In this century alone there has been a spectacular increase in overseas migration from the Pacific, and in unmet demand for it, from individuals, whose dreams might turn to dust, and from governments, who have put increased pressure on countries such as Australia to relax what are perceived to be overly restrictive and even unethical migration policies. After about 30 years of independence, and disappointment over the challenges and fruits of development, there is a new outward urge that is beginning to spill over into Melanesia. That urge parallels labour demands in destinations such as the USA, Australia and the Middle East, especially in the agricultural, security and health sectors, and a slight possibility that metropolitan migration policies might be relaxed in favour of Pacific Islanders. Migration, already changing fast, might be on the verge of taking quite new forms.
The extent of international migration, and growing demands for migration opportunities, well evident in Fiji, are indicative of a region where the best economic opportunities are seen by many households to be overseas rather than in the islands themselves. For even relatively large states such as Samoa and Tonga there are now as many ethnic Samoans and Tongans overseas as there are at home. The future — a diasporic future — is perceived to be elsewhere. While the continuity of Pitcairn emphasises that the Pacific will not become the ‘earth’s empty quarter’ (Ward 1989), it will be increasingly dependent on migration opportunities in other parts of the world. Indeed, there is a growing belief that ‘[s]ustainable development in the 21st century, as in New Zealand and Australia, will depend heavily on opportunities for young people to travel overseas for training and employment’ (Bedford 2003: 37). For small island states that dependence is both positive and negative.
Within countries, migration occurs primarily out of a context of poverty of income and opportunities and unemployment, yet this nexus is itself also one outcome of internal migration, and is concentrated in the largest towns of Melanesia. The most visible and quantifiable existence of deprivation occurs in island states which have potential national development prospects, yet almost no international migration. In Melanesia colonial partition and regulation have lessened wider connections, and even reduced the extent of older forms of circulation. By contrast, in Polynesia and Micronesia, where local development opportunities are few, international migration — rarely in contexts of poverty and unemployment — has intensified and created extensive diasporic communities.
In the short term, a number of distinct benefits accrue to individual migrants and their families and to the sending societies. Migration has reduced the level of open and disguised unemployment, although it has also contributed to a loss of skilled human resources in the ‘modern’ sector. In the case of migration of Tongans and Samoans to the USA alone, ‘[e]migration results in the permanent loss of young educated skilled labour from the Pacific Island nations. Skilled labour is in short supply and emigration probably hinders development’ (Ahlburg and Levin 1990: 84). This is certainly true more generally in the health sector where more costly replacements have been required (Brown and Connell 2004a; Connell 2004a); it is true of the government sector in Samoa (Liki 1994), and certainly also true elsewhere. Exceptions occur where wages and salary levels are more comparable with those in the main migrant destinations, as in several politically dependent territories, such as the Cook Islands (Hooker and Varcoe 1999), though the Cook Islands and Guam have struggled to achieve the return migration of health workers (Pacbeat, September 15, 2005).
Remittances compensate for skill losses, though they flow largely to the private sector and only incidentally support the public sector where most skills are generated. Moreover, remittances are maintained for very long periods — beyond what has hitherto been recorded in most other world regions — and in quite new socioeconomic contexts (Morton 1998, 1999: 237). The most striking conclusion of the most detailed studies is that remittances do not decline over time, emphasising that migrants are ultimately motivated by factors other than altruistic family support, such as asset accumulation and investment at ‘home’, as the intergenerational flow of remittances takes on a more individualistic element (Brown 1997, 1998). Despite an abundance of predictions that remittances will fade over time, as migrants find new commitments elsewhere, they have resolutely failed to do so in quite different contexts (Brown et al. 2006; Simati and Gibson 2001). As long as there are needy kin in the islands, remittances will reach them. This also reflects the pervasiveness of island social mores, and perhaps some discrimination in destinations that increases the desire to maintain island social ties. For whatever combination of reasons, there is room for some degree of optimism that remittance flows will not decline significantly in the near future, but alongside pessimism that this will not continue indefinitely, especially for non-migrant generations. Thus far at least, MIRAB has proved sustainable, and in Melanesia even worthy of emulation.
