The lack of attention being paid to the potential impact of a decline in remittances on Tonga’s long-term economic security is of concern, and has inspired the research I am conducting, with funding from the Australian Research Council. This research involves investigating the transnational practices of second-generation Tongans, particularly those in Australia, in order to discover the form and extent of their ties to their parents’ homeland. Transnational ties are taken to be all forms of connection between a homeland and its population overseas, from phone calls and emails to remittances of money and goods and informal trade links. My use of ‘transnational’ also takes into account the multidirectional nature of such connections: Tongans in the islands also send goods to family members in the diaspora, and Tongans in different parts of the diaspora maintain complex networks of connections that can be quite distinct from ties to Tonga itself. Indeed, one of the questions the project addresses is whether the increasing ties across the diaspora are having any impact on ties to the islands: do they ‘dilute’ the strength of connections to Tonga?
Very little research has been carried out on second-generation transnationalism worldwide, and what little there is strongly suggests that transnational ties differ markedly between the first and second generation. In a collected volume on transnational families in Europe, several authors ‘stress that points of contact weaken substantially in the transition from the first to second generation of immigrant populations’ (Bryceson and Vuorela 2002). For example, Kane’s contribution looks at immigrants from three West African countries in France, who developed strong links with their countries of origin through community development work in the home villages. However, ‘second generation youth do not feel obliged to take part in the village association … the migrants’ children do not feel they owe anything to the village. The strong emotional ties between the migrant and his native land … [are] not replicated in the second generation’ (Kane 2002: 261).
Similar findings are reported in Levitt and Waters (2002), the first collection of papers to focus entirely on second-generation transnationalism. Most of the authors conclude that transnationalism declines with the second generation, and Rumbaut’s paper in this collection, a study of Asian, Mexican and Latin American migrants in the USA, found that overall only a tiny proportion (2.4 per cent) had visited their parents’ country of origin and remitted at least once a year (2002). Although Rumbaut does not quantify their remittances, their low level of engagement with the home countries is likely to be reflected in low levels of remittances. Other studies have shown similar results: Menjivar, for example, claims that for Guatemalan immigrants in the USA, second-generation transnationalism is ‘marginal at best, and sometimes seemingly forced’ (2002: 14). Menjivar concludes that most are unlikely to sustain long-term ties with Guatemala.
Vertovec points out that it is not really known what kinds of links members of the second generation in any migrant group will maintain. ‘Processes and patterns conditioning the intergenerational succession and reproduction of transnational ties remain largely under-researched and under-theorised’ (Vertovec 2001: 577). So little is known of second-generation transnationalism that it is unclear what factors influence the likelihood of transnational practices being maintained, how these fluctuate at different stages of the life cycle and what they mean to people. As Jones-Correa (2002: 238) has observed, remittances can be a chore to one person and a political statement to another. He also points to the difficulties of predicting the future decisions and life trajectories of members of the second generation.
This problem of future uncertainties has struck me in my continuing research with Tongans overseas. If we look at some of the Tongan youth in cities such as Sydney, Salt Lake City and Los Angeles, who are caught up in gang violence and substance abuse, how can we possibly predict their life trajectories? If they eventually ‘settle down’ and move into mainstream jobs and domesticity, is this any guarantee that they will suddenly establish ties to Tonga and begin sending remittances? Will other young people, struggling against the poverty their families have faced since they migrated, find a way to help support Tonga’s economy? Even those who have ‘made it’ in their host nation might be unwilling to provide the level of financial support their parents gave to Tonga since this would mean sacrificing some of the material and other benefits of their success. There are complex issues here, including the resentment of many young people of their parents’ funnelling of family income to churches and Tonga, and the pressure placed on them to be evidence of the success of the migration process. Migration was not just about helping kin in Tonga, but to increase the opportunities for migrants’ children, and where those children have been able to achieve some upward social mobility, they need to demonstrate this through their lifestyles. Further complicating the picture is the point made by Wolfgramm in the quotation above: that participation in the local community can also absorb considerable resources.
