Desire, Obligation, and Familial Love: Mothers, Daughters, and Communication Technology in the Tongan Diaspora 9780824883607

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DESIRE, OBLIGATION, AND FAMILIAL LOVE

DESIRE, OBLIGATION, AND FAMILIAL LOVE Mothers, Daughters, and Communication Technology in the Tongan Diaspora

Makiko Nishitani

University of Hawai‘i Press Honolulu

© 2020 University of Hawai‘i Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 25 24 23 22 21 20    6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Nishitani, Makiko, author. Title: Desire, obligation, and familial love : mothers, daughters, and  communication technology in the Tongan diaspora / Makiko Nishitani. Description: Honolulu : University of Hawai‘i Press, 2020. | Includes  bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020007874 | ISBN 9780824881771 (cloth) | ISBN  9780824883607 (pdf) | ISBN 9780824883614 (epub) | ISBN 9780824883621  (kindle edition) Subjects: LCSH: Tongans—Australia—Melbourne (Vic.)—Social life and  customs. | Women foreign workers—Family  relationships—Australia—Melbourne (Vic.) |  Tongans—Australia—Melbourne (Vic.)—Communication—Case studies. |  Mothers and daughters—Australia. Classification: LCC DU122.T66 N57 2020 | DDC 305.899/48209451—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020007874 Cover art: A girl on a desktop computer in a lounge room, surrounded by photographs of kinship members. Photo by author. University of Hawai‘i Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Council on Library Resources.

Contents

Acknowledgments Chapter 1 “So Far Apart, Yet Too Connected”: The Tongan Social Field

vii 1

Chapter 2 Reterritorializing the Tongan Social Field: Melbourne

25

Chapter 3 Boys Go, Girls Stay

52

Chapter 4 Diasporic Gifts

79

Chapter 5 Social Media in the Everyday Lives of Mothers and Daughters

105

Chapter 6 Making Things Happen: Communication Flows and Diasporic Drama

128

Chapter 7 Conclusion: Desire, Obligation, and Familial Love

150

Notes

161

References

167

Index

183

Acknowledgments

When I went to a Tongan church for the first time in Melbourne, I went by taxi because I was not familiar with Australia’s public transport system. I had introduced myself to the minister by email, and he had told me that I could come to the Sunday service. I still remember the big friendly smile of a Tongan lady who welcomed me as I opened the thick wooden door of the church. She prompted me to have a seat with women in my generation. The minister had already told the young women to look after me. I was not alone from the beginning. The minister and one of the women asked, “How did you get here? Where are you staying?” I told them the name of the hotel and explained that I had caught a taxi. My response shocked them; they would arrange for someone to take me home, they said. I felt bad, so I tried to say no thank you, but the minister smiled and said that the members of the church lived in different suburbs across Melbourne, so he was confident that he could find someone who lived close to my hotel. The family who offered me a lift that day continued to pick me up to go to church for youth group activities and Sunday services, and also took me to various other events, especially until I went to live with another Tongan family. I relate this anecdote to illustrate that my fieldwork has indebted me to Tongan people for their caring natures and kindnesses. Although I cannot name them, my sincere gratitude first goes to all of those who let me share their experiences throughout the project. I have altered their names and identifiable information to protect their privacy. In particular, I thank Pele for trusting me, letting me vii

viii  Acknowledgments

stay in her house, and introducing me to her extended family members. I am also grateful to Neti, Mele, Lu‘isa, Lasini, Rose, and many others in Australia, and to families who let me stay in their homes in Tonga. Much of the work in this book has been written at La Trobe University. I thank the collegial environment created by members of the Department of Social Inquiry. My sincere gratitude goes to Helen Lee, who became my mentor more than ten years ago. I am grateful for her generous support and practical advice during my fieldwork for this book, her invaluable advice, and her comments and feedback on numerous manuscript drafts. I thank John Taylor and Gwenda Tavan for their constructive feedback on the earlier version of this manuscript. I am indebted to Raelene Wilding for the influence of her seminar on my theoretical thinking. Discussions with the members of the seminar, who include Cathrin Anderson, Carolina Hernandez, Senem Mallman, Caitlin Nunn, Marby Villaceran, were invaluable in developing my thinking about migrants’ sociality. I am grateful for the friendships I have developed with Elisabeth Betz, Elizabeth Chapman, Ashley Greenwood, Lisa Hatfield, Kate Johnston-Ataata, and Alex Pavlotski. Thank you to my mentor Tarryn Phillips for positive encouragement, especially while revising this manuscript. I also acknowledge the Japanese academic community in Melbourne for its valuable support, especially Yoshio Sugimoto, Kaori Okano, and Lidia Tanaka. In Japan, I acknowledge Satoshi Tanahashi, who first introduced me to Tongan culture by recommending that I read Helen Morton’s Becoming Tongan, and Makoto Ito, who mentored me while I was in Japan. I am thankful for the continuous support and mentorship of Naoko Fukayama, Norio Niwa, Makoto Kobayashi, and many others from Tokyo Metropolitan University. I thank Niko Besnier and Alan Howard as well as the two anonymous readers of the draft of this manuscript for the University of Hawai‘i Press. Each reader provided valuable feedback and helped me clarify the contributions I can make to theories of anthropology and migration studies. I am especially grateful to Niko Besnier for making the time to discuss the book’s title with me and for providing feedback to some of my revisions. The research for this book would not have been possible without generous funding from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and Scholarship at La Trobe University. I also acknowledge that this book was completed with the assistance of a La Trobe University Social Research Platform Grant.



Acknowledgments  ix

This manuscript has been edited by a number of people: Ashley Greenwood, Katie Poidomani, and Teresa Castelvetere. I thank Helen Glenn Court for her invaluable editorial suggestions that improve my writing. At the University of Hawai‘i Press, I am thankful to executive editor Masako Ikeda for considering my book proposal and for her efforts in seeking possibilities for its publication, to the editorial board members, and to managing editor Grace Wen. Two sections in chapter 6—“Communication Flows” and “Three Diasporic Dramas”—were first published in 2014 as “Kinship, Gender and Communication Technologies: Family Dramas in the Tongan Diaspora” in the Australian Journal of Anthropology. I thank John Wiley and Sons for permission to include this article. The compilation of indexes was undertaken by Elizabeth Nelson. I thank my parents, Yoshimitsu and Yukari Nishitani, for believing in me and letting me pursue what I would like to do. I also acknowledge my grandfather, Shigeru Matsubara, who passed away at the age of ninety-eight in February 2019. He was a great supporter of my career. I only wish I could show him this book. I am deeply indebted to my in-law family members in Australia who have offered me invaluable support, especially caring for my child when I was preoccupied with work. I am thankful to my husband, Bruce, and my daughter, Yuri, who are always filled with positive energy. My research and personal life have been shaped in many ways by Tongan people’s generosity and love, and I am deeply indebted to them. I take full responsibility for my errors and imperfect representation of people’s lives. However, I hope that the Tongan women’s voices and their experiences portrayed in this book are meaningful to Tongan and wider Pacific communities and can contribute to our anthropological understanding of migratory experiences and the cultural specificities of generational changes.

CHAPTER 1

“So Far Apart, Yet Too Connected” The Tongan Social Field

When I began attending a Tongan church in Melbourne during my fieldwork, I was asked several unexpected questions about my features, which are unlike those of Tongans but certainly not unique in terms of Japanese or the general images in popular Australian discourse of Asians (Ang 2001). A young Tongan woman who grew up in Melbourne stared at my feet and asked me whether I had injured them when I was young. When I said no, she said, that because my feet were tiny, she thought that they had stopped growing as a result of an injury. I was puzzled because we were in multicultural, multiethnic Australia. The questions seemed especially strange because they came from the children of migrants who were born and raised in Australia; I assumed that they were accustomed to mingling with people from different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. I was bewildered that these children of Tongan migrants perceived me as strange, as if they had never seen anyone like me. An interaction I had with a young man later clarified the perception for me. “Makiko, how do your eyelashes grow?” he asked, staring at my eyes as he spoke. “Where do your eyelashes come from?” He was in his late twenties at the time. His mother is a migrant from Tonga. Initially, I thought he was joking but his countenance told me that the question was genuine. He truly did not know. I responded by pulling my eyelid up with my fingers and showing him my eyelash roots. 1

2  Chapter 1

Makiko: Why don’t you know? You’ve grown up in Melbourne. Don’t you have any Asian friends? Tongan man: No, I don’t. Makiko: How come? You went to a public school in Melbourne. You must have had Asian classmates. Tongan man: Yeah, I did but I’ve never been friends with them. Makiko: Why? Tongan man: I don’t know. I’ve never been interested in Asians or people from any other developing countries. I only have Aussie friends. His candid response makes it clear that spatial proximity and the visibility of cultural or even racial diversity in a multicultural society do not necessarily result in intermingling or mutual understanding. If a person is not interested in the Other, being in the same classroom does not necessarily lead to meaningful contact or help create acknowledgment of the diversity in society. When Lotta Haikkola analyzed the networks of the children of migrants in Finland, she found that “orientations to people and places” are intricately related (2011, 1214, emphasis in the original). For a place to become “a source of belonging or an object of concern” for a person, the people are what is most important (1214). Although a public school classroom in Australia had once been part of everyday life for the young man who asked about my eyelashes, it did not fully reflect his social world of interpersonal interactions and communications (Unruh 1980, 271). Where, then, are the interests of Tongan migrants and their children directed? How is their sociality shaped? This book is the result of an endeavor to capture the sociality of Tongan migrants and their children in Melbourne, Australia. I call their social worlds, which are maintained by commitment to relations via technologies and face-to-face interactions, the Tongan social field. This idea is based on the Tongan indigenous concept, vā, which refers to the “social space or social relations” between kin and kin-like people (Ka‘ili 2017, 26; Lilomaiava-Doktor 2009). The title of this chapter, “So Far Apart, Yet Too Connected,” reflects how a young woman in her twenties described her kin members across the diaspora and Tonga. Kin relations are intricately related to Tongan sociality. The chapters that follow



Tongan Social Field  3

detail how the field is created, maintained, disrupted, and recreated by commitment to the relationships, which are constructed through travel, gift exchanges, and use of communication technologies. These commitments entail significant gender differences, and I pay particular attention to the roles of daughters and mothers in shaping Tongan sociality. As becomes apparent in this ethnography, being a Tongan daughter or a Tongan mother entails a responsibility to maintain the Tongan social field. Technological development is sometimes associated with the increasing individualization of people—that is, people are free to choose which relationships to maintain, and long-standing ties such as kinship and neighborhood can become less important (Bauman 2003; Castells 1996; Giddens 1992). The experiences of the Tongan people who appear in this book, however, demonstrate that this is not necessarily the case. Global cities such as Melbourne have experienced the “internalized globalization” of society (Beck 2002, 24; see also Ang 2001; Sassen 1996), and within their populations are cosmopolitans who have “an orientation, a willingness to engage with the Other” (Hannerz 1990, 238). Although intercultural mingling in people’s everyday lives has been explored in the context of “everyday multiculturalism” (Wise and Velayutham 2009), day-to-day contact between individuals or groups does not necessarily equate with mutual understanding (Holland et al. 2007; Valentine 2008). The physical framework of a city such as Melbourne is useful for examining the dynamics of interpersonal interactions within that framework, but it fails to capture the myriad social worlds that often cross the physical borders of cities and nation-states. Therefore, although most people who appear in this book live in Melbourne, the city is not the basic unit of this study but instead “an entry point” for the empirical study of Tongan sociality (Amelina et al. 2012, 4), which traverses the boundaries of Melbourne and Australia. In its ethnographic analysis of the lives of Tongan mothers and their daughters, this book illustrates how people deal with given relationships and create their social worlds, which do not necessarily coincide with territorial boundaries, and cannot be described by scales such as transnational and local.

Defining the Tongan Social Field I locate this work within the attempts of social science to capture peoples’ deterritorialized social worlds (Appadurai 1996; García Canclini 1996). It once seemed straightforward to locate a culture in a specific place with a particular group of people (such as an ethnic group or tribe). In the

4  Chapter 1

last three decades, however, this formula (a culture = a place = a group of people) has been critically reexamined. Attempts have been made to decenter the place of fieldwork in anthropology (Gupta and Ferguson 1992, 1997) and to deconstruct the “place-focused concept of culture” (Hastrup and Olwig 1997, 4). Approaches to determine the appropriate units of analysis are numerous. Defining units of analysis as scapes is one example (Appadurai 1996). Defining them as cosmopolitan world culture is another (Hannerz 1996). Neither example views culture as ethnically, nationally, or territorially bound. As scholars seek the appropriate units to study, they have even begun to critically examine the familiar question anthropologists often ask, “Where did you do your fieldwork?” (Kohn 2011, 81). Among the various units, applying different levels of scale—such as local, regional, national, global, or transnational—appears to be the most prevalent method. Although my explorations in this book are closely linked with this approach, there appears to be a gap between what scales can capture and the “conceptions of reality” of Tongan migrants and their children (Delaney and Leitner 1997, 94–95). This gap is explained by the different levels of scale that emphasize differences in distance and do not seem to capture some of the important elements discussed in the section that follows. In fact, geographers have clarified that scale is neither an external fact nor an ontologically given division, but instead socially constructed (Delaney and Leitner 1997; Lefebvre 1991; Marston 2000; Smith 1992). Feminist geographer Rachel Silvey defines scale as a “framing device” and argues that the choice of scale can change what we are able to observe and conclude (2006, 74). This ethnography uses her definition. In the discussion that follows, I first identify what the scales of local and transnational enable us to capture and what they do not. I argue that scales tend to lack attention to how subjects conceptualize their social worlds. An alternative framing device to capture Tongan sociality is therefore needed. BEYOND SCALE

Contrary to the expectations of governments and early assimilationist theorists that migrants would eventually assimilate into the host culture and weaken their ties with their homelands, many migrants maintain those ties. Because the social worlds of migrants “overspill” the containments of the nation-state (Gille 2012, 94), scholars propose new frame-



Tongan Social Field  5

works by rescaling the units of analysis from national to transnational and refer to the social worlds of migrants as the “transnational social field” (Levitt and Glick Schiller 2004), “transnational villages” (Levitt 2001), and “transnational social spaces” (Faist 2000). Each theorist uses the concept of transnational in a different way. For example, Alejandro Portes, Luis Guarnizo, and Patricia Landolt argue that the concept is inseparable from actual movements beyond national borders (1999). Peggy Levitt and Nina Glick Schiller, however, do not limit their usage to “the direct experience of migration” but instead allow that the concept could span “domains of interaction where individuals who do not move themselves maintain social relations across borders through various forms of communication” (2004, 1009). However, most transnational scholars have the same aim—to explore “the processes by which immigrants forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement” (Basch, Glick Schiller, and Szanton Blanc 1994, 7). As is clear from this definition, most transnational studies of migration are concerned with relationships between two nation-states—a host country and a home country. For example, Georges Fouron and Nina Glick Schiller state that those who maintain transnational ties “organize their daily economic, familial, religious, and social relations, within networks that extend across the borders of two nation-states” (2002, 171). Although many diasporic Tongans who appear in this ethnography also maintain ties with people in Tonga, the scale becomes problematic when we try to apply it to the social worlds of people of Tongan descent. First, despite the importance of ties between the host country and the home country, cross-border practices of migrants and their children are not necessarily limited to such connections. This difficulty becomes even more prominent when we focus on the children of migrants because cross-border activities are experienced in different ways by migrants and their children (Levitt and Waters 2002). Ties do not just stretch between two places but potentially across the diaspora (Addo 2013; Lee 2007a, 2007b, 2011; Olwig 2003). Helen Lee proposes “intradiasporic transnationalism” to capture such cross-border ties (2007a). Having found diverse activities beyond just the two places (home and host country), she argues for a “need to rethink the scope of the concept” of transnationalism (2011, 296). In addition are the concerns that the framework of transnationalism paradoxically emphasizes national borders and fails to capture the subjects’ understanding of sociality because the term transnational tends to

6  Chapter 1

“draw attention to what it negates—that is, to the continued significance of the national” (Hannerz 1996, 6). In her study of Caribbean migrants, anthropologist Karen Fog Olwig says that While the concept of transnational sociocultural systems has served the important purpose of pointing to the significance of spheres of life that are not confined to nation-states, it has highlighted the transnational, defined in terms of the nation-state, as the most salient feature of sociocultural systems crossing the borders of nation-states . . . these arenas represent only a limited sphere of migrants’ lives, and there is therefore a danger that the term “transnational” . . . is narrowing down this field of investigation. (2003, 808)

Similarly, Raelene Wilding says that “ethnographers of the transnational are to some extent ‘fetishizing’ migrancy and the transnational” and asserts a gap between the framework of researchers and “the concerns and emphases of the participants in the research” (2007, 332–333). Studies of Pacific Islander migrants demonstrate that interactions among kin members and diasporic organizations in the host society, or across the diaspora, are as significant as interactions with their home countries (Addo 2013; Ka‘ili 2017; Lee 2003; Macpherson 2004; Macpherson and Macpherson 2009; Small 1997). These studies show that ties with other kin members and members of ethnic churches in proximity to migrants are central in shaping their sociality and that of their children. The important common finding is that interactions in close proximity are in fact intricately related with cross-border activities. In other words, no clear boundaries separate the local and the transnational: local interactions may result in further transnational flows of communication and goods, and vice versa. In this context, using the concepts of local and transnational cannot capture the continuity of the sociality because multiple scales interrupt the continuum of the social worlds.1 In fact, several scholars in Pacific Island studies have called for an alternative framework for capturing Pacific Islanders’ emic social worlds. For example, renowned Tongan anthropologist Epeli Hau‘ofa criticizes the “geographic deterministic view” that focuses on national boundaries (1994, 151). According to the long-standing cosmologies of Pacific peoples, their sociality is not limited to small scattered islands, but includes the vast ocean that provides people with rich resources as well as pathways to sail and explore the world. Thus, Hau‘ofa argues that the Pacific indigenous perception of sociality does not see people as living



Tongan Social Field  7

on isolated islands separated by sea or national borders, but instead as living in “a sea full of places to explore” (153). Similarly, Steve Francis finds that Tongan people do not seem to assign value to differences in distance: a common response when a person is asked “ ‘alu ki fē?” (Where are you going?) is “ ‘alu ‘o ‘eva pē” (just going for a stroll) both when they are hanging around within the village and when going overseas (2003, 6). Although Pacific peoples’ perceptions do not place importance on relative distance, the use of scales such as local and transnational inevitably highlights geographical distance and national borders. Therefore, to precisely capture the sociality of Tongan migrants and their children, an alternative framework that reflects the subjects’ emic perception of their sociality is needed. Simon Coleman and Peter Collins propose an interesting approach to this issue: they argue that ethnographers need to respond to “informants’ own (sometimes politically charged, usually explicit) framing of ‘fields’ of action and relevance” (2011, 5). To do so, ethnographers need to “frame around ‘their’ frame” and examine closely “how action is staged by actors” (5–6). They call these framing processes “the double-framing of fields” because the framework emerges through “the interactions between informants’ and ethnographers’ self-conscious constructions of fields of actions and interpretation” (6). Following the double-framing approach, Thomas Carter (2011) and Tamara Kohn (2011) each attempt to create their frameworks without using the scale. Carter conducted fieldwork in both Cuba and the United States to study Cuban baseball players. His initial field of research was “limited to the playing fields of Havana,” but he soon found that his fields appeared through “experiential events”: a paved plaza in Havana suddenly transformed into a baseball field when a boy took off his shirt and used it as a baseball base; and even his neighborhood in New Mexico became a field site when he discovered that his next-door neighbor was involved with Cuban drug dealers (Carter 2011, 63–69). Based on these experiences, he defines places as being where “cultural events” happen (68). Thus, his “perception of the field” shifted from a place to which he traveled to “a multiplicity of events that could literally occur anywhere” (69). Similarly, when Tamara Kohn explores the conceptions of space for aikido practitioners, she finds that the dojo, where they practice their martial arts, is situated as “home” for practitioners (2011). One of her informants says, “You know, the aikido mat is now my home. I’ve been always running, running, running, but now I find I am free here, in England, in France, everywhere” (92). Thus,

8  Chapter 1

mats are practitioners’ social worlds, and they do not have a fixed geographical location. By focusing on practices and place-making activities, both Carter and Kohn successfully frame their field sites to reflect their informants’ perceptions of their social worlds. These works indicate that it is important for anthropologists to examine the ways in which subjects conceptualize the world before delineating a framework. Following this approach, I double frame the Tongan social field by examining the Tongan indigenous concept of social space, vā, and then locating this within work on this topic by other theorists. V Ā: T O N G A N S O C I O -S PAT I A L S PA C E

Tongan anthropologist Tēvita Ka‘ili provides detailed analyses of the concept of vā (2005, 2017). Although a literal meaning of vā is space between people or things, the word also refers to social ties, especially kinship ties.2 Ka‘ili argues that “sociality and spatiality are linked together in Tongan social ontology” (2005, 90). This means that Tongans consider people who are socially close to each other, such as kin members, to be “spatially near to one another” regardless of the actual distance between them (90). Thus the social space of vā is difficult to capture if one uses distance-based scales, such as transnational and local, because vā comprises people who are related to one another regardless of their locations. This may not sound particularly profound because in English it is also natural to describe a person as feeling emotionally “close” to others who are actually far away; the uniqueness of vā, however, is the commitment it requires. Relationships are maintained by pursuing obligations and acting properly according to various factors such as gender, kinship hierarchy, age, and marital status. In other words, social ties have to be looked after (Ka‘ili 2005, 92). Samoan geographer Sa‘iliemanu Lilomaiava-Doktor makes a point similar to Ka‘ili’s when she explores the concept in the Samoan cultural context and observes that “there is personal and group responsibility to maintain symmetry and harmony in vā” (2009, 13). Therefore, if a person does not act properly, harmony is disrupted, and the socio-spatial tie may be at risk because it is not being cared for appropriately. For example, gift-giving typically occurs from a lower-ranked person to a higher-ranked person, such as from adult children to their parents, and ideally comes from cultural values of love, generosity, and care.3 Adult children not sending money to their parents