That conclusion depends in large part on the continuity of migration flows. Ordinarily it might be expected that this would continue where possible in circumstances where there have been structural reforms that reduce public sector employment, wages and salaries remain low and unequal, working conditions are sometimes difficult and hierarchical, commodity prices stagnate and there are many kin overseas. Moreover, for some skilled groups such as nurses, there is now international recruitment. But if opportunities decline and, as Muliaina has argued, if there is a continued tightening of immigration policies in major Samoan destinations, for whatever reason, ‘the standard of living of rural Samoans, as opposed to urban dwellers, may be expected to decline in the next decade’ (Muliaina 2001: 20). If that is true of Samoa it is true of all other Pacific states where there is presently a significant dependence on remittances. Moreover, Muliaina reached that conclusion primarily for a Samoan village about 12 kilometres from the capital where there were several business ventures and commuting to urban employment. Remote locations would face greater difficulties.
While international migration has had positive and negative effects in the Pacific, the significance of the positive effects (particularly increased standards of living) must be contrasted with the limited development potential of many states and their failure to achieve significant economic growth or sustainable development. In most of the South Pacific, the greater self-sufficiency that would follow a decline of migration and remittances would be difficult and painful (Connell 1980). A quarter of a century later these statements can be re-emphasised in a wider context. Demand for migration and remittances is likely to be sustained, alongside rising expectations, in conditions of limited national economic growth. The voices of those who urge more self-reliant development strategies have been stilled. This new diaspora has remarkably quickly come to characterise contemporary Pacific Island states. In this context the need to maximise the benefits from migration and remittances becomes ever more pressing.
Despite the immediate benefits of international migration, long-term international migration of skilled workers might impose considerable costs. Governments have not controlled or directed the use of remittances (and nor have they sought to do so) while the rising material consumption levels following migration tend to generate increased demand for consumer goods. Expectations never decline. This demand can usually be satisfied only by further migration, as long as other sources of national income prove difficult to develop. Inequalities might increase, and the establishment of population (and migration) policies might be delayed further.
It is now a commonplace that about as many Tongans and Samoans are overseas as are at ‘home’, while in the smallest Polynesian states the balance has shifted overwhelmingly overseas (and especially to New Zealand). Notions of home thus change, provoking anxious and partisan debates over the extent to which cultures are retained or transformed, and become hybrid or syncretic, resulting in new phrases such as ‘rooted cosmopolitanism’ (Clifford 2001) to reflect the clash or combination of new residences, roots and routes. Traditions become reconstructed, articulated in ever changing forms and evident across now deterritorialised nations, islands and cultures. While identities might be hybrid and hyphenated, they might also, as in the case of Samoans in New Zealand, represent successful cosmopolitans ‘at ease in multiple worlds, rather than natives of place torn by new and multiple allegiances’ (Yi-Fu Tuan, quoted in Western 1992: 269; Connell 1995; Anae 2001). While cultures shift, citizenship changes and new loyalties emerge, economic ties to home have remained remarkably resilient.
Migrants and their children remain ‘migrants’ though their identities have changed. New technology has made connectivity more fashionable and more feasible, as the Pacific, fully one-third of the Earth’s surface, has experienced a new ‘cartography of compression’ (Kempf 1999), where telephones, email and chat pages have created ‘cyber-Polys’ (Morton 1999). Home nations and islands remain powerful unifying symbols for migrants and their children. Hence in these new transnational meta-societies, and
[i]n an uncertain global political economy, even the most cosmopolitan Samoan must ensure that Samoa is not merely a nostalgic fantasy, but a potentially real destination. … Migration is rarely absolute, unambivalent or final; it is not a cause and consequence of a definite break with a cultural life that is part of history, but a partial and conditional state, characterised by ambiguity and indeterminacy. A fixed status presupposes that the future can be foretold. Uncertainty defines the experience of migration, even in second generations. (Connell 1995: 277)
Contraction and compression of the world through migration and electronics, and their consequences, from remittances to inter-regional kinship, have widened international ties, yet ultimately, in a wide variety of contexts, from the Melanesian island of Kairiru to the Polynesian atolls of Tokelau, those migrants who are regarded as successful are often those who have contributed most to the village (Smith 1994: 227; Huntsman and Hooper 1996: 324). These are ‘the conquerors of the outside world’ (Godelier 1986), in new guises.