Second-generation Tongans do not necessarily lack any sense of moral obligation to kin, but they are likely to enact this in relation to their immediate family members, who are also overseas, rather than to more distant kin in Tonga. As the first-generation migrants age, responsibility for their care will fall increasingly on their children, whose resources will be stretched even further and will be less likely to be directed to Tonga. And, while they feel a moral obligation to kin, they are less likely to be involved in the status-building in Tonga that also has been an inherent aspect of their parents’ transnational ties.
Wolfgramm has claimed that for the second generation, ‘[W]e bear a lot of responsibilities here in our overseas communities to ourselves and to our families and it’s really a burden that’s taken a lot of our time and a lot of our energies, and it’s hard for us to carry that burden and at the same time be expected to subsidise — and I use the word subsidise — Tonga’s economy by sending remittances back to Tonga’ (Pacific Beat online, Radio Australia, March 10, 2005). Another Tongan involved in Ano Masima News, ’Anapesi Ka’ili, also spoke on the Pacific Beat program and argued that many young Tongans in the USA were holding onto their Tongan identity, yet were ‘redefining what it means to be Tongan, and how they choose to identify that. And for many of them remittances is not one of the ways in which they’re seeing it play out in their Tonganness … remittances have been something that many of them have really shied away from and [they] don’t really see it as something that they would like to continue’ (online March 10, 2005). She adds that many of the younger Tongans overseas do want to keep up their connection with Tonga, but through phone calls, return visits and other ties, not through remittances. This creates intergenerational tensions, with some of the older Tongans insisting that ‘the only way you can identify as being Tongan is by the remittances being sent home’; however, she notes that even some of the older generation are resisting this pressure. In a response posted on the Pacific Beat web site after these interviews, one contributor commented that she sends money only because her elderly father is still alive in Tonga, adding ‘our children will not do what we’re doing now’ (online February 24, 2005). Even within Tonga younger people are beginning to look for ways to lighten the burden of kinship and other obligations and to focus more on their own immediate family (James 2002: 286).
Elsewhere (Lee 2003, 2004) I have outlined the obstacles to young diasporic Tongans’ maintenance of ties to Tonga, such as their lack of language and cultural skills and therefore absence of a secure identity as ‘Tongan’; the economic and social problems within the diaspora; and young people’s disapproval of many of the practices of their parents’ generation, such as the time and resources devoted to the churches, and the funnelling of substantial amounts of family income sent as remittances. The high rate of intermarriage in Tongan populations overseas also tends to reduce the likelihood of remitting for Tongan spouses, let alone the children of these unions. Many young Tongans overseas tend to lack any strong sense of connection to Tonga, making it unlikely that they would feel any obligation to remit. Visits to Tonga can encourage this sense of connection, and can lead to more contact between migrants’ descendants and kin in the homeland, yet there is no guarantee that economic support is forthcoming, at least not to the extent needed to sustain current levels. It can also be a strategy that can backfire and for many young Tongans, visiting Tonga can be confronting and seriously challenge their identification as ‘Tongan’ (Lee 2003).
For Tongans and other Pacific Islanders, there is a growing literature focusing on identity issues for members of the second generation, and their experiences in the host countries, but little on their remittance practices, and very little on their other ties to the islands. Where their parents’ homelands are discussed, it tends to be in terms of emotional ties rather than actual connections and economic involvement. My own previous work on the Tongan diaspora shared these concerns, and the ties of the second-generation Tongans to Tonga were addressed primarily in terms of their impact on young people’s negotiations of identity (Lee 2003).
Other work on the Tongan diaspora, even that which deals specifically with transnationalism, tends to avoid the question of second-generation transnationalism. In the only monograph to focus on Tongan transnationalism, Evans states in his conclusion simply that he has relatively little to add to the question of whether transnational ties are sustainable, and adds: ‘At some level the long term continuity of both ideology and practice is an empirical question which must await answers’ (2001: 160). While disappointing, his lack of consideration of second-generation transnationalism is understandable, given that his book focuses on the transnational practices of Tongans in Tonga, rather than the overseas population. Small’s study (1997), which does focus on Tongan migrants’ transnationalism, does not address the question of second-generation transnationalism in any detail; however, she argues that remittances will inevitably decline as the number of overseas-born Tongans outnumber the Tongan-born.