Tongan Social Field  9

can be construed as not properly maintaining or caring about their ties with their parents. Ka‘ili says that vā can be broken when obligations are not pursued, “In this case, Tongans often say, ‘Kuo motu hona vā’ (Their social space/relationship has been broken)” (2005, 109n20). Although vā should be understood as an indigenous ideal of social worlds, it provides insights into ways to understand characteristics of Tongan sociality. First, vā gives us an alternative way to create a more precise framework for capturing Tongan sociality. As discussed earlier, the movement of Pacific Islanders cannot be captured by the range of scales because Islander boundaries are not national borders: space is delineated by kin regardless of their location. Thus, boundaries of vā depend on where networks reach. In this context, multiple scales lose their significance. When a person sets foot in a workplace where no one is related to them, they leave the kin-based social space. However, when that same person travels to different countries to visit kin members, they move within their social space. National boundaries clearly have the power to control people’s movement between different nations, but have less significance in terms of people’s perception of their social worlds. Second, vā tells us that the social worlds of each individual differ in their size. Each person is born into different kinship networks as a matter of course, and each can prioritize which relations to “look after,” thus further changing the shape of their social worlds. The difference in the shape and external boundaries of these social worlds depends on the relations to which an actor makes a commitment. I emphasize here that this is different from an ethnicity-based holistic community. In the context of vā, being of the same ethnicity does not necessarily provide a good reason to take care of the relationship; rather, a person needs to be related in some way. For example, a woman in her early thirties said that she did not have any Tongan friends because she had so many Tongan relatives and, as she put it, “that [was] enough” for her. The social worlds of some people may therefore not directly lead them to engage with cross-border relationships because a person does not look after the ties with people beyond national boundaries. Also, a person who tries to distance themselves from kin as much as possible could end up being outside the social worlds of Tongans. However, these situations can be temporal and if a person rekindles engagement with others, the person creates vā, which is always subject to change. The reason I say “Tongan social field” rather than using vā as a framework is that vā does not fully explain the social worlds of people of Tongan descent. Although their social worlds are harmoniously kept by

10  Chapter 1

taking care of vā, they are also disrupted because within this same space, people compete for cultural capital, reputations, and status (Addo 2013; Bernstein 1983; Besnier 2011; Marcus 1978; Morton 1996). Thus, people of Tongan descent are in a field of competition whereby the participants of the field “seek, individually or collectively, to safeguard or improve their position and to impose the principle of hierarchization most favorable to their own products” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 101). To elevate one’s status above that of others, a person has to be “sensitive to proper presentation of self in the presence of others” (Marcus 1978, 242; see also Levy 1973). In this context, one has to avoid misbehavior in front of others because it brings shame (mā), not only to the person misbehaving, but also to that person’s family, affecting the reputation and status of those other family members. Thus, people in the field are motivated to act according to the Tongan cultural logic for two reasons—to look after interpersonal relations and to care for reputation by avoiding shame. Therefore, in this field, people have to deal with Tongan cultural values. To “deal with” does not mean that people in the field necessarily adopt values. It is instead that Tongan cultural values are problematized in that each individual has to decide whether to follow each value or develop their own policies about how to deal with each value in different contexts. Not following these values results in either breaking ties with others or bringing shame to oneself as well as to family members. These problematizing and decision-making processes are practiced in everyday lives; thus they are an important focus of this book. The Tongan social field, which is structured by Tongan cultural values, is recognized by my informants. For example, a woman in her early twenties told me a story about going for a holiday with her mother to her aunt’s house. Her aunt has a pālangi (Western, European, or Anglo Australian) husband, and the family lives in a small town in New South Wales. The family has a closer connection to the husband’s side of the family and the sole household language is English. She began her story with harsh remarks, “My mum looked so retarded when we were there. She was just so stupid. I was so embarrassed!” Here, the young woman cares for her mother so much that her mother’s behavior invoked shame in her. She was especially frustrated because although her mother generally is confident and behaves properly among Tongans in Melbourne, her behavior and what she said to her pālangi in-laws during the holiday was, for the young woman, inappropriate. She said, “my mum needs to live in a Tongan world, she looks so stupid outside the world and I don’t want to see her like that.” Her idea of the Tongan world is similar to that



Tongan Social Field  11

of the Tongan social field in this book. The Tongan social field is where certain Tongan cultural values dominate and people in this world are expected to uphold them. Some people—like my informant’s mother—feel more comfortable in the Tongan social field; some feel uncomfortable; and still others live comfortably in both worlds. C O M M U N I C AT I O N T E C H N O L O G I E S A N D S O C I A L F I E L D S

Dealing with cultural values and relationships is not new for Tongan people. What is different today is technological progress. A range of communication technologies now make it easier for people to maintain different social worlds according to their interests regardless of physical distance. Each individual engages with multiple social fields, which all operate with their own logic (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). My informants, Tongan migrants and their children in Melbourne, also engage with multiple fields and create different types of relationships. At their workplaces and schools, they follow Australian ways and create relationships with their colleagues and peers. At home, they probably follow Tongan ways when they interact with their kin members. However, using communication technologies enables people to “go” to different worlds far more easily. Even in the office, a person may log on to social media and interact with kin members. At home, he or she may interact with colleagues by phone. In addition, communication technologies play a critical role in highlighting the problematic aspect of scale. I came to realize that Tongan people in Melbourne are living in the field of relationships rather than in a geographical place, when I met a Tongan high school girl who regularly used social media to contact her cousins in New Zealand and Tonga as well as peers at a Tongan church in Melbourne. Although she had friends from different ethnic backgrounds at her school, she preferred to communicate with Tongans in Melbourne, New Zealand, and Tonga over the internet at home rather than spend time with her high school friends. Her feeling of closeness to her cousins overseas (both in the diaspora and her ancestral home) and her peers and cousins in Melbourne cannot be captured by the scale of local and transnational. The conventional usage of transnational would capture her relationship with her cousins in Tonga but ignore her relationship with the others. Even if we expand the meaning of transnational to include those in New Zealand, we would still fail to capture her perception that she also felt close to her church peers and cousins in Melbourne. Although geographical distance

12  Chapter 1

matters when she would like to visit people and see them face to face, communication technologies (phone calls and social media) have made it possible for her to enjoy her close relationships without concern for distance. In this context, redefining the field site as an assemblage of relationships rather than a geographical place or places (Marcus 1995) enables us to capture people’s sociality more precisely. In examining deterritorialized social worlds, Zsuzsa Gille says that “we do not simply have to make the move of disentangling the social from the national but also entangling the social with the material” (2012, 93, emphasis in the original). To “entangle” the Tongan sociality with communication technologies, it is helpful to refer to contributions from social theories of technology that highlight dialectical relationships between the social and technology (Couldry 2008; Silverstone 2002, 2005; Wajcman 2002). Actor-network theory (ANT) in particular brings technology and society into the same sphere of focus because ANT theorists argue that the social and technology are inseparable and intertwined (Bijker and Law 1992; Latour 1991, 1993). Bruno Latour describes this using the metaphor of hybridity (1993). The social, he argues, is coproduced by humans and nonhumans, and thus technology and society are mutually constitutive. Although this book’s ethnographic cases do not support Latour’s argument that nonhuman actors (communication technologies in this context) have agency in themselves, it is worth taking his idea into consideration because the Tongan social field is built “on a larger scale” as a result of technology (Strum and Latour 1987, 796). This book thus treats communication technologies as one of the important constitutive elements of the Tongan social field, not simply as facilitating sociality. In sum, the Tongan social field has the following characteristics. First, relationships in the field are maintained by appropriate behavior. Second, the field is also the field of struggle where units—individuals, families, or churches—compete for status and try to avoid shame. Third, the shape and size of vā is determined by where the person’s networks are. Geographical distance is not perceived as a critical barrier to maintaining relationships. Finally, the Tongan social field comprises people, their practices, Tongan cultural values, and technology. I focus on people’s engagement with the Tongan social field—on communication, the circulation of goods and people within it—rather than any of the other social worlds with which my research participants engage. In other words, my choice of exploring the Tongan social field is made at the expense of investigating their settlement culture; the broader



Tongan Social Field  13

Australian cultural milieu in which Tongan people live, work, and socialize (Hage 2005, 467).4 Acknowledging their engagement with wider Australian society, I concentrate on writing an ethnography of Tongan sociality, which comprises kin and kin-like people.

Daughters and Mothers: Relational Identities and Their Practices To examine Tongan sociality, this book takes a gendered approach and considers how Tongan women, both mothers and their daughters, engage with given relationships in the Tongan social field. It as an ethnography has been shaped by the in-depth access that, as a woman, I was able to gain into female social interactions. Gender boundaries are distinctive in the Tongan social field, and the ideal image of masculinity guides men to be outside and that of femininity guides women to be inside. Wherever I went—both Tongan churches and Tongan households—this gender ideology designated where each person should be, and many people during my fieldwork expected me to observe this distinction. Also, the avoidance relationships between brothers and sisters made it difficult for me to have close interactions with the brothers of my research participants. In the Tongan cultural context, brothers and sisters are expected to show each other respect by minimizing interactions between them. Some families have a more relaxed policy on these avoidance relationships, but many parents expect their daughters and sons not to be in the same room or not to have intimate, private conversations. Some daughters therefore did not even know the details of their brothers’ social lives or were not willing to talk about them. The expectation that I would follow these values was especially intense because I lived with a Tongan family to expand my ties with people and gain access to interactions with Tongans every day in Melbourne.5 Close interactions with women in their everyday lives enabled me to understand how their sociality is shaped because women are central to creating and maintaining the Tongan social field. Women are expected, even pressured, to be closely involved with the social field. Men are relatively free from such pressures. Because the Tongan social field requires the commitment of those who are in it, this volume highlights both what they are expected to do and what they actually do. These aspects are analyzed in the context of relational identities because as a mother, daughter, wife, or sister, a woman is subject to different expectations and acts or reacts in a variety

14  Chapter 1

of ways. Generally speaking, in Polynesian gender studies the focus has been strong on women as sisters and wives given the elaborate hierarchical relations between brothers and sisters (Aoyagi 1966; Bott 1981; James 1983; Marshall 1983; Ortner 1981; Philips 2005). Daughters’ roles, however, tend to be discussed in the context of socialization and marriage (Mead 1961; Morton 1996). Explorations of the roles of adult daughters are particularly productive in the context of migration. Because a growing number of studies explore migrants’ experiences of caring for aged parents, migrants’ roles as daughters have begun to receive some attention (Baldassar, Baldock, and Wilding 2007; De Silva 2018). Relatively less attention, however, has been paid to roles of young women as daughters. Cathy Small (1997) and Helen Lee (2003) provide detailed and iconic ethnographic studies of Tongan families and the children of migrants. Gender differences and relational identities are not their main focus, however. In contrast, the case studies in this book compare the experiences of migrant mothers and their daughters and delve deeply into the relationships between the two. Whereas generational differences are typically described as first generation and second generation, I use instead the relational terms “mothers” and “daughters.” Generational terms underscore differences on the basis of where a person was born and raised (migrant home country or host country), but relational terms emphasize continuous links between the two and the roles they are expected to perform. Relational terms afford a more nuanced analysis of generational differences and avoid the simplistic view of first-generation migrants as traditional and those in the second generation as more Westernized or more assimilated into the host society. Some of the young women in this book live primarily as daughters of migrants; others appear as daughters, wives, or mothers at various times, depending on the context. Personhood in the Pacific Islands is defined by social relations and appropriate behavior in the context of each of these relationships (Linnekin and Poyer 1990; Strathern 1988). Thus, a woman is required to act as a daughter before her parents, as a wife before her husband, and a sister when she is with her brothers. This brings us to another question about relational identities and the egocentric self. Whereas early studies of personhood in non-Western societies highlighted the differences between Western egocentric personhood and non-Western relational personhood (Geertz 1984; Shweder and Bourne 1984; Strathern 1988), an increasing number of subsequent studies dem-



Tongan Social Field  15

onstrate that one can observe both egocentric and relational personhood in every culture, in both the West and elsewhere (Baier 1985; Code 1991; Good 2012; Jacobson-Widding 1990; LiPuma 1998; Mageo 1998; Mines 1988; Wardlow 2006). In his work reconceptualizing personhood, Edward LiPuma says, The foregrounding . . . of individual and dividual [or relational] aspects of personhood will vary across contexts for action within a given culture. More, cultures differ critically in the ontological status, visibility, and force granted individual/relational aspects of persons, especially as these appear in the construction of their own comparative discourses about persons, such as justifications or explanations for actions. From this view, it is a misunderstanding to assume either that the social emerges out of individual actions, a powerful strain in Western ideology . . . or that the individual ever completely disappears by virtue of indigenous forms of relational totalization. (1998, 57)

Thus, even in Western society, where egocentric personhood is prevalent, relational personhood matters in some contexts, and people in other societies also fluctuate between the individual and the relational. Of course, even in the same sociocultural group, each person negotiates individual and relational aspects of self differently. Indeed, LiPuma argues that “persons emerge precisely from that tension between dividual and individual aspects/relations” (1998, 57, emphasis in the original). Tongan cultural values and interpersonal relations are often based on structures of the Tongan kinship ranking system. As will become apparent, the mothers and daughters who appear in this book do not simply perform their roles and comply with Tongan norms unthinkingly. In exploring both their actions and what they related about their attitudes and experiences, this book presents the often ambivalent positions of women of Tongan descent. Most research participants—both mothers and daughters—have lived or grown up in the West, specifically Australia, for more than two decades. However, it becomes clear that Tongan cultural values situate them along the spectrum of the individual and the relational. I examine the difference between the generation of migrants and that of their children, but I also argue that both mothers and daughters fluctuate between the two ends of the spectrum. My main informants are young women of Tongan descent between eighteen and their early thirties and their mothers in their forties to early sixties. To protect their identities, I use pseudonyms and do not always

16  Chapter 1

cross-reference details about them across chapters. When a simple pseudonym is not enough to protect confidentiality, distinguishing information is also altered. The mothers are all migrants from Tonga, but their daughters have various backgrounds. Some were born in Tonga and others elsewhere in the Pacific Islands, New Zealand, or Australia. Some of their fathers are also migrants from Tonga; others are from various Pacific Islands or Australia. Although the women have different backgrounds, they have similar experiences and problems—as daughters of Tongan migrants—when engaging in kin and kin-like relationships. In this book, I often refer to the daughters as “girls,” which is how they are referred to by others in the field. Considering their age range, “young women” may sound more appropriate. The English word “woman” connotes adulthood, however, a life stage where a person becomes individually responsible. As will become apparent, when the daughters engage with the Tongan social field, they are usually required to be obedient to elders. It is to highlight these situations that I use girls to refer to the daughters of migrants.

Fieldwork and Ethnographic Methods This book is based primarily on several periods of intensive fieldwork in Melbourne, totaling eighteen months: November 2006 through March 2007, October 2007 through March 2008, and June 2008 through March 2009. In addition, since 2010, when I permanently moved from Japan to Melbourne, I have regularly socialized with my core informants and have stayed up to date with news in the field. I traveled to other cities such as Sydney, Brisbane, and rural towns in Victoria and New South Wales to visit my core informants’ relatives. I also had multiple opportunities to visit Tonga, totaling three months (July 2007, November 2008, and July 2011). Although I traveled to various places, I had not planned to conduct a “multi-sited” ethnography prior to my fieldwork (Marcus 1995). However, as I created relationships with Tongan migrants and their daughters in Melbourne, either I was invited or it was assumed that I would accompany them on their trips to visit their relatives. Having explored Lebanese transnational family members who are dispersed globally, Ghassan Hage observes, If we are to maintain a concept of the site as something one has to spend an inordinate amount of time and labour on in order to become familiar with, then I was not studying a multi-sited reality. I was studying



Tongan Social Field  17 one site: the site occupied by the transnational family. It was a globally spread, geographically noncontiguous site, but it was nevertheless one site. (2005, 466)

Like Hage, I conducted my fieldwork in one site, the Tongan social field. I acknowledge the differences among the locales and the persistent authoritative power that Australia as a nation-state holds over migrants, but I believe that their engagement with relationships across the diaspora and in Tonga is more appropriately conceived of as one site. My fieldwork can be described as a constant effort to overcome the problem of the invisibility of Tongan people in Melbourne. Because the population of Tongan migrants and their children is not even 0.1 percent of Melbourne’s population (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2013a), and because they do not create visible ethnic enclaves, one cannot expect to come across Tongan people in the street by chance. To create contacts, I began attending a Tongan church in Melbourne as soon as I started my fieldwork. At that time, I saw the church as the unit of my research—as if the church could be a replacement for a village where an anthropologist might stay. However, I quickly had to correct my understanding because attending a Tongan church did not necessarily resolve the problems of invisibility. First, those who attended regularly were keen churchgoers and did not represent the general Tongan population in Melbourne. Similarly, a multitude of Tongan Christian denominations offered differing degrees of engagement with Tongan cultural values—some conservative and others more liberal. Participating in one church would not capture these diversities. In addition, using the church as a unit meant that I was able to meet them only a few times a week; their everyday lives were totally invisible to me. To resolve the issue, I needed to live in a Tongan household and visit as many other households as possible. Building a rapport with people and finding a family to stay with was in effect weaving myself into the webs of relationships in the Tongan social field (Ka‘ili 2005).6 Because the Tongan social field requires commitment, I had to earn trust by attending church regularly, helping women with kitchen chores, and contributing donations to the church or food at feasts. These commitments helped create relationships. I finally found a Tongan family with whom I stayed for fourteen months. During that time, I also visited other households, where I occasionally stayed over for short periods of one night to a month. Staying with a Tongan family certainly helped expand my networks within the Tongan social field. The family kindly and patiently taught me the Tongan way of life

18  Chapter 1

and helped me increase my contacts with people who belonged to different churches or did not go to church regularly. In addition to my host family, young women in a youth group at the Tongan church I attended also became important informants. To expand my networks and add diversity to my contacts, I tried to go to any events to which I was invited or people simply took me. Weddings and birthdays were ideal occasions to meet people who belonged to different churches. It was fortunate that my status as a young woman from Japan made my visit to each household less formal, which enabled me to observe their everyday lives. They responded to my commitment to relationships with their own commitment to me. They rarely canceled appointments to meet with me, and if they did have to attend to other commitments, they simply took me along without canceling our meetings. These unexpected visits to other houses or events also helped me create diverse contacts in the Tongan social field. Weaving myself into the Tongan social field also involved communication technologies. In 2006, when I started my fieldwork, I bought a simple Sony Ericsson prepaid mobile phone. Initially, the contact list on it was empty but as I began to meet people it grew quickly; I felt that it was a tangible symbol of my relationships in Australia. I was also soon introduced to the social network site Bebo, which was extremely popular among Tongans at the time (see chapter 5). Both the mobile phone and Bebo helped me enhance relationships when I could not see people every day. As discussed, this book treats communication technologies as a part of the Tongan social field. I visualize the social field as superimposed layers of tracing paper that depict different kinds of kin and kin-like relationships, with one sheet each, for example, for kinship, church, and friends lists on social media. Although this book does contribute to the discussion of digital anthropology, I do not identify it as digital or internet ethnography. It is about Tongan sociality, and the range of communication technologies including social media (and a desktop computer in a lounge room), mobile phones, and landline telephones in the kitchens of Tongan households is but one part of this sociality. The goal of this book is to demonstrate the importance of classic fieldwork that emphasizes participant observation—immersing oneself in the field of relationships and people’s everyday lives—which today includes their engagement with social media and the internet. Crystal Abidin, who explores internet micro-celebrities in Singapore, achieves “thick description” (Geertz 1973) by observing behind the scenes the



Tongan Social Field  19

process of how images and ideas are uploaded online (2018). She ironed internet influencers’ fashionable clothes that they were about to upload to Instagram, recording the details about the clothes in her field notes. She observed women taking selfies and then dashing, in their high heels, toward the area where wifi was available so they could upload their photos as soon as possible. John Postill and Sarah Pink argue that “social media are part of what can be characterized as the ‘messy web’ ” and that ethnographers need to explore not only social media itself but also “face-to-face socialities and material contexts with which social media are co-implicated” (2012, 125). To untangle the “messy web” for my research, it was necessary to understand how people navigate their kin and kin-like relationships in their everyday lives. Immersion in the field enabled me to understand my informants’ kin relationships—for example, which cousins they feel close to and what kind of relationships girls have with their mothers and aunts. One of the key findings from this participant observation is the existence of information flows across different media along kinship networks. Events taking place in “real life” are uploaded to social media, then that information is discussed face to face between mothers and daughters at a kitchen table before being circulated by mothers to their sisters via landline telephone calls and discussed by these sisters with their daughters, who potentially take the discussion back onto online media (see chapter 6). These flows cannot be captured if the research question is framed within the online sphere or simply asks what kin members do on social media because people not only communicate online, but also talk on the phone and interact face-to-face, and all of these are interconnected. The late 2010s, as this book is being prepared for publication, is the era of the arrival of polymedia, which is characterized by a “plethora of internet- and mobile phone-based platforms” (Madianou and Miller 2012, 1), including, for example, Skype, Facebook, Viber, Snapchat, and WhatsApp. This book, however, captures the transition period in the late 2000s, when mobile phones did not have apps, mobile phone calls were expensive, and many people still used landlines. People had started to use social media, but on a desktop computer in a lounge room. Thus, although the ethnographic present in this book had not reached the polymedia stage, this study is an important reminder that even before the advent of polymedia we used multiple communication technologies to mediate relationships. My contribution is to show how information flows alongside kinship connections, using different communication technologies, a process that continues today on the multiple platforms now available.

