they had earlier been in Bougainville). Many former Fijian soldiers were employed as security guards for private companies in the major Iraqi cities, and other Fijians were employed in support roles in Kuwait, covering engineering, mechanical and IT roles.

Estimates of the numbers recruited to the Middle East from Fiji are variable but have gone as high as 20,000, within little more than two years (Pareti 2005b), though this figure relates to the numbers recruited, who had paid fees of more than $F150 (emphasising the demand), rather than those who had actually migrated, which might be about 2,500. Recruitment has covered all regions of Fiji, appears to have focused entirely on ethnic Fijians, and recruitment companies have allocated quotas to churches.

Recruitment drives have touched on circuits of the Methodist Church to the extent of job quotas for specific church circuits. On farmlands in Baulevu, beside the Rewa River, groups of men wait and hope they will be included in the 150 quota given to the Kasavu Methodist Church. In Raiwaqa in Suva, and Nadera, the Methodist Church has offered to use church funds to pay for application fees for members hoping for a job in Kuwait if they agree to repay the money. In Dreketi Tikina, in Macuata, a village used its development fund to pay for application fees. Similar stories have been heard from Koro Island and other villages around the country (Pareti 2005a).

Such a village basis for migration, and support for and selection of migrants, is reminiscent of earlier labour migration schemes to New Zealand (see below). There are, however, real disadvantages, in terms of the loss of skills to Fiji (Pareti 2005b) and circumstances where more than a dozen workers have been killed in the Middle East.

So substantial has this migration become that a recent study of migration and remittances in Fiji (and Tonga) revealed that as many as one-third of all households in Fiji had at least one overseas migrant, and remitter (compared with 60 per cent in Tonga), and 43 per cent of households received remittances (compared with 90 per cent in Tonga). In circumstances where households might be the migrant unit (especially for Indo-Fijians), this is a remarkably high percentage, after a relatively short period of engagement in international labour migration, and already reflects the substantial presence of Fijians in the security industry in the Middle East (Brown et al. 2006). Moreover, Indo-Fijian households were also remittance recipients, contrary to earlier beliefs that few received remittances. It has been stated that the earnings of 250 Fijian soldiers working in Iraq for a UK security company totalled nearly $F5 million in a six-month period in 2004–05, with all that pay being sent back to bank accounts in Fiji (Pacific Islands Report, April 14, 2005). Recent estimates have suggested that remittances to Fiji were about $A269 million in 2005 (Brown et al. 2006) or would reach about $F350 million in 2005 (Pareti 2005b), well up from the $A71 million in 2002, and substantially more than transfers from Fiji (Gani 2005). These recent events in Fiji emphasise and dramatise the ‘outward urge’ that has become so powerful in the region.

The former US territories of Micronesia — Palau, the FSM and particularly the Marshall Islands — have increasingly exhibited similar trends (Ahlburg and Levin, 1990; Hezel and Levin 1996; Hezel and Lightfoot 2005), with an equally substantial growth in recent migration flows. In the past 20 years, emigration accelerated from the FSM and the Marshall Islands, as the signing of the Compacts of Free Association guaranteed migration rights in the USA and its territories. Between 1990 and 2004, more than 13,000 people left the Marshall Islands for the USA, especially after government jobs were lost in public sector reforms (a situation that has also been true of the Cook Islands), so that one in five Marshallese now lives in the USA (Fiji Times, September 7, 2005). FSM is following a similar course. The migration process in Micronesia is becoming increasingly similar to that in other parts of the South Pacific: a steady outflow, the growth of relatively permanent urban communities overseas (beyond student groups), the return flow of remittances and growing interest in migration.

Kiribati and Tuvalu have been characterised by migration for even longer, dating back into the 19th century, but of contract labour — mainly to Nauru (for employment in the phosphate mining industry) or to work in the international shipping industry (for which both countries have training schools) — hence return migration is normal, and the impact on national population change much less significant. In the past decade, Tuvalu has experienced accelerated migration, and has requested new opportunities in metropolitan states, while the Tuvalu community in New Zealand is growing steadily. Nowhere does the demand for migration appear to be decelerating.

Interest in migration has long been such that in Samoa, when prospects for emigration were particularly poor at the start of the 1980s, the ‘broken dreams’ of potential migrants contributed to a significant rise in youth suicide (Macpherson and Macpherson 1987). At a national level the economic future of several states hinges partly on the continued flow of remittances, and hence on some continuity of migration (Ahlburg 1991; Connell and Brown 1995). The possibility of blocked migration in the future, a situation ever present in public debate (Macpherson 1992; Shankman 1993), emphasises the potential problem of a high rate of natural increase in case emigration is substantially reduced, especially since there is now a ‘culture of migration’ where emigration is normal, expected and anticipated, and an important element in household and national social and economic systems.

In recent years migration opportunities in metropolitan states have tended to decline, and are increasingly targeted towards skilled migrants rather than family reunions. Thus migration flows from the Pacific are increasingly likely to be of skilled migrants from various sectors including health (Connell 2004a, 2004b) and education (Voigt-Graf 2003), as the overall number of migrants from the independent states has tended to fall. Structural changes within metropolitan states have meant that certain sectors, notably health, are short of skilled workers. Pacific Island nurses, usually entering the bottom levels of the ‘global health care chain’, have migrated much greater distances, to the United Arab Emirates and beyond, as demand intensifies. Before the early 1980s, male migration had preceded female or family migration throughout the South Pacific, but there is now minimal gender bias in the numbers of Pacific Islanders migrating to the Pacific Rim; however, preferences are shifting towards women. In many cases, families migrate as units either as skilled migrants on the basis of one of the spouse’s qualifications or as family migrants. There are, however, flows of specific occupational categories, which are either male or female dominated. For instance, Fijian women have migrated as nurses, domestic helpers and care-givers, while Fijian men have moved overseas as soldiers, tourism workers and employees of private security companies (Voigt-Graf and Connell 2005).

Thus in recent years migration has become more complex, globalisation has extended the number of destinations and brought longer migration chains, migration has become more selective, and part of that selectivity has favoured the migration of women. The more remote and rural parts of the island states are even less likely to be perceived as favourable places of residence. This has been matched with continued urbanisation throughout the island region. Although the largest concentrations of Pacific Islanders are in overseas destinations, such as Auckland and Honolulu, urbanisation now characterises the Pacific (Connell and Lea 2002), especially where international migration remains largely absent.