However the impact of migration might be judged and debated, in terms of diverse migration streams, and ideologies from economic growth to dependency (van Fossen 2005), it is evident that alongside growing numbers of potential migrants there is growing interest in migration in island governments. Those who are most involved are those who have assessed migration most positively and ‘voted with their feet’ — or would like to do so. There might be greater inequalities in some sending contexts, at village or national levels, but there is little doubt that migration has provided new and welcome development opportunities. Pragmatism has overwhelmed intellectual doubts; short-term need has triumphed over long-term planning. Opportunities are eagerly sought. While many migrants are indeed within the disadvantaged secondary sector of metropolitan labour markets, and they and others have been deskilled during migration, they have accepted outcomes that, however disappointing, might well be superior to what has been left behind. Especially in circumstances where there appear to be possibilities for new forms of migration, and especially to Australia, migration will continue.
Migration has become an even more conscious household strategy, because of its crucial role in generating remittances, and there is growing evidence that island households are encouraging training and employment in careers with scope for migration. It is not yet evident that states themselves are training such highly skilled individuals for migration, but there are precedents in Kiribati and Tuvalu, where seamen are trained for the international labour market, and there is definite interest. Indeed, from the northern Pacific, the ‘Philippines model’ of training an excess of health workers for the ‘global care chain’ provides a possibility for smaller island states. While it might be expected that national development policies should encourage return migration, and such policies exist (Connell 2004a), alongside the recruitment, training and retention of those with skills, it now seems unlikely that policies will be developed and implemented to discourage or prevent further skilled migration, especially of women, but rather that skilled migration might be encouraged.
At a very different scale, international agencies, undoubtedly in a context of gathering aid fatigue, are increasingly stressing the role of diasporas and return migration in national development — an unreasonable focus on the potential role of emigrants, not least because their remittances support households, rather than the nations they have moved away from. Such a new form of ‘international self-reliance’ is inherently problematic.
The narrow yet open economies of the region are influenced increasingly by transitions in the international economic system, and particularly the superior growth of Pacific Rim nations, which has enabled migration. Foreign investment, tourism, new communications and intensified trade have drawn the Pacific Islands more comprehensively into the global system. In rather different ways, the futures of each of the Polynesian and Micronesian states (except perhaps Guam and French Polynesia) are bound up with the present and future of international migration and the ability of these countries to seek out new potential destinations overseas. All have retained interests in overseas employment opportunities. Tuvalu and Kiribati have experienced resettlement overseas, and Tonga has leased agricultural land in Asia. Tuvalu’s Prime Minister has stressed that his country is continuing to seek employment and migration opportunities in Australia and that Tuvalu ‘would not take no for an answer’ on the provision of either employment or education opportunities, regarded as necessary for economic survival and even more critical in the face of future sea-level rise (Connell 1999, 2003d). Rising material consumption levels following migration have generated increased demand for consumer goods, a demand that can be satisfied only by further migration, as migrants bypass the small towns of the Pacific to seek superior living conditions beyond.
The shift from a more broadly based structure of migration towards more skilled migration has created a new dimension of inequality. No longer are the poor so easily able to move (though that was never easy, at least from independent states, and that might change if guest worker schemes are [re]introduced), whereas the relatively rich (or at least those who have acquired training and marketable skills) are actively courted and recruited. There is growing international competition not just for ‘the creative class’ (Florida 2005) but for a wide range of skilled workers. This inequality also has national dimensions, most affecting the relatively poor Melanesian countries, where access to training opportunities is inferior to that in other parts of the region (though the loss of skilled workers might be unsustainable). New wine varieties are filling old bottles.
Uneven development is unlikely to decrease, but while poverty is evident in several states, few governments recognise its existence, and even fewer have sought policy solutions. The rhetoric of self-reliance, at national and household levels, has disguised a situation in which there has been a growing dependence on external sources of funding, whether from aid, remittances or investment. This has, in part, contributed to new forms of socioeconomic inequality in cities, and incipient class formation, though ethnic and regional divisions and traditional power structures are of pervasive importance. International migration has deferred and mitigated, but not resolved, issues of poverty but also of development. The combination of weak economies, overburdened bureaucracies, urban unemployment, fractured social networks and uneven development challenge notions of sustainable development. Most Pacific Island states are likely to remain weak for the foreseeable future, become increasingly dependent on the wider world and require new forms of external support and intervention.International migration constitutes one increasingly less hesitant solution: an expanding and unsatisfied outward urge, a necessary bottom-up globalisation that will always be uneven and somewhat unsatisfying.