20  Chapter 1

To collect ethnographic materials during my fieldwork, I learned both Tongan and colloquial English, and conducted participant observation, interviews, and informal conversations on a daily basis. Because this book is concerned with what daughters and mothers are expected to do and what they actually do, participant observation played a significant role. In an era of multisite ethnography, scholars of migrant studies often place importance on “being there . . . and there . . . and there!” (Hannerz 2003, 201) and on collecting information predominately through interviews. However, my work demonstrates that the classical methodology of immersing oneself in the field can still contribute to the examination of deterritorialized social worlds.

Structure of this Book To examine mothers’ and daughters’ engagement with the Tongan social field, this book explores their everyday lives from a variety of different perspectives. Chapter 2 provides more detailed information on my field site, the Tongan social field, and Melbourne. Although this chapter emphasizes the deterritorialized nature of the field, national boundaries and different geographical places certainly influence perceptions of Tongan sociality. Chapter 2 also looks at kinship networks, Tongan churches, and other organizations that help maintain the Tongan social field. Chapters 3 and 4, which discuss Tongan cultural practices from opposite perspectives, can be read as a pair. Chapter 3 demonstrates that gendered Tongan cultural values are instilled not only in the migrant generation, but also in their daughters. The title of the chapter, “Boys Go, Girls Stay,” reflects the Tongan gender ideology that allocates mobility to males and immobility to females. By examining how this ideology influences the everyday lives of the children of migrants, the chapter demonstrates how the association between the degree of mobility and gender guides women to “stay” in the field but lets men “go” outside it. Although this ideology appears to restrain the daughters’ freedom, chapter 3 reveals that repetitive practices of “staying” lead many girls to feel more comfortable among kin and kin-like people and to reproduce the gendered structure of the field. In contrast, chapter 4 explores individualistic desires of mothers and daughters. I focus on their gift-giving practices, which are essential to their relationships in the field. Paradoxically, although mothers in some cases may be just as disinclined to pursue familial obligations, they expect their daughters to help them financially. Giving money away



Tongan Social Field  21

can often be painful for both because it affects their ability to achieve individual goals. However, daughters of migrants continue to engage with these familial obligations because the act of providing financial support is seen as an expression of their love toward their family. In the transnational framework—host country and home country—children of migrants do not appear to engage in gift-giving practices as much as their parents. However, when we see people’s sociality as an assemblage of relationships, it becomes apparent that children, especially daughters of Tongan migrants, continue to engage in gift-giving practices to help their parents pursue familial obligations. Having followed the flows of gift-giving practices engaged in by both mothers and daughters, I argue that the distinction between the local and transnational becomes ambiguous in the Tongan social field. Chapters 5 and 6 discuss communication technologies in the Tongan social field. Both chapters emphasize the cultural specificity in the use of technologies. Chapter 5 takes a historical view and discusses how social media became integral to the Tongan social field. Tongan cultural values have been passed on from mothers to daughters, but social media was first adopted by daughters. Having already been instilled with specific cultural values, daughters used social media in a way that placed importance on kinship ties. The integration of social media in the Tongan social field enhanced the field’s existing quality of valorizing neither the local nor the transnational: social media helped users communicate among church peers across the suburbs as well as kin members in the diaspora and Tonga. Chapter 6 examines everyday politics in the lives of women in the Tongan social field by focusing on communication flows and what people in the field call family dramas. The case studies in this chapter examine how people navigate the Tongan social field when they are attempting to achieve desired outcomes that may deviate from Tongan cultural values. The chapter shows that people use technologies effectively to manipulate the social distance of relationships to create leeway for themselves. Although the range of technologies “overcome” the long distance and help people reconnect with others, options such as unfriending or simply not answering phone calls make it possible to adjust the distance between people in proximity. The nature of communication flows is uneven, which means that the digital divide between the diaspora and Tonga can be used to adjust relationships. However, the incidents related to communication technologies discussed in this chapter do not end with serious ruptures of relationships. Instead, people

22  Chapter 1

in the field carefully negotiate between individualistic desire and commitment to Tongan cultural values. The concluding chapter provides updates on core informants. Despite some changes in the life course of research participants and their attitudes toward the field, the core analysis in this book holds. The chapter draws together the many forms of mothers’ and daughters’ engagement with the Tongan social field and expands on the theoretical contributions of this research to studies on deterritorialized social worlds.

Alternative Ways to Read This Book: Two Research Participants’ Views Readers of this book will become familiar with two young women, Neti and Lu‘isa (both pseudonyms), who were also kind enough to read the book before publication and give me their thoughts. My aim has been to demonstrate how to write an ethnography that uses relationships as the field site. Their understanding of the value of this book is different. I include their reviews so that readers can read this book with three perspectives in mind (Neti’s, Lu‘isa’s, and mine). Makiko’s fieldwork experience amidst the Tongan people in the Western world gives non-Tongans a kind of understanding as to why Tongans are the way they are, the Anga Fakatonga/Tongan way. Even if it doesn’t make sense to the non-Tongan because it may not resonate with Western culture, I think a sense of understanding of the Tongan culture is certainly achieved through her insight and research. For Tongans (I being one) this book can be confronting and yet eye-opening at the same time. For a culture with much pride, it can be difficult to read of one’s faults; however, to be aware of these faults and correct them is to be in a better position than to feel a sense of shame because one knew and did nothing. Like a typical Tongan, I was more interested in discovering where and how I had been written about in this book and how that would appear to the rest of the Tongan community, despite knowing my privacy had been respected. Initially, I had ignored the fact that this book is documented research for future academics and not some gossip column in a magazine, so of course (in my own thoughts) I was inclined to figure out who she is talking about. However, after reading Makiko’s findings it became apparent that the identities of her subjects was far less interesting in comparison to the scenarios that had taken place and the different reactions and interactions that had occurred based on the amount



Tongan Social Field  23 of exposure the subjects had to their own culture (Tongan) in a Western world. I think many Tongan migrants can relate to most if not all the situations described by Makiko and, therefore, I hope that the Tongan community will take interest in having a read of this book. Whether it gives Tongans a sense of shame or pride, I think the message I took from this book is that a balanced exposure to both the Western and Tongan culture is required for one to move forward, thrive comfortably and achieve original desired goals of migration to a Western, cultured nation whilst most importantly still holding on to a sense of self and identity, which is to be TONGAN. (Neti) Before I read Makiko’s work, I did not have the words that explain my own experience. They remained in the back of my mind, but I did not have enough time to reflect on this. It was almost “empty.” Part of the reason is because there were not many books or movies that show issues Polynesians have. Reading this book gave me words to fill that space to explain my experiences. For example, Makiko’s description of the field was useful to describe my problem: being in it and finding it difficult to stay in it. I think every Tongan who reads this book will find some benefits. I would like this book to become a source for Tongans to start the discussion about their everyday experiences between the two cultures. Living in Australia as a Tongan, it is very complicated, and hard. It is a struggle. Reading that people have similar experience, young Tongans can learn that they are not alone, and they can make better choices and improve their relationships with their mothers. Tongans would read this book and relate it to themselves or would know somebody who is like that. You may identify yourself as one of the characters in this book. (Lu‘isa)

Both readers and research participants seem to relate this book to their own issues. Whereas Neti understands this book in relation to the socioeconomic struggles of Tongans in the diaspora, Lu‘isa understands it in the context of family relationships. One of the important findings from this process is that they want this book to be read by Tongans and other Pacific peoples. Since the critique of anthropology in Writing Culture (Clifford and Marcus 1986), anthropologists have become increasingly reflexive about writing ethnography and more aware of politics and power differences inherent in that act. When I was writing this book, I assumed that it would target an academic audience. In retrospect, the process of asking two close friends to read it has illuminated the

24  Chapter 1

­ otential value of ethnography if it is accessible to communities. It has p also reminded me of the responsibility I have toward Tongan communities: that is, to think about how I report my research findings to those communities. Although this book does not resolve the problem of power differences between myself as an anthropologist and the subjects of my research, I see some indication in my friends’ and research participants’ reviews of the valuable role that ethnography can play.

CHAPTER 2

Reterritorializing the Tongan Social Field Melbourne

In a theoretical sense, I conducted my fieldwork in the Tongan social field. In a physical sense, however, I spent most of that time in Melbourne, where most of my informants live. It is therefore necessary to discuss how Tongan migrants and their children in Melbourne conceptualize their sociality in relation to geographical differences and how they are organized through given relationships. The size of the Tongan social field goes beyond national borders, but the relationships in closer proximity play the pivotal role in Tongans’ everyday engagement with the field. This chapter provides foundational information for this ethnography. The chapters that follow—female mobility and social life (chapter 3), gift-giving practices (chapter 4), use of social media (chapter 5), and everyday politics and kinship relationships (chapter 6)—cannot be understood without exploring relationships created and maintained in Melbourne. By bringing the idea of territoriality back into the discussion, I first highlight a gap between the Tongan perception of sociality and the reality of national borders that so limit Tongans’ mobility. Communication technologies, electronic money transfers, and courier services have made interactions across national borders easier; actual movement, however, is becoming increasingly difficult for Tongan passport holders. In addition, although the Tongan social field is a social space created by personal relationships, it is not a homogeneous space, and people 25

26  Chapter 2

in it differentiate each geographical area in a unique way. In the field, various organizations help create and maintain people’s relationships in their daily lives. The lives of most Tongans in this study are spent in Melbourne, and kinship networks, Tongan churches, and various other organizations close at hand play vital roles in shaping their sociality.

Tonga, the Tongan Social Field, and National Borders Located in the Polynesian archipelago, the Kingdom of Tonga is made up of 171 islands, thirty-six of which are inhabited. These islands are administratively sorted into five groups: Tongatapu, Vava‘u, ‘Eua, Ha‘apai, and Ongo Niua. The capital city, Nuku‘alofa, is in Tongatapu. Tonga has been a constitutional monarchy since 1875 and is the only Pacific nation never to have been colonized, though it was a British protectorate between 1900 and 1970. Christian missionaries began arriving in Tonga in the late eighteenth century, and through the process of building a modern constitutional monarchy, Christianity became an integral part of Tongan culture and beliefs (Campbell 1992; Marcus 1980). The country depends on remittances from migrants overseas and developmental aid programs from affluent countries, including the United States, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, and increasingly China. Although basic infrastructure is “of reasonably good quality” (World Bank 2014, para. 1), telecommunications infrastructure is relatively limited but rapidly improving. According to statistics available from World Bank Open Data, 29 percent of the population subscribed to mobile phone plans (both prepaid and postpaid) in 2006, reaching 51 percent in 2009 and more than 70 percent in 2016 (2019a). Only 5.85 percent could access the internet in 2006, 16 percent in 2010, and 38.65 percent in 2015.1 Social changes in Tonga in the twentieth century cannot be explained without taking the mass migration of its people into account. In the 1930s, less than half of the population lived on the main island of Tongatapu (Small and Dixon 2004). Internal migration from the outer islands to Tongatapu began after World War II as the increase in population caused shortages of land for subsistence agriculture. Tongans from the outer islands moved to the capital city for better work opportunities, education, and easier access to medical services, and by 2006 almost 70 percent of all Tongans lived in Tongatapu. However, in the 1960s, outmigration—mainly to the United States, New Zealand, and Australia— began in response to a stagnant economy that provided few opportunities. “By the mid-1980s, more than 1,900 Tongans were leaving Tonga

Melbourne  27

each year, slowing the natural population growth rate of 2.3 percent annually to only 0.3 by the census year 1996” (Small and Dixon 2004, para. 7). Although the immigration policies of the three main countries of destination are becoming increasingly stringent, making it more difficult for Tongan citizenship holders to migrate permanently, it is safe to say that every household in Tonga has at least one relative who is a migrant overseas. It is impossible to give an exact number for the size of the overseas population, but it is commonly acknowledged that more Tongans are now in the diaspora than in Tonga (Besnier 2011; Lee 2003). Although the movements and social worlds of Pacific Islanders, including Tongans, may conjure up the image of porous boundaries, national borders have a persistent power to control and regulate people’s movement. Discussions of second-generation Tongans in the diaspora and Tongan passport holders who want to emigrate from Tonga seem to be separate topics; however, in many cases they are related. Families often discuss immigration issues, such as how they can bring their cousins to Melbourne or help relatives secure permanent residency. Adult children of migrants often need to contribute to airfares or visa application fees for their relatives in Tonga. In addition, given that a number of daughters of migrants marry men in Tonga (discussed in chapter 3), the issues around national borders are significant for those who want their partners to live in Australia lawfully. They pay significant sums and wait patiently a considerable time for approval from the immigration department to bring their partners to Australia.2 Some women have relationships with Tongan male overstayers and have to deal with immigration case officers to acquire appropriate visas for their partners.3 Differences in citizenship and immigration status can also have clear repercussions outside the visa application process: the children of migrants move freely between Tonga and Australia, but their cousins, whom may be overstayers, cannot see their family members in Tonga if they wish to remain in Australia. Because the Australian government prefers skilled migrants, it does not offer many options for the unskilled labor force, in which many Tongans are categorized. Although the Trans-Tasman Travel Arrangement between Australia and New Zealand has enabled Tongans with New Zealand citizenship to freely enter Australia to live and work, those from Tonga have limited opportunities to migrate to Australia, either temporarily or permanently. In the case of permanent migration, apart from a limited number of people who are eligible for skilled migration, the only option would be to apply for family reunification visas,

28  Chapter 2

i­ ncluding carer or partner visas. Carer visas are capped each year and difficult to obtain. Partner visas are not capped and are usually granted if the couple can show evidence of a genuine relationship.4 The temporary labor migration pathway to Australia developed only recently, partly in response to persistent requests from the governments of Pacific countries, including Tonga, which are eager to see Australia increase labor opportunities for their people, even if only temporary ones. Eventually the Seasonal Worker Programme and its pilot version the Pacific Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme were created so that “unskilled” workers from participating Pacific countries could work, mainly in horticultural areas for six to nine months. In 2019, Tonga was added to the list of eligible countries for the Pacific Labour Scheme, which allows workers from eligible countries in the Pacific to work in rural Australia for a minimum of twelve months to as long as three years. Australia’s stringent policies have affected not only Tonga and other Pacific countries but also most people from the Global South. Tongan passport holders, however, have been further impacted by the misleading statistical impression that Tongan passport holders are likely to become unlawful noncitizens.5 Because the population of Tongans in Australia is relatively small, the actual number of illegal migrants is not large. On June 30, 2012, what was then the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) estimated that 1,090 unlawful noncitizens in Australia were from Tonga, only 1.8 percent of the total (2013, 165). In comparison, overstayers from the top three countries—China, Malaysia, and the United States—made up about 30 percent of the total 60,900. Even though the actual number of overstayers is small, Tongan passport holders have received particular attention because of their high nonreturn rates. In 2011, for example, 890 Tongans—3.54 percent of all Tongan visitors—remained in Australia after their visitor visas expired. In contrast, 8,070 Chinese and 5,080 US passport holders overstayed— only 0.39 percent and 0.74 percent of all Chinese and American visitors respectively. Despite the small actual number of Tongan overstayers, this rate is “used as an indicator of visitor visa compliance, and may be considered by decision-makers when assessing visa applications” (DIBP 2013b, para. 2). Because Tongan passport holders are seen as likely overstayers, stringent policies regulating their entry are in place, including a complex procedure for all visa applications, including visitor status. Applicants are required to provide personal bank account details to demonstrate that they do not need to work during their stay. If a person is invited

Melbourne  29

by family members who have Australian citizenship or permanent residency (Sponsored Family Visitor Visa), those family members may have to pay a substantial security bond, which usually ranges from A$5,000 to A$15,000 per person (DIAC 2010). These bonds are refunded to sponsors after the visitors have left Australia without breaching visa conditions: no work, no study or training, and no staying beyond the visa period. Even though the bond is returned to them, sponsors find it quite difficult to secure such a large sum of money in the first place. Since 2014, Tongans have been able to apply for tourist visas online; before then, visas had been issued in Fiji, and the wait to speak with officers of the Australian High Commission in Tonga was a long one. In 2011, when I was in Tonga, the mother with whom I was staying was trying to arrange a tourist visa so that she could attend her niece’s graduation in Australia. Her three children in Tonga all have professional jobs, and she had no reason to overstay in Australia. However, she had to abandon her travel plans because her visa was not approved in time. Although options for people in Tonga to enter Australia as migrants are limited, they use the few options available to them and cross-border movement continues. Church members and high school students in Tonga organize fundraising trips, traveling to different churches in the diaspora to raise funds for their churches or schools. Sports teams also cross Australian borders to play in international matches. Members of the national rugby team, Ikale Tahi, play in various countries, though the majority of the members are actually diasporic Tongans. However, other sports players also go overseas, thanks to support from international associations and cohorts in the diaspora. For example, during my fieldwork in 2008, the Australian Football International Cup was held in Melbourne, and football players from Tonga participated. A church minister invited all the team members to stay in his house, and a Tongan church held a welcome event for the team. The event itself was formal and included speeches from both sides, but after the event, young men in their twenties took the team players out to the city to socialize. In addition, Melbourne airport is the entry point for visitors planning to work in horticultural industries in regional Victoria. The children of migrants may be instructed to pick up visitors at the airport so that they can rest at migrants’ houses before the long bus trip to their regional destination the next day. It is therefore not unusual for children of Tongan migrants in Australia to see people from Tonga on a daily basis. Because age and gender often determine the people with whom a person spends their time,

30  Chapter 2

Tongan migrants expect their children to “look after” any young visitors or newcomers from Tonga. Adult children of migrants take these visitors out and explain the Australian way of life to them.

Tongan Migrants and Their Children in Melbourne Melbourne, the capital city of Victoria and the second largest city in Australia, recorded a population of about four million in the 2011 census (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2013b). Within this population, nearly 40 percent were born overseas, the most common countries of birth being England, India, China, Italy, and New Zealand; 42.1 percent of people have both parents born in Australia, and 45.9 percent have both parents born overseas. Language use is also diverse, more than 30 percent speaking languages other than English at home; the top five languages are Greek, Italian, Mandarin, Vietnamese, and Cantonese. Table 1 shows the Tongan population in each state and capital city in Australia in 2011. As noted elsewhere (Besnier 2011; Grossman and Sharples 2010; Lee 2003), census data do not reflect the actual number of Tongans because overstayers and Tongans with New Zealand citizenship tend not to be included in the number of Tongans. However, population distribution figures seem to reflect reality: most Tongans live in Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2012), Melbourne dominated general population growth in Australia from 2001 to 2011. Overseas students and skilled migrants tend to live in the central areas of Melbourne; many unskilled migrants, however, especially from non– English-speaking backgrounds, settle in the outer suburbs, which has made some Anglo Australians view specific suburbs as “un-Australian” (Turner 2008, 576). Graeme Turner, who specializes in cultural studies and TV media representations, argues that economic and cultural differences between inner-city urban spaces and suburban areas have emerged through two opposite images of multiculturalism, “the heart of the city is applauded for redefining Australianness in terms of its open embrace of the international, the transnational and the global,” which runs counter to “the discourses of border protection operating in the policing of identity and belonging in the suburbs” (Turner 2008, 579). Although some Tongans have an Australian middle-class lifestyle, live in the inner-city or wealthy suburbs, and embrace a redefined multicultural Australianness, most of my informants would be classified as working

Melbourne  31

Table 1. Population (2011 Census) Population with Tongan Ancestry

Overall Population

State New South Wales Queensland Victoria Western Australia Australian Capital Territory South Australia Northern Territory Tasmania Total

14,372 5,062 3,919 661 566 238 158 118 25,094

6,917,658 4,332,739 5,354,042 2,239,170 357,222 1,596,572 211,945 495,354 21,507,717

City Sydney Brisbane Melbourne Perth Canberra Adelaide Darwin Hobart

12,694 3,729 2,942 498 559 194 64 58

4,391,674 2,065,996 3,999,982 1,728,867 356,586 1,225,235 120,586 211,656

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics 2013b.

class and live throughout the outer suburbs, which are often associated with problematic aspects of multiculturalism. Tongan households are dispersed across the outer suburbs, especially to the west, where the cost of rent is more affordable. In these areas, Pacific Islanders are often regarded negatively or are even criminalized. For example, in a collaborative research project with the Victorian Police, which explored community safety and relationships between youth and police in a western suburb of Melbourne, Michele Grossman and Jenny Sharples selected young people (age fifteen to nineteen) from Sudanese and Pacific Islander backgrounds for focus groups because6 Anecdotal reports from police, young people and community representatives suggested that young people in these communities [Sudanese and

32  Chapter 2 Pacific Islanders] . . . were more frequently involved in issues relating to public gathering, youth-on-youth assault, aggravated assault, traffic offences and weapons carriage than other CALDB [culturally and linguistically diverse background] and non-CALDB youth. (2010, 26)

Grossman and Sharples find that youth from Pacific Island backgrounds feel that they are unfairly treated by police, who tend to have racist views against them (2010, 165). This finding is also supported by Steven Francis’s work: As a result of the stereotype that all Pacific Island young people are big, some people provoke fights in an attempt to demonstrate fighting prowess and ability. There are also numerous examples of institutional racism and harassment ranging from some members of the police to security guards and shopkeepers. (1995, 187)

The misconception of “aggressiveness” (Francis 1995, 180) coexists with the other common stereotype of Tongans that “they are all friendly, deriving in part from the name ‘Friendly Islands’ given to Tonga by the explorer Captain James Cook” (Lee 2003, 61). In turn, Tongans also have stereotypic images of non-Tongans. They generally contrast themselves with pālangi, pointing out that though modesty and generosity form part of the idea of Tongan virtue, pālangi symbolize their lack. Thus parents often say that they want their children to mingle only with Tongans, usually cousins and church peers in the social field, rather than with friends outside the field, to avoid negative influences from non-Tongans. This dichotomy is an important part of Tongan identity both in Tonga and in the diaspora (Lee 2003; Besnier 2011), and although some of the negative elements attributed to pālangi are stereotypical and without much basis, it is also impossible to dismiss them as ungrounded delusions. For example, one of the Tongan households where I stayed was in an ethnically diverse suburb whose residents were typically of low socioeconomic status. The Australian neighbor sold drugs and a few neighbors sometimes visited the Tongan household to ask for a loaf of bread or milk to share with their children when they ran out of money. The Tongan family stopped me from going outside after dark because the danger was real. Perhaps middle-class Tongans who live in affluent suburbs would not find evidence that strengthened their negative stereotypes of non-Tongans, particularly pālangi. However, for working-class Tongans who live in marginalized areas, everyday

Melbourne  33

experiences may help bolster such stereotypes. It is ironic that, on the one hand, Tongans and other Pacific Islanders are viewed as part of “the risk” and investigated as illustrated in the collaborative research project with the Victoria Police (Grossman and Sharples 2010), and that, on the other, Tongans understand that negative influences arise from outside the social field. Racist discourse in the media, for example, sometimes leads Tongans to make derogatory remarks about various Others—such as Somali refugees, Indians, and Indigenous Australians—in everyday conversation (see also Lee 2003, 69; Small 1997, 225n13). However, comparisons are almost exclusively made with reference to pālangi—reminiscent of the young man who claimed, “I only have Aussie friends.” Although most Tongans with whom I spoke live in the outer suburbs, I did not observe much intermingling of Tongans and non-pālangi. Grossman and Sharples say that although local schools, local councils, and government emphasize “social cohesion and harmony,” “some Pacific Islander young people of both genders said they felt less safe around people from nonEnglish speaking cultural backgrounds. . . . The experience of ‘different’ cultures creating a chronic sense of risk and threat to young Pacific Islanders of both genders” (2010, 127–128). MELIPOANE: TONGAN PERSPECTIVES

Tongans in Melbourne can appear socially and economically marginalized, but this impression does not fully represent them. The emic understanding of geographical differences is closely related to the size of the Tongan population. Those who have migrated from Tonga describe the difference by saying that Melbourne (Melipoane in Tongan) is an easy city to live in because fewer Tongans live there than in some other areas. The implication is that if many Tongans live in the same area, the likelihood is higher of more events—such as fundraising, funerals, and weddings—being held during which people would incur a range of familial obligations and thus have to donate money and goods. On the one hand, locations with high concentrations of Tongan cohorts offer social support. On the other, “they are the context of heightened obligations . . . and potential exposure to damaging gossip and rivalries that can result in deportation if one is undocumented” (Besnier 2011, 36). New migrants who are sponsored by residents in Melbourne move directly to Melbourne, but Melbourne was not the first place for the early Tongans who migrated to Australia to live. They moved from Sydney

34  Chapter 2

or Auckland to escape from these obligations. Interestingly, even those who socialize mainly with Tongans in Melbourne said they came to Melbourne because not many Tongans live there. Although migrants describe the differences between Melbourne and other places in terms of different degrees of obligations, their daughters describe the differences in reference to the constraints in their everyday lives. I explore how these constraints affect the daughters’ personal networks in chapter 3. Here, I summarize them as a range of restraints on single women’s behavior that originate in the Tongan cultural values of chastity and modesty. For example, Neti, who is in her early twenties, and I went to the twenty-first birthday celebrations of one of her relatives in Melbourne, where we met more of her relatives from Brisbane and Sydney. The party was held in the backyard of the birthday girl’s house, where a large tent had been set up with all the food and drinks— including coolers filled with soft drinks and bottles of alcohol—and all those attending were free to help themselves. Important guests such as ministers and other adults had seats in the tent, but Neti and the girls ate on the terrace of the house. Girls from Melbourne, including Neti, started drinking alcohol; the girls from Brisbane and Sydney did not. After a short while, they asked Neti in a whisper to go to the tent and get alcohol for them. When I asked why they could not get it themselves, they explained that they were too embarrassed to do so in front of their mothers and relatives. Because the terrace was on the opposite side of the yard, it was impossible for other guests to see them. They therefore felt free to drink, but did not want to be seen taking alcohol from the area where so many adults were. About a week later, I was with Neti and she suddenly remembered this incident. “I think us girls are lucky to be in Melbourne,” she said. “We have more freedom. Because they [the two girls] had to hide drinking from their parents. But it’s ridiculous because, in the end, their mothers knew that they were drinking. They were so drunk.” This contrast revolves around the Tongan cultural value of modesty; drinking alcohol in public does not fit with the Tongan ideal of femininity. Although Neti said she had more freedom, daughters in Melbourne also have to deal with a range of Tongan cultural values. Two other examples are ‘Ofa and ‘Alisi, who are also in their early twenties. Both grew up in Auckland but came to Melbourne at different stages in their lives, which led to them having different impressions of Melbourne and Auckland. ‘Ofa moved to Melbourne in 2004, having spent most of her life in Auckland. She regularly attends a Tongan church

Melbourne  35

in Melbourne but does not mingle with the other girls in her generation. According to ‘Ofa, girls in Melbourne are too snobby and fiepālangi, an expression used to criticize behavior when people “seem too eager to turn their back on tradition” and behave in non-Tongan, especially in Western or Australian, ways (Besnier 2011, 12). She does not like to see them wearing short skirts to church or always speaking in English. She felt more comfortable speaking Tongan, she said, and said she would die if she could not eat manioke (cassava) or talo (taro). Rather than socializing with the girls, she usually sits with women in their forties and fifties and converses with them in Tongan during the morning tea at church. ‘Alisi, by contrast, moved with her parents and siblings to Melbourne in 1993, and thus has spent more time in Melbourne than in Auckland. She is part of a core group of girls at her church and actively engages in youth group activities and “nights out” with them. She dyes her hair reddish brown and is keen to follow edgy Australian fashion, which tends to be too revealing in the context of Tongan values. She considered herself luckier than girls in Auckland; her parents, she said, had been stricter when they lived in Auckland, but had begun to compromise. At first, she had missed an environment where the majority of the people she saw were Islanders, but now she appreciated that she did not “suffer” as much as the girls in Auckland.7

Social Organizations Scattered across suburbs in outer Melbourne without creating ethnic enclaves, Tongans are still connected through their invisible networks, which are mainly organized on the basis of kinship. Other ties, such as Tongan churches and student associations, are also part of the mix. An early report asserts that when Pacific Islanders first settled in Australia, the extended family began to “dissolve,” leading migrants to become isolated without community support (Francis 1995, 184). My fieldwork in the late 2000s, however, shows dense webs of networks that provide vital support for Tongans in Melbourne. Children of Tongan migrants were born into this field of relationships, which consists of two key elements: kinship ties and ties created through Tongan churches. Before they enter wider Australian society—a kindergarten, for example—their initial relationships are constructed within the Tongan social field. Grandparents, siblings, aunts, and uncles visit the hospital as soon as the baby is born. As soon as babies have been christened and start attending church with their parents, they receive a

36  Chapter 2

good deal of favorable attention from the church congregation. As soon as a baby’s parents get out of the car, members of the church—most likely the mother’s sisters or the baby’s cousins—run to the baby and carry it into the church. During the service, a baby will be quietly passed from a cousin to an aunt, to a sister, to a non–kin member. This passing and cuddling continues until the baby starts crying, at which point he or she is taken outside by either the mother or a close family member to calm down. During the service, all this is undertaken quietly; at morning tea, however, the process is noisier because every woman seems to want to hold the baby, who continues to be passed from one person to another. Little children can act as “carriers,” taking a baby from person to person, or running to the baby’s mother to get a bottle or wipes if adult women think they are needed.8 For most children of Tongan migrants, kin members and peers who grew up in the same church become their foundational networks. A girl in her early twenties said, “They [church members] are all like a family for me. I grew up in this church and I know everyone.” As discussed later, these ties created through “growing up together in the church” become an important part of the networks of children of migrants, even after some of them stop attending church regularly. KINSHIP AND HOUSEHOLD COMPOSITION

Pacific Islanders, including Tongans, consider kinship ties to be most significant of all relationships. When they explore the historical process of Samoan migration to Auckland, Cluny and La‘avasa Macpherson say, “Kinship frames Samoan social organisation and Samoan transnationalism” (2009, 73). Their historical account from the early 1970s shows that kinship networks have offered mutual support throughout migration and settlement, playing a pivotal role in building today’s “transnational Samoan society” (Macpherson and Macpherson 2009, 76). As true of Samoan migrants in New Zealand, kinship ties among Tongans provide the foundations for migrants to move, settle, and form the Tongan social field on much larger scales. When we look at earlier studies on Tongan migration, we find two basic patterns. One is that each sibling migrates to a different country, which leads the size of the Tongan social field to expand. In his research, conducted in Tonga in 1992, anthropologist Ken‘ichi Sudō shows how family members are dispersed across the diaspora. One of his research participants has eleven children, “two sons live in Australia, one daugh-

Melbourne  37

ter in Auckland, and one son, one daughter and one cousin in the United States” (Sudō 1997, 104). He analyzes this pattern as a strategy to stabilize remittances because even if the economic situation in one country worsens, siblings in other countries can keep sending money to their family members in Tonga. In fact, the topic of dispersed family members across the diaspora and their ties to Tonga has received much attention. George Marcus uses the term “dispersed family estates” to refer to the system by which adult siblings migrate to different countries or urban areas of Tonga while maintaining ties with family members back in the village and sending remittances (1974, 92; see also Evans 2001). These strong ties across national borders are seen as characteristics of the Pacific diaspora (Gershon 2007). However, not every group of siblings forms a dispersed family estate. Another common but relatively underexamined situation is when siblings move to the same country, known as chain migration. Usually older siblings move first and sponsor their younger siblings. This method allows the Tongan social field to form dense networks between people in close proximity. Whereas the former pattern is often followed to heighten the status of those who remain in the village—by stabilizing the remittances from different countries—siblings in close proximity often cooperate to heighten their own status in the diaspora and support families in Tonga as well. Indeed, mutual support among local kin members is essential to everyday lives in Melbourne. In addition to sending money to their family members in Tonga, they cooperate to collect money and donate to Tongan churches to establish their reputations in Melbourne. When large familial gatherings such as weddings and funerals are held, family members across the diaspora may support the event; however, in everyday life, it is extended family members living nearby who make up an individual’s core unit. In addition, migrants’ life paths—whom they marry in Australia, for example—may influence how they engage with the Tongan social field and how they raise children. Relationships between siblings also influence their children’s relationships. To illustrate how these life path choices and relationships of extended family members in close proximity influence both how migrants cooperate with each other and their children’s engagement with the Tongan social field, I offer the migration story of an extended family among my core research participants: a single mother in her forties, Pele, and her daughter Neti, in her early twenties. Although Pele is not a regular member of any Tongan church, and her house is located in a suburb where not many Tongans live, she is in fact neither isolated nor distant

38  Chapter 2

from the Tongan social field. She has close relationships with her siblings, and her physical household resembles part of a bigger house for extended family members who constantly come and go. Pele has three sisters and three brothers. The first to migrate was the oldest sister, Susana, who moved to the capital city of Tonga, Nuku‘alofa, as a waitress in the late 1960s. By 2013, the siblings and their children and grandchildren constituted thirteen households: one in Tonga, one in Europe, and eleven in Australia. The immediate family in Tonga comprises their deceased oldest brother’s oldest son and his mother who have remained to look after their family land. The other siblings, including Pele, have financially supported this small household in Tonga for about twenty years. 1. Pele Pele is the youngest sister of her siblings. Although she migrated to Australia much later than her sister Susana, I introduce Pele and Neti first because they appear most often in this book. Pele moved to Melbourne with her brothers when their mother passed away in Tonga in 1986. She is a single mother with two children, and when I lived with them during my fieldwork, Neti was in her early twenties and Pele’s son Isi was in primary school. The household language is a mixture of Tongan and English. 2. Susana In 1968, the oldest sister, Susana, left the remote island where she had been living and started working as a waitress in the capital city, Nuku‘alofa. There, she met a pālangi hotel owner who was looking for workers for his resort hotel on another Pacific Island. Because the salary was better than what she was earning in Tonga, Susana moved there and began working in the hotel in 1969. In 1978, she was sponsored to migrate to Australia, where she started a factory job in Melbourne. She has lived there ever since. In Melbourne, she married a Tongan migrant and had a ­daughter, Besi, and a son, Tevita. Besi married a Tongan man from Tonga, and he successfully obtained his spouse visa. The couple lives at Susana’s place, trying to save money so that they can move out to their own house. The language used in Susana’s household is exclusively Tongan and the family members are keen churchgoers.

Pele and her extended family members (Greyed out symbols indicate non-Tongans).

40  Chapter 2

3. Sālote When their father passed away in 1976, Sālote joined Susana and worked in the same hotel. She fell in love with an Anglo Australian man and married him. In 1979, they moved to Australia and settled in Queensland. They have one adopted child from Tonga (‘Amelia) and two other children, a son and a daughter. ‘Amelia has a small Tongan vocabulary; the two other children do not speak Tongan at all. Of the original migrant sibling group, this is the only household with a middle-class lifestyle: Sālote and her husband own their property and their financial situation is stable. Neti describes Sālote as “the only person in our family who actually gives back money when she asks for a loan. She’s got a pālangi way.” Although Sālote often comes to Melbourne for family events, her husband and children hardly interact with family members apart from Neti, because she used to live with them. 4. Nia The third of Pele’s siblings, Nia, moved to Melbourne after Susana was settled, and they worked in the same factory. She also married an Anglo Australian man and had three children: a son, Lisiate, in his early thirties, a daughter, Veisinia, in her late twenties, and another son, Kali, in his teens. Veisinia speaks fluent Tongan and married a Tongan migrant. Her brother, Lisiate, does not speak Tongan at all. Lisiate shares a house with his Anglo Australian friend and does not participate in family gatherings as much as his sister. 5. Siō The older brother, Siō moved to Melbourne with Pele and his younger brother Aisea in 1986. Pele stayed with Nia and babysat Nia’s two children; Siō and Aisea lived in a “men’s house” with young, single male relatives. In 1990, Siō married a non-Tongan woman and had a son and a daughter. The two children keep in sporadic touch with their paternal cousins and attend big family events such as twenty-first birthdays, but only if they are held in Melbourne. They display a much lower level of commitment than their cousins: they are not included as helpers to contribute to preparations for feasts but come instead as guests. Because Siō is the only sibling with the patrilineal surname, his sisters see him as the head of the family in Melbourne. However, because his wife is in charge of their finances, he has difficulty affording the time and

Melbourne  41

money for engagements with the Tongan social field. His younger sister Pele often serves in the role of wife for him when he needs some traditional wealth or outfits to wear for events. 6. Aisea The younger brother, Aisea migrated to Melbourne with Pele and Siō in 1986. He married a Tongan woman and had two daughters. Before his death in 2004, Aisea often visited his sisters’ homes and interacted with his nieces and nephews but Aisea’s siblings and their children have since lost contact with his daughters. 7. Semisi and Sione The oldest brother of the original sibling group passed away in Tonga, and the family’s land was inherited by his oldest son, Viliami. His siblings and their children in Australia put money together to bring the two younger sons—Semisi and Sione, then in their twenties—to Melbourne in 2004. Sione married a Tongan woman; they live in Melbourne with their son. Sione got a job at the same factory where Pele and Susana used to work. Semisi, however, left Melbourne and moved to Sydney, where some of his mother’s family lives. He married a Tongan woman and lives with his wife’s parents. Both Semisi and Sione have developed a fatherson relationship with their uncle Siō. 8. ‘Amelia Informally adopted ( pusiaki) by the siblings’ mother, Langi, ‘Amelia is in her thirties and was born in Tonga and raised there until she was six years old.9 In 1980, after a visit to Australia to see her children, Langi returned to Tonga leaving ‘Amelia with the siblings. ‘Amelia was then legally adopted by Sālote and raised as one of her children. Now she has a professional job in Queensland and is married to an Anglo Australian man; they have two children. Given that ‘Amelia was adopted twice, how Pele and her siblings treat her is ambiguous: sometimes as their sister but in other contexts as a niece, Sālote’s daughter. She does not have any connections with her biological parents, and all the family members see ‘Amelia as an important member of this extended family. This story of these siblings illustrates several important points. First, close interactions mostly happen between maternal family members in close proximity. In Tongan kinship terminology, a mother’s sister is also

42  Chapter 2

categorized as a mother ( fa‘ē), acting “like a second mother to the children, giving them orders and discipline and forming a very close, affectionate relationship” with them (Morton 1996, 125). For example, some children of migrants also call their maternal aunt “mum,” which further enhances close relationships with one’s maternal same-sex cousins. Among Pele’s extended family members, Neti, Veisinia, and Besi have constructed close relationships, and they tend to describe themselves as sisters. Of course, this kinship rule does not govern every relationship: another maternal same-sex cousin, Sālote’s daughter, has limited contact with her maternal cousins except Neti, who used to live with them. This is not only because geographical distance prevents them from interacting face-to-face regularly but also because Sālote’s daughter has a distinctively different lifestyle from her cousins in Melbourne. Sālote’s children have middle-class lifestyles like their parents, which are different from their other relatives in Melbourne, most of whom depend on welfare or engage in menial jobs. Thus, class difference intersects with the kinship system. Some family members joked that Sālote’s children were “too pālangi.” Even ‘Amelia, who spent her first six years in Tonga, now has little knowledge of Tongan culture. In contrast, Nia’s daughter, Veisinia, who also has a pālangi father, was raised differently. Veisinia’s mother devotes herself to engagement with the Tongan social field, which has led to Veisinia’s being familiar with the field and a fluent Tongan speaker, whereas Sālote has compromised more with her Anglo Australian husband, and thus created some distance between her children and the Tongan social field. Furthermore, although each member of the original sibling group has formed their own nuclear family household, these, especially the households of the sisters in Melbourne, often function as a single unit in their everyday lives. Rather than using childcare services, for example, the extended family members support each other. When Pele first arrived in Melbourne, before finding a job, she looked after her older sisters’ children, and when Pele’s nieces grew older, they in turn looked after her children. In addition, as the youngest aunt, Pele is less strict than her sisters, and as a result her household provides a place to socialize for her nieces and nephews; or, more frankly, a party place where they get together and have a drink without worrying too much about Tongan cultural values. For example, avoidance relationships between the Tongan brothers and sisters are ignored to a certain extent and both nieces and nephews (considered brothers and sisters in the Tongan cultural context) share the same table and drink alcohol together.10

Melbourne  43

The cooperation of migrant sisters in close proximity becomes more visible during the preparation of a feast. When they host such an event, Susana’s and Pele’s houses are the main unit for preparations even though it takes about fifteen minutes to drive between their houses. The sisters allocate the cooking tasks and which nieces and nephews will help through a series of phone calls. On the day of the preparation, nieces and nephews go to the allocated houses, but are also flexible: phone calls between the two households keep track of each other’s progress, and young people often move to the household that needs more help. Thus a few cars often move back and forth between the two households. In contrast to the strong relationships between the sisters and their daughters, cross-cousin relationships and relationships with father’s side of the family are more reserved. Various factors—separation, divorce, death, and intermarriage—may affect the relationship with father’s side. For example, Neti keeps in touch with cousins on her father’s side, but the relationship is not as close as with her maternal cousins. Veisinia has Australian cousins in her father’s side, but the relationships she has with them are different from those on her Tongan side of the family. The Tongan elaborate kinship hierarchy system also plays a role in shaping the quality of relationships. Its main principles are that sisters rank higher than brothers; elder ranks higher than younger; and the father’s side ranks higher than mother’s side. The more egalitarian relationships between maternal parallel cousins may enhance their friendships, just as the hierarchical relationship between paternal cousins may sometimes prevent closer relationships. In addition, the hierarchical relationship between brothers and sisters gives the father’s sister (mehikitanga) an authoritative power that may also have an impact on how relationships are formed. Traditionally, a mehikitanga is believed to have sacred power over her brothers and their children as well as the right to request goods and money from them (Taumeofolau 1991). In Pele’s extended family, we observe this in the relationship between Pele and her brother’s son Sione. Pele does not ask her sisters’ sons to mow the lawn, but always asks Sione. Even when Lisiate, her sister’s son, was staying with Pele, it was Sione who came to mow the lawn. We do not see this hierarchical relationship between Pele and the children of Siō, however. As described, Siō’s children would come to family gatherings as guests rather than as family members who help prepare for the feast. Whereas Sione grew up in Tonga and knows what is and is not done in the Tongan social field, Siō’s children were born in Australia and their mother is not Tongan. Thus they are not familiar

44  Chapter 2

with many cultural protocols. Rather than enforcing the mehikitanga’s power over them, Pele is called “aunty,” has affectionate relationships with Siō’s children, and does not demand any labor from them. Thus, in the diaspora, where multiple logics and different social fields exist, the Tongan kinship hierarchy does not necessarily determine all relationships. Although at formal rituals, including twenty-first birthdays and funerals, the father’s sister plays an important role, I observed more informal, less hierarchical relationships between mehikitanga and their nieces and nephews in everyday life in the diaspora. The household compositions discussed often change as a result of people’s movements, which is also a characteristic of Tongan house­ holds both in Tonga and in the diaspora. “The composition of a household may change from one month to the next” (Decktor Korn 1975, 235). For example, Shulamit Decktor Korn conducted her fieldwork in Tonga from 1969 to 1970, and finds that “the composition of households in Tonga is probably best understood as the outcome of different ways of fulfilling certain demands on the individuals and family groups who make up the household” (1975, 240), but “not as the expression of norms regarding kinship” (255). Most Tongan households have a spare bedroom, spare beds, or a number of foldable mattresses for visitors as a matter of course. Of course, not every Tongan sibling group migrates to the same country: some households have no close relatives living nearby. Lina’s, for example, consists of her, her husband, and two children. They moved to Melbourne from Auckland in 2005 because they thought there would be “more opportunities” in Melbourne. Neither Lina nor her husband have any siblings in Australia, only in Auckland or Tonga. Their daughter, Finau, who is in her early twenties, said she really missed Auckland where she had so many cousins with whom she could spend time. A keen user of social media, Finau interacts with her cousins in Auckland and Tonga regularly. The family has created close ties with people through their Tongan church, however, which has helped them host feasts at the church and enabled them to hold a big twenty-first birthday party for Finau. TONGAN CHURCH

As Lina’s household makes clear, Tongan churches play an important role in shaping the sociality of Tongan migrants and their children in a number of ways. Because Tongan migrants and their children in Mel-

Melbourne  45

bourne do not form ethnic enclaves, Tongan churches are valuable places where face-to-face interactions with a large number of people take place. In addition to regular services, churches also provide a space for holding important life events—christenings, birthdays, weddings and funerals— and for meetings between diasporic Tongans and visitors from Tonga. Ministers or high school choir groups from Tonga, for example, go to Tongan churches to hold fundraising events, and church congregations hold welcome events for these visitors. Many scholars who study Pacific Island migrants report that ethnic churches are key organizations that physically unite dispersed populations and help nurture networks (Lee 2003; McGrath 2002; Small 1997). Tongan churches also embody one characteristic of the Tongan social field: the physical space where status competitions take place. Members of the congregation appraise each other on the kind of clothes they wear to church, how they behave, how they host morning teas or feasts, and how much money they contribute to fundraising events or misinale (annual church donations); these often become subjects of gossip, which can spread to those who are not present at the occasion via phone calls. As discussed in chapters 5 and 6, the emergence of social media, which enables people to upload photographs for others to see, has strengthened this competitive nature because people can evaluate others in the field without physically being present. To avoid shame and gain repute, many migrants devote so much time and money to Tongan churches that some of them have difficulty paying household bills. Many people—both migrants and their children—who try to distance themselves from Tongan churches cite gossip and the competitive nature of the church as reasons they stopped attending regularly. Tongan churches thus have both positive and negative effects on migrants and their children: although they provide opportunities for creating and maintaining relationships, they can also be a space for judgmental experiences. During my fieldwork, I attended five churches whose members are mostly Tongan: three Australian-based Uniting Churches, one Free Church of Tonga, and one Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga. As is true of the Tongan population in Australia, it is difficult to grasp the precise number of Tongan churches in Melbourne because the congregation may split and form new groups or people who left the church may form small-scale Bible study groups in place of Tongan churches.11 Still, other Tongans belong to Christian denominations and do not form separate ethnic churches. For example, as far as I know, Mormon, Seventh Day Adventist, and Pentecostal churches in Melbourne are multicultural.

46  Chapter 2

In addition, people who had regularly attended a Tongan church may instead simply begin attending so-called pālangi churches within the same denomination, where the congregation is mainly non-Tongan Australians. A family who started going to a pālangi church told me about how their church was nice and stress-free because it was free from the competitive nature of Tongan churches. I observed that a church whose members were mostly elderly Anglo Australians in the eastern suburbs gradually became popular with Tongan people who wanted to distance themselves from a Tongan church. A migrant woman who moved to the church proudly told me that as the Tongan members increased the Anglo Australian minister put up a sign in Tongan saying “Mālō e lelei” (Hello) at the entrance of the church. Despite the fluidity of church membership, Tongan churches are still central in shaping the sociality of Tongan migrants and their children. Even after a person leaves a Tongan church, the networks created through the church are often maintained. Also, when one’s extended family hosts a feast at a Tongan church, nonregulars often come to the church to help organize the event. Children of migrants who do not go to a Tongan church may also have to give money to their parents so that they can make donations to the church. Thus, although individuals may be able to decide whether to attend a Tongan church, kinship ties make avoiding its influence difficult. As Helen Lee explains, each denomination, even each church, has differing policies on how to organize church services and on the degree of Tongan-ness of services (2003). For example, although some churches deliver services exclusively in Tongan, others use both English and Tongan to better include the children of migrants, who may have limited language skills. How congregation members dress also differs. Those affiliated with Tongan-based churches—such as the Free Church of Tonga—or of churches in areas where many newcomers live—such as the western suburbs of Melbourne or rural horticultural areas—tend to dress in formal Tongan clothing: men wear a shirt and tupenu (wraparound skirt), and ta‘ovala (mat worn around the waist) and women wear puletaha (a short-sleeved top and ankle-length skirt) and kiekie (decorative waist band). The dress code of the Free Church of Tonga was so strict that the family who took me to a service asked me to wear formal Tongan attire. In more Westernized churches, men wear suits, or shirts and pants, and women wear modest dresses, tops with ankle-length skirts, or black pants. That the dress code may be relatively less strict in these churches does not mean that people can wear anything they like:

Melbourne  47

congregants are still required to be well groomed and modestly dressed. Women especially are required to embody the modesty that is such an important element of the Tongan ideal of femininity. Whether one has Tongan blood often becomes irrelevant when attending a Tongan church because everyone who does is expected to follow Tongan values. When a christening was held for a baby whose father is Tongan and mother is Anglo Australian, I heard several women complain about the mother’s clothing. The father was dressed in traditional Tongan attire, but the mother was wearing pants and a shirt. I asked a migrant woman who complained to me whether the woman should have worn Tongan clothes. She replied, “No, she doesn’t have to. But she could have dressed up more properly to show respect.” Tongan churches also deal with problems faced by youth and try to retain the participation of young people (Lee 2003, 43), who are more likely to stop attending Tongan churches than older generations. Sunday schools and youth groups are organized not only to pass on religious knowledge but also to teach Tongan language and traditional dances to children of migrants. One interesting attempt I observed in Melbourne was a kava circle for young men, usually accompanied by their fathers.12 This Tongan church has a small building for kava club (kalapu) at the back of the church hall, where fathers hold kava circles on Fridays while the youth group holds their activities in the church hall. After the youth activity, male youth group members join their fathers’ kava circle. When we examine Tongan male migrants’ sociality, the kava circle is as important as the church, both important meeting places in which to create and maintain relationships. Some men hardly ever attend Sunday services, yet rarely miss the kava circle, which is also held in the church building. Although attending the kava club is a common social activity for males, from the young men to the elders in Tonga, it is not popular among children of migrants. Some simply dislike the taste of the kava; others may not want to go because of their limited Tongan language skills given that people in a kava club speak mostly Tongan. Also, although young male migrants tend to go to the kava circle, sons of migrants more often socialize in pubs or nightclubs, preferring to spend time with peers rather than their fathers and uncles at a kava club. The organizer of the youth kava club told me that the club encouraged young men to participate to prevent them from being involved in fighting at nightclubs or spending too much money on alcohol. He also mentioned that young men can learn Tongan songs that men sing throughout the night at the kava circle.

48  Chapter 2

Although young children typically do not make their own decisions about whether to go to church with their parents, most parents do not force them to attend when the children are older. One of the churches I attended had an interesting age distribution. The age range of regular attendees was broad, from babies to people over seventy, but the daughters and sons—in their late twenties and early thirties—of migrants were absent. Although some daughters returned when they became mothers and took their children to church, single women in their thirties did not attend. Lisa, in her early thirties, left the church a few years ago; most of the girls in her generation, she said, had stopped going about the same time. She explained her decision by referring to competition and gossip discussed earlier. Her decision has not affected her networks because she maintains close relationships with peers who also no longer attend regularly. She continues to refer to them as sisters. Her leisure time is mostly devoted to spending time with her cousins or her church peers. Thus, for her, avoiding going to church does not mean that she wants to distance herself from Tongan people in general. She said, “It’s weird to say but I like going to Tongan funerals. Everybody wears the Tongan traditional clothes and eats Tongan food together. When I go, I really feel that I am Tongan.” She said that she had not been interested in the Tongan language and culture when she was young; however, since her mother passed away and she inherited Tongan traditional wealth, she has become interested in the language and culture. “I wish there were a Tongan cultural center or something like that, where we can learn Tongan and learn how to weave mats and things like that.” I asked, “Doesn’t church fulfill the same role as a cultural center?” She responded by emphasizing that she would like to participate in cultural activities but only if the church is not involved. Although there are no cultural centers and Lisa does not openly involve herself with any Tongan church, she still engages with the Tongan social field through her kin members and the peers she has grown up with at church. Lisa’s story suggests that physical attendance at church cannot be the sole criterion for assessing involvement with the Tongan social field. No longer attending church does not mean that they distance themselves from the field because their relationships with kin members and church peers do not necessarily end as a result. Tongan churches are therefore not only important as a physical place where people socialize with each other, and practice Tongan cultural values, but also as generators of relationships.

Melbourne  49

O T H E R O R G A N I Z AT I O N S

Different organizations help diversify each person’s relationships. Tongan organizations, such as ex-student associations and kava clubs, and organizations based in wider Australia, such as bingo centers and sports clubs, are venues where people from different denominations can socialize. For children of migrants, joining sports clubs often enhances ties not only with Tongans from different churches but also with non-Tongans. Generally, Tongans have strong attachments to their high schools in Tonga. Status rivalries between high schools in Tonga are deep-seated, sometimes resulting in violent incidents between students. Many people maintain ties with their schools by participating in student associations. These associations in diasporic communities hold fundraising events, such as dinner dance nights and kava clubs to support their school financially and raise funds for scholarships. Such events entail financial pressures on those who attend but are also considered enjoyable social occasions. Although the primary attendees are alumni, the events are usually open to everyone and, despite the need to make a donation, some think of them simply as a social occasion. When I attended a fund­ raising kava circle for Tonga College, one of the attendees there who had graduated from a rival school said, “When I was young, we often fought against boys from Tonga College. We hated each other. But now, I just love drinking kava and having fun with these guys. It’s nice to help young people in Tonga.” Although alumni associations and kava circles are Tongan in origin, people also attend Australian-based social venues. Bingo centers, for example, are popular among Pacific Islanders.13 Older men may come with their wives, but bingo is most popular among older women. For some, the aim is gambling. Many women, however, see bingo as a social occasion and attend with their sisters or adult daughters. The contrast between non–Pacific Islander players and Pacific Islanders is notable: the former wear casual clothes; the latter dress up and put flowers in their hair. Bingo centers usually hold two sessions a day, daytime and evening, the latter attracting more people. People are and have to be quiet during the games, but breaks in between are a great opportunity to catch up with people from other churches and exchange news. These encounters can sometimes create a sense of shame, though, in that people’s gambling is “witnessed.” When I said hello to Tongan acquaintances at bingo, they would look surprised, grin, and say, “Makiko,

50  Chapter 2

what are you doing here? You naughty, eh?” This remark is a reminder to the witness (myself) that both of us are complicit in engaging with something incompatible with the Tongan ideal femininity that emphasizes modesty. In studying female bingo players in the Cook Islands, anthropologist Kalissa Alexeyeff observed that “women periodically had to justify their activities in positive terms,” such as bingo as “an income-generating strategy” for their households (2011, 219–220). This also applies to Tongan women in Melbourne because their winnings are often used for familial obligations and household expenses.14 Despite ambivalence among people about bingo, it is still an important social occasion for many women who have less freedom of mobility than men, as discussed in chapter 3. For children of migrants, participating in sports provides opportunities to extend “their social contacts beyond their family and church and as a temporary escape from the behavioral restrictions often demanded of them” (Lee 2003, 45). The most popular Tongan sport is rugby, and although some view it as counter to femininity, both girls and boys play. However, it is boys who are often encouraged to play from a young age; parents hope that their sons will find success in the future. The belief that associates rugby with wealth risks railroading boys into playing, closing other avenues for more secure, less competitive career paths. Professional sports as a pathway for upward mobility in the Pacific are discussed in the context of migration from the Global South to affluent countries (Besnier et al. 2018). This is also applicable to children of migrants living in Australia, where rugby is seen as a way of breaking through barriers to upward mobility. This idea that “successful rugby players will bring wealth to the family” is perhaps surprisingly acknowledged by young boys. In Pele’s household, her son in primary school, Isi, often entertained his family members by saying that he would buy houses for each extended family member in Australia when he became a professional rugby player. Indeed, extended family members of a son, nephew, brother, or cousin with a successful rugby career proudly upload photos of his accomplishments on social media. Although only a few people can be professionals, being in a team helps nurture ties with teammates. Rugby teams in Melbourne are based on suburbs rather than ethnicities, but people often see them as based on ethnicity. Many Tongan players belong to a team that is not local, and some people drive a long way to participate, which leads children to make social contacts not only with non-Tongans but also with Tongans from different churches. Their ties with teammates and attachments toward the team are so strong

Melbourne  51

that when some children of migrants become parents, they enroll their sons in the same rugby club in which they or their brothers used to play.

The Tongan Social Field and Melbourne To situate mothers and daughters who appear in this book in not only the theoretical space of the Tongan social field but also a physical place— Melbourne—this chapter examines Australian national borders, the characteristics of Melbourne, and social organizations in Melbourne. Although the Tongan population in Melbourne is small and the households are dispersed, the Tongan social field is established through kinship ties and church memberships. Unlike other popular destinations for Tongans, such as Sydney and Auckland, Melbourne has an almost invisible Tongan social field: a small population is dispersed across the suburbs. This scattered nature makes Melbourne not only unique but also the ideal place to observe the Tongan social field and identify its characteristics. As discussed in chapter 1, the field is made up of relationships that require commitment. Because Tongan migrants and their children are physically dispersed, it would appear easy to avoid meeting cohorts and peers if a person wanted to do so. However, as the chapters that follow demonstrate, people deal with given relationships in their everyday lives, sometimes with pleasure, and other times with struggle. As we begin to focus more on cultural practices within the ideological Tongan social field, we need to keep in mind that most of the Tongan migrants and their daughters being discussed are living in a physical place, Melbourne.

CHAPTER 3

Boys Go, Girls Stay

“Boys go, girls stay” encapsulates the gender ideology that specifies where men and women should be in the Tongan cultural context (Morton 1996, 103). This chapter explores how ideal images of masculinity and femininity influence the everyday lives of children of Tongan migrants.1 It demonstrates that this ideal has a strong influence that guides daughters to “stay” in the Tongan social field and sons to “go” out from it. Because the Tongan social field is made up of one’s relationships, to stay in the field means that personal networks are dominated by other Tongans, and to go out from it allows for more diverse networks. Although the idea of allocating mobility to males and immobility to females appears to impose constraints on women, this gender ideology has multiple implications. The ethnographic materials in this chapter could also be analyzed in the context of gender socialization and the construction of gendered identities, the focus instead is on examining the gendered nature of the Tongan social field and how daughters negotiate the gender ideology. Parents, especially mothers, play a significant role in teaching their children Tongan cultural values and gendered behaviors. In this context, it would be easy to transform this chapter’s question into how tradition-minded parents impose gendered values and how their daughters are influenced by this imposition. However, throughout this book I examine the relationship between individual women—both mothers 52



Boys Go, Girls Stay  53

and ­daughters—and the structure of the Tongan social field without assuming that parents are the bearers of tradition or that daughters are without agency. In some studies on second-generation migrant youth, parents are depicted as holding on to traditional culture derived from their homeland, and their children as individuals who are “torn by conflicting social and cultural demands,” both from their parents’ culture and the host culture (Portes and Zhou 1993, 75). This gap is sometimes interpreted as the cause of delinquency among migrant youth, including Pacific Islanders (Mayeda et al. 2006). However, anthropological studies also demonstrate that boundaries between young and old, modern and traditional, are not clear (Rasmussen 2000; Gable 2000). Although young people sometimes become agents of change in society, “the phenomenon is neither so wholeheartedly rebellious nor so intimately connected to modernity as this imagined scenario suggests” (Bucholtz 2002, 531). The image that children of immigrants are “engaged in pitched battles against tradition-bound parents from the old country is a partial, and often misleading, view” (Foner and Dreby 2011, 547). Thus, although Tongan cultural values are often passed on by parents, parents are not necessarily wholly tradition minded, and their children are not entirely against their parents’ cultural values. When we see the girls’ mothers as “persons” and take their life stories into account, it becomes apparent that the image of tradition-bound migrants is not an appropriate description. Although some girls’ parents had married in Tonga before they migrated, many mothers emigrated when they were still single, whether through job-training or exchange programs or by being sponsored by siblings or relatives. On the one hand, early migrants made efforts to create a Tongan social field by organizing Tongan churches, creating social ties among fellow migrants from Tonga, and maintaining ties to Tonga by pursuing familial obligations as well as keeping in touch via communication technologies. On the other hand, the young unmarried migrants explored new social fields in Australia where pālangi live and pālangi logic operates. Although more recent newcomers from Tonga can settle themselves within a well-established Tongan social field and may be able to get a job through their kinship networks, early migrants inhabited new, unfamiliar social fields and were obliged to interact with a different cultural logic. Several mothers told me romantic stories about pālangi men from when they were young. Some of them pursued their romantic love and married pālangi, and others eventually decided to marry men from

54  Chapter 3

Tonga. I heard stories of how they went out every weekend to discos, got drunk, and had so much fun. Some couples had pālangi style weddings: rather than traditional Tongan clothes, they wore white wedding dresses. Most young women these days also wear white dresses, of course, the big difference between their weddings and those of their mothers is the guest list. For example, Susana, a migrant woman in her sixties, has a photograph in her house of her in her white wedding dress with three pālangi friends taken in the early 1980s. She joyfully explained to me how the four of them were so close and always went out together on weekends. Her stories from when she was a single woman in Australia are filled with active engagements outside the Tongan social field. She did not hesitate to tell me how she enjoyed dating a pālangi boyfriend who used to drive her around in his fancy car. In contrast, Susana’s daughter Besi had her wedding in Tonga, where her husband lived, and their guests were exclusively family. She prefers to spend her leisure time with her cousins rather than with the non-Tongans she has met at work or school. This seems a contradiction, especially in terms of assimilation theory. Whereas mothers enjoyed their youth as single women outside the Tongan social field, many daughters of Tongan descent seem to prefer to remain within it. According to a widely held view of assimilation theorists, generational change is treated “as the yardstick to measure changes in immigrant groups. The first generation (the foreign-born) were less assimilated and less exposed to” the host society than the second generation, and “their grandchildren (the third generation) were in turn more like the core . . . mainstream than their parents” (Waters and Jiménez 2005, 106). However, the contrast between Susana and Besi shows the opposite pattern. Susana engaged with Australia more than Besi in terms of personal networks. Besi’s case is not unique. Many girls prefer to spend their leisure time within the Tongan social field, unlike their brothers, who interact more with wider Australian society. One of the main reasons for this difference is families’ differing treatment of sons and daughters. Several studies discuss the differential treatment of sons and daughters of migrants in some migrant populations; they focus, however, on the ways in which each gendered person engages with the host society (Dion and Dion 2004; Kurien 1999; Mahler and Pessar 2006; Warikoo 2005). Tongan culture is not alone in stressing the chastity of single, young women to maintain the reputations of families (Le Espiritu 2001). This leads women to stay home and “off the streets” while their brothers enjoy more freedom, a process that makes women serve “as the family



Boys Go, Girls Stay  55

pillar of tradition and culture” (Warikoo 2005, 806). These studies are interested in how different parenting styles influence the process of integration into mainstream society. For example, Carl Bankston argues that second-generation Vietnamese girls perform academically well at school in the United States “not because of the abandonment of patriarchal views, but rather, ironically, because of the persistence of these views, which place greater social controls on young women than on young men” (1995, 161). From the framework of host societies, gendered forms of discipline in migrant communities appear to constrain daughters of migrants; however, using a redefined field of people’s relationships enables us to view gendered mobility from a different angle. The ethnographic accounts that follow explore both directions of engagements: how the girls engage with both the Tongan social field and wider Australian society. In closely examining the everyday practices of daughters of Tongan migrants, it becomes clear that Tongan cultural values that regulate the daughter’s mobility are not only externally imposed but also embodied in their everyday practices. Before delving into these practices, it is necessary to detour and explore further the differences between mothers as persons and the ideal role of mothers. As discussed earlier, when we focus on generational issues, it is important to not accept uncritically the dichotomy of parents as bearers of tradition and children as forces of change. This chapter reveals the multiplicity of relationships between Tongan cultural values and children of migrants, especially daughters, and clearly shows that mothers should not be described as simply imposing structures and constraints. The following section discusses how migrant women become “mothers” and their roles in the Tongan social field.

A Mother as a Person and the Ideal Role of Mother Recall the contrast between the Tongan migrant Susana and her daughter Besi, who is less engaged with mainstream Australia than her mother is. Although Susana had been active outside the Tongan social field before her marriage, she became more active within it after she became a mother. The family have been core members of a Tongan church and devoted considerable time and money to it. In addition, Besi is fluent in Tongan because her parents used to smack her and her brother if they spoke English at home, according to the father. Because Besi can understand the lyrics of traditional Tongan songs that other girls who speak

56  Chapter 3

Tongan cannot, they ask her to explain their meaning when they prepare for the traditional solo dance tau‘olunga; Tongan choreography mirrors the story of each song. Although Besi is one of the most fluent Tongan speakers in her generation and one of the keenest churchgoers, she is not unique in the contrast between her mother’s single life and her own. To understand the reason why this difference has emerged, it is necessary to consider how mothers have raised their children in Australia and their role as “mothers.” When they explore transnational parenting by Filipino migrant women, Mirca Madianou and Daniel Miller say, “A mother is both a normative concept—the ideal as to what a mother should be—and the experience of actually being, or having, a mother” (2012, 10). The woman who gave birth to the baby may suddenly come to realise that two new beings were born at that precise moment: not just the baby, but also a creature called a mother. Up to then she was a young woman, who possibly went to parties and had a career, and most likely had an education she had expected to use in life. But now she is a mother, and seems to be regarded as an altogether different sort of person, whether she likes it or not. She discovers that, just as the baby, she too is newly born into the category “mother”. (143)

Migrant women in this book interact with the Australian social field every day as a matter of course; however, as mothers, their role is to pass on their cultural values to their children so that they can be competent in the Tongan social field. This role is especially important because, as discussed elsewhere, the Tongan social field is a site of struggle in which people compete for reputation and try to avoid shame. Helen Morton describes the Tongan mother’s role: “the mother has the greatest responsibility for teaching her children ‘proper’ anga (behavior, way of being) so that they become poto [socially competent, capable] and for caring and protecting her children” (1996, 44; see also Young 2004, 400–401). When a baby is born, a young woman has to learn to be and act as a “good” mother to her baby. However, even once they are mothers, the different aspects of migrant women’s personhood are still evident. For example, Pele, a Tongan migrant woman in her forties, loved going shopping with me. I sometimes felt as if I were a dress-up doll for her because she often insisted that I try on clothes that she chose. Although I preferred not to wear revealing clothes, she tended to choose them for me to try and often



Boys Go, Girls Stay  57

said, “Kiko, you are in Australia. You have to be sexy!” In this context, it was as if she had lived in a Western country much longer than I had, and she guided me to fit into the Australian image of femininity even though it contradicted the more conservative Tongan ideal. However, she did not treat her daughter, Neti, in the same way, and was often upset when Neti wore revealing clothes, especially when she got ready to go to Tongan gatherings. Pele often reprimanded her: “Neti, cover up your huhu [breasts]! So embarrassing!” She was concerned about what other people at the Tongan gathering would think about Neti’s clothing, which reflected on her role as a mother. This also applied to me when I attended Tongan church; I had to discuss what I was going to wear and ask for Pele’s approval. When somebody at church complimented what Neti and I were wearing, Pele looked happy. This is intriguing because Pele herself stopped going to Tongan church in the late 1990s because she was tired of the gossip. She was still concerned, however, about what other people in the church thought of her. As the church congregation began to notice that I had gained weight since living with Pele, she started receiving phone calls from them complimenting her. They saw my weight gain as evidence of Pele’s feeding and looking after me well. The phone calls also make it clear that church members were “judging” Pele through me—her fictitious daughter. Thus, the judgment of others within the Tongan social field is key to understanding mothers’ roles. As discussed in chapter 1, the Tongan social field is a site of struggle where units—individuals, families, or churches—compete for status and to avoid shame. In addition to practicing appropriate behavior, people have to be aware of and alert to those around them, who witness and judge everyone’s behavior. Tongan cultural values sometimes do not align with those of wider Australian society. For example, higher socioeconomic status does not necessarily enhance reputation. A family that struggles financially with unemployment or lower-wage jobs but manages to meet its obligations to the Tongan church will have a good reputation. Risk of being criticized is higher when a person breaks with the structure of the Tongan social field. Helen Lee describes this discrepancy when she conducted her fieldwork in Melbourne in the late 1990s. The status of second-generation Islanders within their own communities does not necessarily rise along with their socioeconomic status in the wider society. If they have moved out of the traditional networks

58  Chapter 3 and are not competent in Tongan language they may be respected for their economic success but are unlikely to be regarded as of particularly high status. Some may find themselves marginalized from the Tongan community, and those who have not achieved educational and economic success are doubly marginalized. (2003, 58–59)

Of course, as discussed in detail in chapter 4, many people have individual goals such as buying a house, enjoying a financially stable life, or encouraging their children to earn higher degrees. However, if they care about relationships within the field, they also need to reflect Tongan cultural values in their behavior, including the socialization of their children. In sum, it is important to differentiate between mothers as persons and their expected role as mother. This is because when they become mothers, they assume responsibility for ensuring that their children behave properly in the Tongan social field. Under their mothers’ supervision, children are expected to behave properly because an individual’s misbehavior affects the family’s reputation. However, Tongan cultural values, which parents teach their children, cannot be understood as merely rules or constraints. We should not see daughters of Tongan descent as always intimidated by the judgment of their peers and family members. The key to understanding the daughters’ engagement with Tongan cultural values is to look at gender differences in Tongan cultural contexts. The following section discusses how gender differences influence daughters’ engagement with the structure of the Tongan social field.

Ideal Images of Femininity and Masculinity Cultural values, which are integral to engaging properly with the field, are encapsulated as anga fakatonga (Tongan way), which is often contrasted with anga fakapālangi (Western ways) both in Tonga and in the diaspora (Addo 2013; Besnier 2011; Good 2012; Ka‘ili 2017; Lee 2003; Morton 1996; Small 1997). Key values of anga fakatonga, which are specifically relevant to this chapter, are love (‘ofa) and respect ( faka‘apa‘apa). ‘Ofa has multiple meanings, “feeling of warmth, of pity, of respect, of admiration and many others” (Kavaliku 1977, 51). Faka‘apa‘apa can be translated into respect in English; however, the two words are different in the sense that the Tongan notion of respect is typically directed toward those of high rank. Feelings of ‘ofa or faka‘apa‘apa need to be manifested outwardly through appropriate behaviors based on one’s position in



Boys Go, Girls Stay  59

the hierarchy (Kavaliku 1977, 53). “High-status persons demonstrate ‘ofa by teaching and guiding, whereas low-status persons do so by being unquestioningly obedient” (Morton 1996, 81). These ideas and concepts are widely shared among migrants and their children even though some elements are “contested and subject to transformation” (Lee 2003, 3). In some contexts, anga fakatonga works as “an imagined norm of Tonganness” (3); people refer to the Tongan way when they contrast themselves with pālangi or when they evaluate other people’s behaviors by comparing the actual behaviors with the ideals. Those who pass judgment include not only the generation of migrants but also their children. A girl who comes to Sunday church service wearing a short skirt would be criticized behind her back by her peers as well as their mothers. Thus, some daughters of migrants embody Tongan cultural values to the extent that they become a norm not only for adjusting their own behaviors but also for judging those who seemingly deviate from these values. They often feel pressure to be “more Tongan than Tongans in Tonga” so they do not appear to turn their backs on Tongan cultural values (Morton 1998, 160). Although some people make a conscious effort to adjust their behaviors to fit into these values, many children of migrants also gain unconscious, embodied dispositions. For example, sharing is considered important in Tongan culture. When one girl pulls her lip balm or hand cream from her handbag while she is chatting with other girls, it is typical for her to pass it around so the others can use it too. As Morton notes, “The act of sharing is more important than the goods themselves” (1996, 86). From perfumes to chewing gum, they tend not to use their own goods only for themselves, especially when they are together. In addition to gender-neutral values, such as sharing goods with each other and respecting elders, behaving according to the ideal images of femininity and masculinity is also highly valued. These images are intricately related to broader gender differences, such as the division of labor and differences in mobility. I argue that these differences create gendered attitudes toward the Tongan social field and even influence personal networks. Although Tonga is a patriarchal society, the chiefly ideal is associated with women and the commoner’s image is associated with men. Women and chiefly persons are associated with “stasis, restraint, sanctity, superiority, dignity, and so on. Similarly, males . . . are defined by qualities of mobility, lack of restraint, inferiority, and the like” (Morton 1996, 101). Values allocated to women require more effort to practice;

60  Chapter 3

the embodiment of lack of restraint does not require the conscious effort demanded to achieve stasis and dignity. Thus daughters are generally more strictly disciplined than sons. These differences are also illustrated in the Tongan language. In Tongan, a single woman is referred to as ta‘ahine or finemui and a single man as tamasi‘i or talavou. Whereas finemui simply means young woman and tamasi‘i is commonly used to refer to boys (from toddlers to young, single adults), ta‘ahine and talavou have multiple meanings. According to a Tongan-English dictionary, ta‘ahine refers to “girl, or young woman; daughter; maiden, virgin; virginity, mai­den­hood” (Churchward 1959, 472), and talavou means “youth, young man . . . adolescent; or strong and healthy and good-looking” (448). Thus, words for young women and young men themselves contain ideal images of women and men. Virginity, which is implied in ta‘ahine, illustrates some constraint on young women, whereas the positive adjectives associated with talavou show that there is more freedom in young men’s lives. These implications disappear in Tongan words for married women and men. When a woman marries, she is called finemotu‘a (elderly woman, married woman, and wife) or fefine (female), and a married man is called tangata (man) or siana (man, fellow). Although girls do not use these Tongan terms in everyday life, they are conscious of the distinction between being single and being married. One research participant highlighted the ambivalent feelings that arise from being a daughter in the Tongan social field. We don’t have identities. In Tongan culture, women have only three identities: daughters, wives, and mothers. Tongan women used to get married when they became twenty-one years old, so as soon as they became adults, they became wives or even mothers. But in Australia, we stay single even in our late twenties or thirties. We are adults, but we aren’t wives or mothers. We still have to act like daughters. (Vika, age twenty-nine)

Vika is a New Zealand–born woman who migrated to Melbourne with her parents and siblings in 1997. At the time I talked with her, she had just married a newcomer from Tonga. She speaks fluent Tongan and frequently accompanies her mother to Tongan gatherings. Her statement came in response to my comment that many women stayed single in their early thirties, whereas men tended to marry or have steady partners at a relatively younger stage, such as in their early twenties.



Boys Go, Girls Stay  61

Her usage of identity, which she suddenly raised herself, is noteworthy. Here, she was not talking about one’s cultural or ethnic identity as Tongan; instead, she used it to refer to relational identities. Although she has recently acquired the identity of wife, she talks as if she is also one of the single adult women. Her description of single women implies a negative, ambivalent position regarding a single adult woman who is merely a daughter but neither a wife nor a mother. Her image of a single woman does not have the positive associations with freedom or independence, which one would find in the broader Australian context. Given that Tongan culture is changing in the face of globalization and modernization (see, for example, Besnier 2011; Good 2012), Vika’s description of Tongan culture is static and stereotypic. Vika has never been to Tonga; when I asked her about that, she giggled and said she did not think she could “survive” in Tonga because it seemed to be “dirty” and “unhygienic” and she could not live without air conditioners. Although her way of thinking is influenced by Tongan cultural values, Tonga as a geographical place does not seem to have any particular significance. Vika highlights the daughters’ submissive position in the Tongan cultural context and, perhaps, a desire for acquiring an individual identity as an adult woman. Interestingly, this distinction between married and single can be reflected in daughters’ personal networks. For example, once a girl becomes a married woman, she tends to hesitate to go out with single girls. A newlywed woman, Atu, said that when she was single, she used to go out every weekend with other unmarried girls but that she stopped going out with them once she married. Instead, Atu started to become closer to her married cousins. She does not drink alcohol in front of unmarried girls, only when she is with married women. Atu explained that she felt uncomfortable getting drunk in front of single girls, “That’s not what I’m supposed to do, and I don’t know what they talk about me.” Here, she clearly makes a distinction between a single woman and a married woman. Also, her concern about what peers think illustrates that not only the generation of mothers but also children of migrants may judge others’ behaviors in the Tongan social field. The reason Atu believes she still has to restrain herself as a married woman is that marital status intersects with other factors that influence behavior, such as age. Generally, as women get older, they have more room to deviate from the image of femininity. For example, young, single women often perform the tau‘olunga (traditional solo dance, ideally for virgins) at events such as fundraisings, weddings, and birthdays. The

62  Chapter 3

tau‘olunga mainly consists of a series of gentle, smooth hand movements and occasional quick head tilts by a smiling dancer whose knees are mostly kept together and whose torso remains static. “The female dancer’s restricted movements and smile iconicize society’s control of virginal femininity and her acquiescence of it” (Besnier 2011, 134). In between the “formal” programs conducted by young dancers, middle-aged women, the generation of mothers, often come up to the stage and express joy by clowning (Bernstein 1983, 61). Occasionally, older women pull young married women onto the floor to dance with them. On these occasions, whereas older women perform clownish dance movements, young women just clap their hands to the rhythm of the music and behave in a more reserved way. In contrast to these festive occasions, the degree of “immobility” in the everyday lives of older women increases as they age. Fetching an older female relative her handbag from the bedroom while she sits on a couch in a lounge room or her belongings that she left in the car is a younger, lower-ranked person’s job. The girls in their twenties would give orders to younger siblings, and mothers would ask their children to get items for them. G E N D E R I D E A L S A N D S PAT I A L L O C AT I O N S

The ideal images of femininity and masculinity influence not only the behaviors of actors in the Tongan social field but also their spatial locations, that is, where males and females should be. In the Tongan cultural context, “spatially, the idiom is that females and chiefs are associated with the inside, the center, whereas males and commoners are associated with the outside, the periphery” (Morton 1996, 101). Interestingly, this idea of women being inside and men being outside is practiced in various aspects of the everyday lives of people of Tongan descent. Household members may have meals together by sharing a table in a dining room, but when visitors come for dinner, for example, men socialize outside and women chat inside the house. When people attend church, men stay outside before the church service starts and women socialize in a church hall. The dichotomy also applies to the gender division of labor. In this regard, female work is conceptualized as “light, easy, clean, and involving staying” and male work as “heavy, tough, dirty, and involving going” (Morton 1996, 139). This division is clearly practiced among Tongan migrants and their children in Melbourne. Household chores allocated to school-age children are differentiated by gender: girls un-



Boys Go, Girls Stay  63

dertake cooking, cleaning, and washing; boys are in charge of cleaning the backyard and taking rubbish bins outside. These allocations are seen as a process of teaching the appropriate behaviors of men and women so that boys can become masculine and girls can become feminine. Crossing the division of labor is therefore generally discouraged. I once made a mistake in this regard that revealed the gendered nature of work. One day, I was making gyoza dumplings at Rose’s house. Rose is in her late twenties and both her partner and her mother are migrants from Tonga. Because Rose had household chores to do, I was by myself in the kitchen when I noticed Rose’s young son staring at me, appearing interested in the process of wrapping minced meat into dumpling skins, so I invited him to help me. He hesitated, so I encouraged him, but when Rose returned to the kitchen, she immediately told him off and ordered him to leave the kitchen. She turned to me and said quietly, “Sorry, Makiko. I have to teach him the right things to do.” This was intriguing because she often told me that she found her upbringing unfair because she could not have as much freedom as her brothers. Indeed, whereas Tongan masculinity emerges from boys’ unrestrained behavior, Tongan femininity is nurtured by restrictions that constrain women to be modest, humble, and chaste (before marriage). Reflecting on her upbringing, Rose said she wanted to raise her daughter and son equally. She told me she found it difficult to chastise her son in front of her mother when she wanted to tell him to be quiet, because her mother stopped her by saying, “Don’t worry. He is a boy.” The gyoza incident, however, makes it clear that the notion of gendered division of labor is deeply instilled in her way of thinking. On the one hand, she wants to treat her children equally. On the other, she still believes in gender-based labor roles. The gender division of labor becomes prominent when feasts are prepared. Although both sons and daughters are expected to help equally, they are asked to do so in different ways. Although males have to do more exhausting, physical work, the atmosphere in which they work seems more joyful. One of the traditional male jobs for feasts in the diaspora is roasting pigs. Whereas roasting pigs is a time-consuming, physically tiring form of labor because the spits need to be turned continuously so that the pork will cook evenly, the activity also offers an opportunity to socialize with each other. Males old and young get together in the backyard. Depending on how many pigs will be roasted, a few men turn the spits while others sit around and enjoy the conversation. Sometimes men start drinking beer while they cook; the overall

64  Chapter 3

a­ tmosphere in the backyard is generally relaxing and lively, punctuated by frequent laughter at joke telling.2 As the men and boys roast pigs and socialize in the backyard in a relaxed atmosphere, women and girls are extremely busy because they cook more food than the men do. The cooking is quite systematic; some keep peeling vegetables, a few are in charge of cutting meat and slicing the vegetables, and the others stand in front of stoves. Although mothers talk with each other in relatively relaxed moods, making jokes as they work, daughters are quieter and required to work more than mothers. The mothers check to ensure that the daughters are cutting and slicing the vegetables, meat, and fish evenly and neatly. The quantity and quality of food is critical in a family’s attempts to differentiate their feast because the same variety of food is served at almost all Tongan feasts, which allows little scope for originality. The number of roasted pigs, the number of tables the host filled with dishes, and the presentation and taste of the food are likely to be a source of gossip after each feast. The atmosphere in the kitchen at these times is so serious that young women were often enough in tears in response to the pressure they were under from mothers and aunts. GENDERED MOBILITY

The dichotomy of “men being outside and women being inside” also affects the mobility of daughters and sons. “Behavior is differentiated by the general notion that ‘boys go, girls stay.’ Boys are associated with the outdoors and are seen as tau‘atāina [free]; girls’ place is indoors and girls’ behavior is more restricted” (Morton 1996, 103). Practicing this idea in the diaspora results in the tendency of boys to go outside the Tongan social field, and of girls to stay within it. Because men have relative freedom to go outside the field, their personal networks typically include more non-Tongans than those of women. The different mobility of sons and daughters is clear in the everyday lives of people of Tongan descent. Mele’s household, for example, comprises a father who works in a factory; a mother who works in a nursing home; two daughters, twenty-five-year-old Mele who works as a receptionist and Seini who is in year twelve at the local high school; and a son, Sioeli, who is in year eleven at the same school. Mele’s parents were keen on participating in activities at their Tongan church. They went regularly to evening services on Wednesdays and Bible study and choir practice on Saturdays as well as to Sunday service.



Boys Go, Girls Stay  65

The two girls always accompanied their parents and also participated in youth group activities on Fridays; their brother only occasionally joined them. Thus the girls went to the church at least four days a week and the boy only once or twice at most. Even when Sioeli did attend, he often spent time in the car park with his peers and did not actually attend the service. The daughters, however, actively engaged in the church activities. Sioeli was the youngest of the siblings, but he had much more mobility and freedom than the two girls. Their mother usually took the teenagers, Seini and Sioeli, to school by car, but she only picked up Seini because Sioeli spent time with his classmates after school. In contrast, Seini spent her time after school helping with housework at home. She left the house to accompany her mother or her sister to church or to visit their relatives. Mele usually came home from her office in the city center around six in the evening and helped with housework or went to Tongan church with her parents and her sister. She did not, she said, socialize with her colleagues after work. Saturday nights were Mele’s favorite time to go out with other girls from the same church. She went out almost every weekend, always with the same three girls, who were also in their mid-twenties, from her church, and always to the same place, a Polynesian nightclub in the city center of Melbourne. During my fieldwork, I sometimes went out with them. Having a regular group of church members to go out with seemed to be normal for many girls. Whereas Mele’s was based on church networks, many girls’ groups consisted of sisters and maternal cousins, who are also considered sisters in the Tongan context. After choir lessons in the late afternoon on Saturdays, they would get together at one of the girls’ houses and start drinking alcohol as they changed into more revealing, nightclub fashion. They shared make-up and helped each other do their make-up and straighten their hair. They would leave home after midnight and spend time in the Islander-style nightclub in the city until around five in the morning. About five hours later, they would be at church wearing modest clothes, attending a choir group and preparing morning tea. Although drinking alcohol, wearing revealing clothes, and spending all night in a nightclub certainly are not in line with the Tongan ideal image of femininity, the girls arguably remain in the Tongan social field. Although Mele and the other girls geographically move from their outer suburb to the central business district, they specifically go to the Polynesian nightclub and meet up with other Tongans and other Pacific Islanders. Some girls of course have friends from other Pacific Islands

66  Chapter 3

through netball or school, but the bond between the church peers and cousins is so strong that they hardly mingle with other Islanders at the nightclub. Although boys also come to the same nightclub, they have broader options and also go to pubs or other Australian clubs. To better understand the social life of young women, I asked Mele to analyze her mobile phone contacts list based on ethnicity. More than 90 percent of her contacts were people of Tongan descent. She seemed surprised when she saw the result. She said she mainly contacts the three girls that she is closest to from church as well as other congregation members to discuss organizing youth group. Her non-Tongan contacts are her classmates from high school and her work colleagues; she hardly contacted non-Tongans, she told me. “The church is the center of my life,” she said proudly, and she enjoyed organizing activities for her peers. Mele showed that she was satisfied with her social life, but her sister Seini seemed to be still in the process of accepting her life as a daughter of Tongan descent. According to Seini, she used to argue a lot with her parents about the relatively greater restraints on her relative to her brother. Even though her brother is younger than she, he could go to his classmates’ houses but she had to stay at home. However, Seini had “started to understand” her parents’ reasons—to protect her from undesirable influences in Australian society, such as underage drinking and drug problems. In addition, as she grew accustomed to her more Tongan lifestyle, she did not find it particularly appealing to socialize with nonIslanders, especially with pālangi, “They are very different from us, and I don’t really want to hang around with them. Tongans understand you more than pālangi friends. They get what I say.” Thus, though she had a certain desire for freedom, it was not freedom to spend time with nonTongan classmates. Seini admitted that she was “very family oriented.” Her contact list was also mostly people of Tongan descent. Although she had the numbers of non-Tongan classmates, she said she rarely rang them: “Sometimes, my schoolmates, I text, like, what’s happening at school tomorrow, and stuff like that, with the Tongan, oh what are you doing, like just catching up and see how they are.” She loved spending time with her cousins and peers at church and she seemed to be always excited to go to church. After church, she sometimes slept over at her church peers’ houses. Although Seini’s parents did not let her go to her school friends’ houses, they did not prevent her from going to other Tongan families’ homes. When we examine the daughters’ everyday lives, it becomes apparent that the concept of “inside” has expanded its meaning from inside the



Boys Go, Girls Stay  67

home to refer also to inside the Tongan social field. I do not deny that Tongan migrants exercise more control over their daughters than sons, but it is also impossible to argue the daughters are immobile, or simply restrained by the structures of the Tongan social field. Daughters do have mobility within the Tongan social field, however, as discussed later in this chapter, their mobility is limited if they wish to leave the field. If we define “friend” as a person one knows well and likes, who supports and helps you, shares interests and opinions, and spends leisure time with you, friends of daughters of Tongan migrants are most likely to be kin members of the same generation.3 Therefore, although it is evident that sons have more relative freedom than daughters in terms of their mobility, it would be a misunderstanding to think the daughters of Tongan descent are “suffering” from this gender difference. Rather, the idea of “boys go, girls stay” in fact opens up a new possibility for daughters to be active within the Tongan social field, even though a side effect is that they become uncomfortable outside the field, when they have to interact with non-Tongans. As discussed in chapter 1, the boundaries of the Tongan social field are delineated by people as opposed to geography. Thus the neighborhood can become outside the field and a different country can become inside the field, all depending on where a person’s network is. Of course, some girls have close relationships with people both inside and outside of the Tongan social field. Neti is a good example. She said, “I don’t find any differences between Tongans and pālangi. I like to hang around with both.” When I asked, “so you really don’t feel any differences between Tongans and pālangi?” she said, “It’s of course a bit different, like, if I’m with my cousins, I don’t ask for stuff, I just get it. Because we share. If I don’t have cash for smokes, I just get some from my cousins, and they don’t care. But I don’t do that with pālangi friends.” Neti spends more time with cousins and church peers, however, she also occasionally catches up with her non-Tongan friends. Many mothers share two seemingly contradictory opinions about the people with whom their children should socialize. On the one hand, they prefer their children to socialize with people in the field, such as extended family members and church peers, partly because of the high moral standards of the Tongan self-image relative to views of pālangi youth. Values such as modesty, generosity, and kindness belong to Tongan-ness, and pālangi represent the opposite. Thus, space outside the Tongan social field is considered suffused with bad influences, including alcohol, drugs, and other sources of delinquency. On the other

68  Chapter 3

hand, in some circumstances, especially the economic context, some mothers said that it is better to spend time with pālangi. Here the reasoning is another common contrast between Tongans and pālangi: Tongans are lazy and pālangi work hard. Although high moral virtues are associated with Tongans, when it comes to finances and home economy, being good at budgeting and saving as well as having a good job and being hard-working tend to be associated with pālangi: Tongans describe themselves as not good at handling money. Thus, Pele, Neti’s mother, once said that she would like her daughter to spend time with her nonTongan friends because “they have good job and are working hard,” which would be a “good influence” for Neti. During my fieldwork, Neti and some of her peers in Melbourne did not have full-time jobs. In fact, within the Tongan social field, adult single women who stay at home and do not have paid work are usually not judged negatively because they do not deviate from the Tongan ideal of femininity. They mainly do housework and engage with activities at Tongan churches. Although they are not criticized by other people in the field, Pele, in this context, is critical of her daughter: she hoped Neti’s pālangi friends would be a good influence on her. Here, we can observe Pele’s individualistic desire. However, we also have to bear in mind that “the actors’ desires, goals, and imagined possibilities” should be seen as “cultural” (Wardlow 2006, 5). Perhaps, in the Australian context, parents would not strongly link daughters’ financial stability or success with their own. However, Pele’s ultimate goal is to save money with Neti and buy a house so that they can all live together. Thus, Pele does not expect Neti to leave home and live independently, she still expects her daughter “to stay.” Neti shows no intention of permanently leaving the field. She is satisfied with occasional catch-ups with her non-Tongan friends.

Cultivating the Tongan Social Field Although Tongan passport holders may encounter difficulties in going beyond national borders, children of migrants who have Australian or New Zealand passports do not. I found that parents tend to take daughters rather than sons to where their relatives live. Daughters not only accompany their parents overseas, but also go by themselves to visit relatives. Usually when girls say, “I’m going for a holiday,” it means they are going to visit their relatives abroad. In other words, they prefer to visit places where they have relations, and exhibit little desire to visit places outside the Tongan social field. The preferred holiday destina-



Boys Go, Girls Stay  69

tions of the daughters—where relatives live—include Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, New Zealand, Hawai‘i, the west coast of America, and even Japan (if they are related to Tongan professional rugby players there). Even those with a stable income who can afford to travel choose to visit relatives rather than to explore the unfamiliar world outside the Tongan social field. By traveling and interacting with their kin members, the daughters cultivate relationships in other countries and expand their field of relations. In addition, this lifestyle also leads girls to prefer partners who have Tongan backgrounds. Table 2 presents the backgrounds of the partners of girls and boys. Categories of partner refer to spouse, de facto partners and boyfriends and girlfriends in “official” relationships.4 Because the total numbers of girls and boys in table 2 are different, it is impossible to directly compare the two. Nonetheless, the table illustrates several characteristic points about boys and girls of Tongan descent in Melbourne: more girls are single than boys; girls’ partners tend to be of Tongan descent; and more girls have long-distance relationships with partners in the diaspora and in Tonga. For example, an Australian-born Tongan woman who was eighteen years old at the time of her interview prefers to marry a Pacific Islander. She compares Pacific Islanders with pālangi in relation to the value of giving as follows: I think it’ll be better if I was to marry an Islander because Islander understands better. If you were to go, oh I gotta go to my mum’s house and take food or whatever, like if you said to Islander, yeah, they’ll understand, like family first, but if I was to marry pālangi, they’ll be like, no, we don’t have enough petrol, like financial wise we don’t have money, things like that. I think, marrying Islander, it’ll be easier.

Table 2. Relationship Status of Girls and Boys Status

Girls (%)

Boys (%)

Single Non-Tongan partner Partner of Tongan descent (in Melbourne) Partner of Tongan descent (in the diaspora other than Melbourne) Partner from Tonga Total

9 (22.5%) 10 (25%) 8 (20%)

3 (15%) 12 (60%) 1 (5%)

5 (12.5%)

4 (20%)

8 (20%) 40

0 (0%) 20

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In her view, Pacific Islanders are family oriented and pālangi more individualistic. Sharing and giving in this context do not belong to obligation but are an important part of her identity. Girls tend to have long-distance relationships. Whenever I asked, “how about boys in Melbourne?” the reply was invariably, “No way.” Because in their view, most boys and girls in Melbourne grow up together, they are more like family, and it is not appropriate to consider them in a romantic way. There are roughly three ways to find partners outside Melbourne. The most common is at church conferences or family gatherings, such as weddings and twenty-first birthdays. At these events, daughters can meet many people who belong to different churches or come from other states or overseas. It was common to observe girls talking about boys they met in the diaspora after coming back from family gatherings or church conferences. They begin texting each other and sometimes start a long-distance relationship. Also, they may find boyfriends when they are away on holidays, especially in Tonga. A common joke has it that first you need to go to Tonga with your older family members to know who is related and who is not, then the next trip you can find a moa (chicken), colloquially a boyfriend or girlfriend. In addition, girls sometimes build relationships online via social media. Online communications eventually develop into face-to-face communications. Daughters of Tongan migrants are thus able to meet their partners in the Tongan social field, even though the relationships are often long distance. One of the girls who married a boy from New Zealand said that girls in Melbourne were popular among Tongan boys elsewhere. She explained, “Because we are not too Tongan, but not pālangi.” As discussed in chapter 2, Tongans understand the geographical differences of the Tongan social field in terms of the density of commitment. Melbourne is perceived as a place where Tongans can have fewer obligations than Sydney or Auckland, which have larger populations of Tongans. Thus, it seems possible that the reason so many girls find partners from outside Melbourne is that boys in the diaspora and in Tonga perhaps perceive Melbourne as the “periphery.” Because the Tongan social field consists of each person’s relationships, having a partner of Tongan descent means that a person’s field expands to include the partner’s family members. As discussed in chapter 1, a person’s orientations to people and place are intricately related (Haikkola 2011). Thus the daughters’ tendency to be inside the field encourages them to find partners in the field, which results in di-



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versifying or strengthening their networks within the field. This also sometimes changes the degree of engagement with the Tongan social field. For example, Vika explained that she began to engage more with the Tongan social field after she married a migrant from Tonga. It is intriguing because she not only committed to her in-laws in Tonga but also began to engage more with the Tongan social field in Melbourne. Although she had not been particularly eager to attend Tongan church with her parents, she started going after she married because her husband wanted to go. According to her, her husband was “completely Tongan” and eager to be involved with many Tongan functions. Interestingly, although he had not been in Melbourne as long as she had, he knew more Tongans than she did, through men’s kava clubs. She asserted that her networks had changed completely after her marriage. Thus, marrying a Tongan can strengthen relationships within the Tongan social field. Recall Susana, who used to socialize with broader Australian society but devoted herself to her commitments in the Tongan social field once she married her Tongan husband and had children. When we reflect on Susana’s life course and then look at changes in Vika’s personal networks, it seems that marrying Tongan men can be a turning point for daughters of Tongan descent, a deepening of their engagement with the Tongan social field. In the future, when Vika has a baby and becomes a mother, her commitment may become stronger. Therefore, being within the Tongan social field encourages women to marry a Tongan in Tonga or children of Tongan migrants in the diaspora. This tendency goes on to strengthen the Tongan social field, which is made up of relations.

Resisting from Within or Escaping the Tongan Social Field As is clear from the discussion thus far, Tongan cultural values do not necessarily constrain daughters of Tongan descent but may create a comfortable space for them. However, not all daughters find the Tongan social field comfortable. When a person does not, the reason is most likely that she finds the structure of the field constraining rather than enabling. How does she react? What options does she have? Is it possible for her to get away from the constraints? In his anecdotal work, How to Quit Being Japanese, the sociologist Yoshio Sugimoto says, “to quit being Japanese” does not directly mean to waive Japanese citizenship; instead, it refers to “general attitudes to refuse structures which give constraint to Japanese society, systems within Japanese culture, which deprive of freedom, and elements within

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Japanese custom, which are not desirable” (1990, 20). A person can reject the range of constraint in one of two ways: live within Japan and engage with structure by resisting constraints in order to make changes in everyday lives, or escape from Japan (20).5 It is important to articulate that his provocative expression “to quit being Japanese” does not refer to erasing Japanese identity itself. He says, “An attitude to ‘quit being Japanese’ may actually be the same as increasingly ‘becoming Japanese’ in the sense that one has to heighten their sensitivities to Japan” (216). Although his escape refers to geographical escape from a nation-state, Japan, his idea of juxtaposing escape with resistance is insightful for analyzing the girls’ options. Because the Tongan social field is a deterritorialized concept, both options—resistance against the structure and escape from it—are not a matter of geographical place but instead more to do with attitude.6 In regard to resistance against the structure, I observed two ap­ proaches. The first option for daughters is simply to not obey their parents or Tongan cultural values. For example, Neti was not necessarily obedient to her mother, Pele. Although she conformed with appropriate clothing when she went to funerals or events she thought important, she explained she could wear whatever she wanted for regular church services on Sundays. When Pele told Neti to change her clothes, Neti often yelled back at her, saying, “Go back to Tonga!” Neti explained that, when she was a child, she needed to follow every order Pele gave, otherwise “she belted me really hard.” Although physical punishment is widely used to discipline children both in Tonga and in the diaspora (Morton 1996; Lee 2003), when their children become adults, parents rarely use this method. Neti said if her mother wanted her to follow “every single Tongan way,” she should not have moved to Australia. Pele would still complain and grumble about her, but could not entirely control her adult daughter. However, Neti did not have complete freedom in the sense that she could only choose this option of resisting when her mother imposed a constraint. When she was at Tongan gatherings, she embodied the virtue of obedience and followed any orders from older people.7 The other way to potentially make changes in the field is to discipline the next generations in a different way from how the girls were raised. Although many girls admitted that they were family oriented and loved to socialize with their cousins, they also said that they want to raise their children differently when they eventually become mothers, especially in terms of free mobility in Australia. A girl in her early twenties told me she wanted to let her future daughter go out with her classmates,



Boys Go, Girls Stay  73

something she had not been able to do when she was at school. Thus, if these girls raise their children in a different way without referring to the idea of “boys go, girls stay,” the structure of the Tongan social field may change. However, we also need to take into account the ideal role of mother. Like their mothers, once the daughters become mothers, the Tongan social field expects them to behave properly in their new role. The pressure to be ideal mothers is especially profound when they find partners from within the field; recall Vika whose personal networks changed after she married a Tongan migrant. I do not intend to negate the possibility of change; however, unmarried girls’ desires to raise their children as they wish seems optimistic. If they want to pursue their wish, they may be confronted with criticism from other people in the field. In regard to escaping the Tongan social field, escaping means putting distance between oneself and other members in the field. Because my fieldwork was conducted within the Tongan social field, I did not encounter anyone who had thoroughly cut off ties with their family members and did not share any part of their life with people in the Tongan social field. I heard a few stories of people those in the field could not reach. For example, when a group of children of migrants, both men and women, were talking about their childhood in the church, several names came up of men about whom nothing was known regarding their current situation. Some were not even on the congregation membership roll. Family members may also lose contact with each other when a key person dies or divorces. For example, Neti and Pele’s family members lost contact with Pele’s brother’s children after his death. However, in this case, no family members tried to find them. Lu‘isa’s experiences, by contrast, illustrate that sometimes the attempt to escape can be challenged when members in the field try to find a person. Her struggle illustrates the difficulty of escaping from the field and makes clear that the Tongan social field has its own force of gravity that is only felt when one tries to escape. Lu‘isa is in her early thirties, and has lived by herself in a one-­bedroom apartment in the inner city for more than ten years. In the context of Tongan cultural values, it is quite unusual for an unmarried woman to live by herself. She works full time in the central business district and spends weekends with her non-Tongan friends. She keeps close ties with one of her maternal cousins but tries to distance herself from Tongans in Melbourne, including her parents and siblings. Although I had met her family members at Tongan gatherings, I had never seen Lu‘isa before. I fortunately met her by coincidence at a late stage of my fieldwork. We

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met at a holiday house in Victoria, which is owned by one of her cousins’ relatives. Several girls planned this short trip and Lu‘isa’s cousin persuaded her to come with us. Once I introduced myself as undertaking research on the experiences of daughters of Tongan descent, she became so interested that we began to meet frequently after the holiday. According to Lu‘isa, her current personal networks are influenced by her experience living with her family until she turned eighteen, when she ran away from home in response to her mother’s unreasonable discipline. She was born in Tonga, but moved with her mother, her brother, and two older sisters when she was eight years old after her father secured a permanent resident’s visa in Australia. Her mother was strict, Lu‘isa said, particularly on her. The responsibility of most of the household chores tends to be allocated to older daughters, but in Lu‘isa’s family, the work was given to the youngest, Lu‘isa. When Lu‘isa could not meet her mother’s expectations, her mother resorted to harsh physical punishment. The conflicts between Lu‘isa and her mother had been a source of gossip among Tongans. Gossip is one of two types: one that sympathizes with Lu‘isa’s situation and one that disapproves of her current life without family. The gossip made her uncomfortable when she attended Tongan gatherings. According to Lu‘isa, the worst part was that people wanted to tell her who was talking behind her back and what they were saying. She finally asked people not to tell her anything; “It doesn’t hurt as long as I don’t know who is talking about me.” Although she did not want to reveal the contents of her mobile phone contact list to me, Lu‘isa told me that she thought she did not have as many Tongan numbers as other girls did. Although she occasionally talks with her siblings by phone, she does not talk to or see her mother. The only person of Tongan descent to whom she remains close is the cousin who supported her during her childhood. In addition to her relationship with her mother and the problem of gossip, the other reason why she does not want to engage with the Tongan social field is because “it gets complex and difficult. Pālangi are much easier to hang around.” Having spent her early childhood in Tonga, she was confident in her Tongan language skills and knew how to behave properly if she went to Tongan gatherings. Although she knows what to do, she feels uncomfortable because “everyone is judging each other.” In contrast, she said, pālangi do not judge people like that. Her thoughts are illustrated in the following incident. One day, she invited me for dinner with her friends from university,



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a mix of men and women. Before she introduced them to me, she whispered to me, “It’s a lot easier without Tongans when I see my friends.” Although she has a close relationship with her cousin, Lu‘isa never invites her when she sees her non-Tongan friends because it is difficult to explain male friends in the Tongan cultural context. As she told me, “Tongans would feel weird about having dinner with guys” because they might think her male friends were her boyfriends. By not inviting her cousin, she can inhabit a non-Tongan social field where the idea of “male friends” makes sense. How she differentiates herself from her cousin is interesting. From Lu‘isa’s perspective, her cousin embodies Tongan cultural values and could feel uncomfortable in a non-Tongan environment. This view illustrates that children of migrants themselves are aware that people have different relationships with the structure of the Tongan social field. Although she spends her everyday life outside the Tongan social field, she cannot completely escape it because the very notion of “boys go, girls stay” is a gravitational force that pulls her back. One day, she heard from her family about a funeral for a distant relative. Because she was not willing to go to the Tongan gathering, she asked her cousin to tell her sisters and mother that she would not be able to attend. On the funeral night, however, her sister came to her workplace to pick her up. Because Lu‘isa did not want to attend the funeral, she stayed inside her workplace, waiting for her sister to give up and leave. However, her sister kept tooting her horn until Lu‘isa gave up. Because the Tongan social field consists of a person’s network, even though one tries to escape from it, the field itself can approach and ensnare the individual. Ironically, her brother did not attend the funeral, and no one complained about his absence. Thus, the social field’s force of gravity does not operate equally on sons and daughters: it creates the imperative of engagements for daughters who have relationships in the field. This idea is further bolstered by a prevalent idea among Tongan parents that “girls are ‘naturally’ better behaved” (Morton 1996, 73). Also, the person who “caught” Lu‘isa was not her mother, but her sister, who is also in the children of migrants group. Lu‘isa’s conflict is not only with her mother but also with her sister, who has a different attitude about engagement with the Tongan social field. This demonstrates that it is necessary to reconsider the picture of generational conflicts. The conflict occurs not only between migrants and their children, but also within the same generation as well. In sum, although people may completely escape from the field, Lu‘isa’s case illustrates how difficult this is.

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Beyond Generational Conflicts Although the ideal image of femininity does not give daughters of Tongan descent full control over their mobility, all daughters of migrants are not necessarily burdened by the imposed structure. Within its space, they enjoy spending time with their cousins and fall in love with their partners. The association between location and gender is often embodied in children of migrants; thus, it makes them behave in the ideal way without thinking. Many people in the field cannot clearly explain the logic of gender ideology. When I asked the daughters of Tongan migrants why boys and girls are required to do specific activities, they found it difficult to explain. Most of their answers are tautological: “because that’s what boys are supposed to do” or “because she is a girl.” Therefore, I use Morton’s analysis (1996) in this chapter to explain the details of the ideal images of femininity and masculinity. Although children of migrants may not be aware of this ideology, the idea of men being outside and women being inside is nevertheless reproduced through their internalized knowledge of appropriate gendered embodiment. Pierre Bourdieu argues that “the most characteristic operations of . . . ‘logic’ ” in the field “take the form of movements of the body, turning to the right or left, putting things upside down, going in, coming out, tying, cutting, etc.” (1977, 116). It is interesting to see fathers and sons approach men’s crowds outside the church building, and mothers and daughters go straight to the church hall as soon as the family members get out of their van. Repeatedly practicing the structural location of women and men “constantly reinforce[s] this orientation, acting as a mnemonic device that constantly reminds the agent how structure is organized” (Besnier 2011, 24). The idea of gender differentiation is thus continually reproduced. However, given that many girls told me they wanted to be fair to their future children, both sons and daughters, I do not intend to argue that the structure will never change. We should nonetheless bear in mind the possibility that when these girls become mothers they may well change their minds and reproduce much the same pattern. In this regard, becoming a wife and mother within the Tongan social field function as transitional points: at each point, daughters are pulled further into the Tongan social field. Having a partner within the field generates additional gravitational forces from the affines and becoming a mother engenders expectations in the Tongan cultural context. The repeated practices of gender ideology in their everyday lives



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can also explain why daughters’ interests tend to be oriented inward within the Tongan social field. In her study of the Muslim women’s piety movement in Egypt, Saba Mahmood demonstrates how “bodily acts” and emotion are interrelated (2012, 157; emphasis in the original). She introduces a woman who tries to demonstrate shyness, the ideal image of femininity in Muslim women, by wearing a veil. Although she did not originally feel shy, wearing the veil created that feeling and she became uncomfortable without it. Mahmood argues that “the sequence of practices and actions” in which one is engaged “determines one’s desires and emotions” (157). Mahmood’s analysis explains well the inward interest that the daughters, such as Besi and Mele, exhibit. By locating themselves “inside”—be they at home or within the Tongan social field—in their everyday lives, they nurture a desire for living among relationships and thus feel comfortable within the field. In addition, framing the field through subjects’ relationships highlights multiple meanings of mobility. What seems to be immobile in the framework of the host society, Australia, can be seen differently when we apply the framework of the Tongan social field, whose shape and size depends on a person’s networks. Thus, for most daughters who have relatives across the diaspora and in Tonga, being immobile in Australian society does not necessarily equate with geographical immobility. Rather, women can be much more geographically mobile than men while remaining within the Tongan social field. As with the experiences of Italian “Flying Grandmas” (Zontini 2010, 822), even much older Tongan women are often very mobile, moving between countries to help look after grandchildren; yet, what is unique about Tongans is that they still enact the ideal of immobility by being less active or mobile in daily life. Feminist geographer Rachel Silvey argues that determining who is mobile depends on which scale of mobility is applied to assess the movement (2006, 67). Although the long-standing Tongan notion of “boys go, girls stay” historically may have not had the same implication for female long-distance mobility, given that the size of the Tongan social field has expanded in the last five decades, the notion acquires multiple meanings of mobility in which the assessment of female mobility depends on the choice of framework. It is also important to consider that the Tongan social field does not necessarily provide well-being to every daughter of Tongan descent. As Lu‘isa’s story illustrates, the gravitational force, which girls who are comfortable within the field would not feel, operates against people who try to escape it. The conflict between Lu‘isa and her family can be under-

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stood as “the tensions between networks and societal pushes or desire for individualization” (Zontini 2010, 817). In her research on Italian transnational families in the United Kingdom and Italy, Elisabetta Zontini finds that many Italian female migrants hold an image of the “idealized Italian family” and attempt to interact with their family members accordingly (819). Although this ideal provides some positive aspects of social capital, such as support and care, practicing it often incurs painful experiences and constraints because people also desire individualization. If we apply Zontini’s analysis here, it becomes clear the two poles—willingness to dwell among relationships and desires for living individually outside the Tongan social field—should not be treated as a definitive dichotomy but instead as two ends of a continuum. Among my informants, Lu‘isa was at one end, where individualization dominates, leading her to attempt to escape the Tongan social field. The other daughters, such as Besi and Mele, are at different positions along the continuum, at the other end from Lu‘isa, given that they comfortably reside within the field and engage in relationships within it. Although I argue that Tongan cultural values not only externally control the daughters’ behaviors but also are embodied in their practices, I want to avoid essentializing the daughters as simply acting according to the cultural structure. Within the spectrum, daughters may shift their positions throughout their lifetimes and, in different contexts, even at the same time, as they fluctuate between familial ties and a desire for living individually.

CHAPTER 4

Diasporic Gifts

To give was to be inside the social order, to enact that social order, and to feel the pressures and constraints that all social orders impose. Cowell, “The Pleasures and Pains of the Gift”

As discussed in chapter 3, daughters move ambivalently between individualistic desire and familial ties in their everyday lives. This chapter delves further into this negotiation of desires and argues that mothers as well as their daughters fluctuate along the continuum. This ambivalence is clear in familial obligations and gift-giving practices. Although many women live comfortably within the Tongan social field, they tend to struggle with their obligations to look after relationships with the people in the field. Focusing on Tongan familial obligations that create gift-giving practices, I explore how relationships generate commitments for daughters and their mothers and how these involvements create, maintain, and strengthen their relationships. Following the flow of gifts, I also identify the size of the Tongan social field for each actor. To empirically illuminate the intertwined local and the transnational relationships in the Tongan social field, I use these scales in the analysis of the flows of gifts. Relationships they have to maintain through gift-giving are located not only within Melbourne but also across the diaspora and in Tonga. 79

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The issues dealt with in this chapter are typically discussed in remittance studies. Whether migrants who have lived overseas long term consistently send money to their homeland and whether children of migrants send goods and money to their ancestral countries are important questions, which remittance studies explore (see, for example, Brown 1998; Lee 2006). Although this chapter is concerned with the issues explored in remittance studies, it problematizes the ways in which the concept of “remittances” frames the issues. Remittances have been defined as “economic transfers that follow unidirectional paths from a mobile worker to her or his household, community, and country” (Cohen 2011, 104) and “money and goods sent by emigrants from the new dwelling-place to the place of origin” (Burman 2002, 49). Clearly, a focus on remittance captures only a unidirectional relationship between emigrants sending remittances and residents in the homeland. As is true of what the concept of transnational can capture, the word “remittance” does not convey other economic flows occurring outside the homeland. This chapter demonstrates how focusing on subjects’ relationships in the field enables us to capture multidirectional, multiscalar flows of gifts, whether within the diaspora or between the diaspora and Tonga.

The Pleasures and Pains of the Gift When anthropologist Mandy Thomas examines the transnational movement of gifts within the Vietnamese diaspora, she refers to those that “pass within Vietnamese families in both Vietnam and Australia” as diasporic gifts (1999, 146). She defines diasporic gifts as “transnational in character” and “by nature crossing cultural and economic worlds that incorporate a range of values,” the latter giving them semantic ambiguity (150). For example, the gift of a sequined evening top that a giver wanted a recipient to wear at a formal occasion may be worn at a market while selling fruits, which Thomas analyzes as the recipient’s expression of the “power to engage actively with the gift and to use it in unintended ways” (150). Such clothes can also be sold, ensuring a shift in their status from gifts to commodities (151; see also Appadurai 1988). In this chapter, I examine the everyday experiences of Tongan mothers and their daughters with diasporic gifts, the type of which varies tremendously. Monetary gifts, of course, have been one of the most influential, as is evident from their importance in the economy of Tonga. According to a 2007 IMF working paper, “the growth in Tonga’s remittances has been very pronounced over the past decade, increasing from



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an already large base of 23 percent of GDP in 1997 to about 40 percent in 2005” (Browne and Mineshima 2007, 3).1 Moreover, various gifts of Western goods from the diaspora—clothing, digital gadgets, household appliances, furniture—may be considered diasporic gifts with an ambiguous nature, being both gifts and commodities, given that they can be sold in the secondhand markets in Tonga (Besnier 2004, 2011; Brown and Connell 1993). These favors, either in monetary or material form, are often returned through “contra-flows” (James 1997) of traditional highvalue goods such as bark cloths (tapa or ngatu) and woven mats ( fala), and Tongan foods such as seafood and staples (such as yams and taros). Whereas Thomas concentrates on the flows of diasporic gifts between Vietnamese in Australia and Vietnam, my research expands the scope of diasporic gift-giving practices by including overall “generalized” giftgiving, which includes all “putatively altruistic . . . transactions on the line of assistance” such as “free gift” and “kinship duties” within the Tongan social field (Sahlins 1972, 193–194). Because gift-giving practices are intricately related to taking care of one’s relationships in the field, the key to understanding them is to examine familial obligations in the Tongan cultural context. This becomes crucial, especially when we examine children of migrants, because adult children play important roles in meeting these familial obligations (Lee 2007a, 2007b, 2009). The following section examines Tongan concepts of familial obligations and theories of gift-giving practices. FROM STRUCTURE TO PRACTICE

To fathom the flow of diasporic gifts and the relationships between givers and recipients, I examine a range of familial obligations related to prestations of goods and money in the Tongan social field. As discussed earlier in this book, gift-giving is a crucial element of the creation and maintenance of kin and kin-like relationships. The harmonious sociospatial space, vā, is believed to be maintained by people acting in accordance with Tongan cultural values and following the kinship hierarchy. The Tongan ideal of gift-giving is organized around three core concepts: ‘ofa (pity, love and generosity), faka‘apa‘apa (respect), and fetokoni‘aki (mutual assistance) (Evans 2001, 57). The first two concepts are intricately related to hierarchical relationships in which the lower rank holders show respect for the higher and the giving of gifts by the former to the latter is a material expression of this respect. Thus, in the context of the kinship hierarchy, gifts flow from brothers to sisters, from children to

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parents, and from the mother’s side of the family to the father’s side. Conversely, the higher rank holder should feel love and be generous toward the lower and ideally redistribute the goods in that direction. The third concept, mutual assistance, is commonly practiced between or among holders of the same rank. “Any and all social ties should be expressed through fetokoni‘aki. Neighbors, fellow church members, friends, and all kinspeople should practice fetokoni‘aki. To practice fetokoni‘aki, is to show mutual ‘ofa, to fail to do so in appropriate situations or with appropriate people is to be without ‘ofa, and at best elicits pity, at worst contempt” (Evans 2001, 57). These three concepts and the ranking system are seen by Tongans as accurately articulating the nature of gift-giving and receiving among Tongans. As discussed in chapter 3, many diasporic Tongans feel stronger pressure to be loyal to Tongan cultural values than Tongans in Tonga, and how they perform gift-giving is often subject to judgment by other members in the field. In addition to these ideals, the feelings of mā also operate in giftgiving practices (Besnier 2011, 119; see also Addo and Besnier 2008). As discussed throughout this book, engagements with the Tongan social field not only require actors to commit to their relationships by behaving according to Tongan cultural values but also place them in positions of competing for reputation and avoiding shame. In fact, gift-giving practices highlight these two putatively contradicting characteristics of the field: the creation and maintenance of ties and status competition. To look after relationships, one needs to meet one’s obligations through prestations of goods and money, and the value of the gift is evaluated by recipients and other witnesses. Givers may be able to impress recipients with generous gifts but risk being shamed if the recipients or witnesses think the quality and quantity of the gifts are inappropriate. Because Tongans value both generosity and humbleness, what constitutes an appropriate quantity and quality can be ambiguous. Even when one manages to show generosity, if recipients or witnesses think the gifts are too extravagant, givers could be shamed by being criticized for not understanding or for being “ ‘uppity’ ( fie ‘eiki, or fie ma‘olunga)” (Marcus 1978, 255). Following Marcel Mauss’s classic work (1966), studies of gift-giving tended to concentrate on the social motivations, rules, and systems regulating the act and less on the actual practices and associated feelings involved in gift-giving, such as reluctance, hesitation, or even hatred. However, bolstered by a historical shift in the 1980s from Levi-Straussian structuralism to practice theory (Ortner 1984), some scholars now argue



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that we need to move our focus from the system of gift-giving to the practices and emotions of gift-giving. First, Jenny Burman, who studies Jamaican migrants in Canada, asserts that remittance studies ought to look at the emotional realm. She promotes consideration of the affective content implied by the extended definition of “remit,” “with its many nuances exceeding the act of sending: to surrender, to put back, to withdraw, to set free, to relieve from tension” (2002, 49). Thus, by not limiting the meaning of “remit” to an economic strand, and by taking other meanings into consideration, Burman attempts to expand remittance studies. She stresses the emotional variables, saying, “let the complex texture of human practices call into question traditional academic divisions between ‘moves’ motivated by, on the one hand, financial interest or survival and, on the other, emotional attachments” (50). Another interesting argument is put forward by Andrew Cowell (2002), a specialist in European medieval literature. He criticizes gift theories in anthropology and sociology, asserting an increasing distance between gift theory and social practice in reality. In his argument, he effectively uses the metaphors “the pleasures of the gift” and “the pains of the gift” to show this distance. In medieval Europe, he explained, witnesses of gift-giving events were physically beaten at important giftgiving occasions, which ensured that the witnesses, the victims of violence, would retain powerful memories of the event through this painful experience (281). However, around the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the significance of oral records was superseded by written records and a shift took place whereby “the smile (or the description thereof) began to be an important accompaniment to ceremonies of exchange, and the phrase ‘the smiling donor’ . . . began to appear commonly in accounts and charters” (283). Cowell applies this historical shift in behavior—from a body in pain to one with a smile—to gift theories to argue that these theories “have forgotten the body. This is because the body, in the act of giving within a gift economy, is at least potentially a site of pain— the pain of violence when the gift fails, or the sublimated pain of social control when the gift succeeds” (293). In addition to the call for considering actual bodily experiences in ethnographic studies of gift-giving, his metaphors of pain and pleasure are useful for understanding two Tongan terms about familial obligations, fatongia and kavenga. Although both words refer to obligations of prestations of goods and money, they have different connotations and are used in different contexts.

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First, fatongia can be translated into duty or obligation but more precisely is used for correct or ideal behaviors or attitudes, especially related to the prestation of money, goods, and services.2 Correct or ideal behaviors and attitudes are those that demonstrate a recognition of one’s hierarchical position and the practices demanded by Tongan concepts such as love, respect, and mutual assistance. Knowing one’s place—high or low—and acting accordingly is requisite knowledge in the Tongan social field. In her analysis of the Tongan cultural values that children need to learn, Morton emphasizes that “children not only need to learn appropriate values and behavior; they must also learn to be poto he anga: to be able to behave according to context” (1996, 78). This knowledge “determines the status of the actors involved and consequently the roles that they play” (78). In the context of fatongia, the duties involving prestations, these ideals compel givers to give generously to show their respect to the recipients. Because of its connotation of correct and ideal behavior, fatongia appears in public speeches but not in casual conversations. For example, at a wedding or twenty-first birthday, guests attend the party with gifts of traditional wealth for the hosts. The givers justify their effort by saying, “Kuo lava atu hoku fatongia” (I have done my duty) and the recipients, or the host stands and says, “Mālō e fai fatongia” (Thank you for doing your duty). Thus, those performing fatongia appear similar to the smiling gift-givers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: it only showcases the pleasures of giving. In the gift-giving of traditional wealth, a group of women carrying long pieces of ngatu to the recipient shout and march in front of the guests (witnesses) with joyful movements as if they are dancing: they show the pleasures of giving, even if privately they may also be worrying about how they will meet their living expenses afterward. In contrast, kavenga literally means burden of obligation—something difficult or worrisome that one is responsible for—and appears in daily casual conversations, especially when people complain. In her ethnography of a Tongan family in the United States, Cathy Small describes kavenga by quoting her informant’s expression, “a heavy sack that one must carry” (1997, 41). Kavenga clearly carries negative connotations, which sit well with Cowell’s concept of the body as a site of pain (2002, 293). Although Tongan gift-giving does not involve actual physical violence against persons’ bodies, as in Cowell’s example of medieval Europe, people described kavenga as a “headache” or sometimes tears appeared in their eyes while telling of their experiences, indicating the



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emotional pain also experienced in Tongan gift-giving practices. I thus argue that fatongia can be associated with Cowell’s expression “pleasures with a smile,” and kavenga with a body in pain. I do not argue, however, that all instances of gift-giving are painful for Tongans. Eseta, a Tongan woman in her early thirties who grew up in Tonga, explained the differences between fatongia and kavenga, based on how she feels about each gift-giving activity. According to her, if her mehikitanga (paternal aunt) passed away, she would need to give food and traditional wealth to the aunt’s family. She explained that this obligation was fatongia but not kavenga because she knew her place (mehikitanga being superior in rank), and it would feel natural, “it is my duty as a Tongan.” In contrast, she said that when her mother asked for money for an annual contribution to the church (misinale), she saw the contribution as an instance of kavenga. Although she knew she had to do it, she was reluctant, identifying that prestation as a burden, or kavenga. However, she added that from her mother’s point of view, the donation to her church was not kavenga, but fatongia because it was important for her to do it as a member of the congregation. As her explanation illustrates, whether the prestation is seen as fatongia or kavenga is subjective. Having grown up in Tonga, Eseta repeatedly told me about the virtue of Tongan cultural values. For her, understanding her status—high or low—and acting properly were important, and armed with this knowledge she did not feel reluctant to give gifts when she felt it was appropriate. However, she admitted that she did not always smile when her gift-giving was of the kavenga variety. Although the structure of Tongan gift-giving and familial obligations is well explored (Ka‘ili 2017; Evans 2001), the emotional aspect of gift-giving still requires deeper consideration. The giving of gifts may produce feelings of accomplishment and happiness that nurture good relationships, yet on some occasions, especially when the household is on a tight budget, a monetary gift can be a source of emotional pain. The case studies in this chapter examine Tongan women’s experiences of gift-giving and their visceral emotional responses. They augment the available literature by revealing more about personal relationships. For the individual, the key questions are whose requests should I respond to and who should I keep in touch with? Because a person’s familial obligations are interwoven with family relationships, whether to fulfill the obligation is not a decision to freely make alone. The expectations concerning engagement with these obligations are not only as difficult to escape or avoid as relationships in the field,

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but also similarly gendered. Engaging in familial obligations is mainly classified as a female responsibility in the Tongan diaspora. In Tonga, men give pigs and agricultural products (tokonaki), such as yams and taros, at gift-giving occasions. However, because men in the diaspora hardly grow Tongan staples or raise pigs, the significance of their gifts is relatively lower than that of women. In contrast, women’s gifts, including bark cloth and woven mats, remain important in gift-giving at funerals and weddings in the diaspora. Several anthropological works have reported that diasporic gift-giving is sometimes more competitive than in Tonga, and the number of traditional gifts presented at events has increased in the diaspora (Addo 2013; Besnier 2011; Macpherson and Macpherson 2009; Small 1997). Despite the increased importance of such gifts, most Tongan diasporic women lack the materials and skills to make them.3 They therefore are forced to buy traditional wealth as commodities from women in Tonga. Traditional gifts are also increasingly being replaced by cash and objects, such as store-bought food, quilts, blankets, clothing, cakes, and perfumes. Accumulating enough traditional wealth to be ready for unexpected gift-giving occasions, organizing money for frequently held fundraising events and donations to churches, sending money to family members in need, and making ends meet are all women’s roles. In Auckland in the mid-1980s, for example, Tongan women tended to remit more than men, a pattern that reflects Tongan gender ideology (Vete 1995). Gender roles as a fefine Tonga (Tongan woman) or a tangata Tonga (Tongan man) account for the influence of gender on remittance patterns. Compared to Tongan men, women are considered to be more frugal and responsible due to their upbringing. Girls’ boundaries are very well defined; from an early age girls are required to remain in and around the house, never to be seen elsewhere in the village. . . . They are also expected to be dependable and frugal. To exceed these bounds results in being physically punished and reprimanded for behaving like men. . . . As a consequence, women have a clearer idea of household needs in Tonga, and migrant women remit on the basis of this knowledge. (Vete 1995, 59–60)

Although Mele Vete conducted her research more than three decades ago, her observations remain relevant to the current situation. My ethnographic material also demonstrates that expectations on women to manage familial obligations continue to be high in the diaspora. Al-



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though husbands tell their wives to do fatongia to receive familial honor or to avoid shame, it is women who must deal with the conundrum of how to make ends meet. As discussed later, women’s role as wives does not erase their role as daughters. Women need to help husbands, affines, and natal family members who try to pursue fatongia. The difference between the two kinds of obligation can be symbolically described as follows: fatongia is what men do and kavenga is what women do. This idea of the gendered classification of fatongia and kavenga became explicit when I presented the earlier version of this chapter at a conference held in Nuku‘alofa in 2011. Several non-Tongan scholars and journalists were present but most attendees were Tongan—­ academics and government officials, both from overseas and from Tonga. As I presented case studies of the mothers and daughters, I heard many Tongan women laughing knowingly at my examples, as if they had shared experiences with the women about whom I was speaking. When I finished the presentation, I saw many women in the audience smiling at me. In contrast, the Tongan men looked angry. At question time, a few Tongan men criticized me saying that Tongan gift-giving should be analyzed as fatongia, but not kavenga, and that the practices come from Tongan love and generosity. One Tongan man told me that, as a Japanese person, from one of the most affluent countries in the world, I had overanalyzed Tongan familial obligations from the economic rationalist perspective by highlighting the negative aspect of gift-giving in the diaspora. In a society where deviating from the ideal way would lead to feelings of shame, people tend not to openly discuss negative feelings associated with gift-giving practices that nurture harmonious relationships. And, it is true that pursuing duties is greatly valued by both men and women, as Mele Fuka writes, “carrying out what a Tongan interprets to be his or her duty is the greatest investment, far greater than any economically productive investment” (1985, 90). Although Tongan women did not raise their hands during the question and answer period, several approached me during the break and said that it was good that I had highlighted the kavenga aspect of the gift-giving. Indeed, I had the sense of unspoken emotions and experiences that many Tongan women shared. When I introduced myself to Tongan women, I sometimes told them that I had learned in my fieldwork how difficult and painful it could be to pursue kavenga, which often led them to talk about their experiences and emotions. What will become clear in the following stories of women in the diaspora is their mixed feelings of love toward their families, their

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willingness to commit to relationships, and their desires to achieve individual projects.

Diasporic Gifts in the Context of Daily Life Many migrants, even those struggling financially, are under considerable pressure to meet family obligations, both in Tonga and in the diaspora (see, for example, Addo 2013; Ahlburg 2000; James 1993; Lee 2003). It is not uncommon to hear stories about families that cannot pay their bills or buy groceries after having made huge donations at fundraising or other familial events. Indeed, in addition to familial obligations, various organizations, such as churches and student associations, also hold fundraising events. Ironically, even these organizations that provide opportunities to socialize, as discussed in chapter 2, also impose obligations for prestations of goods and money. Tongan churches generally organize fundraising events to support themselves, visitors from Tonga, and churches and hospitals in Tonga. Tongans in Melbourne are also under pressure from relatives. Some migrants tire of familial expectations. Pele made a New Year’s resolution in 2008 saying, “I’m going to say no to all the kavenga this year. This is my New Year’s resolution. I’m sick of caring about other people. I have to update my own bills and mind my own business.” She had to repeat this resolution in 2009 because she had not been able to achieve it the first time around. Although Pele’s parents had passed away years ago in Tonga, and she did not regularly send money to anyone there, she still faced a range of familial obligations about which she felt unhappy. This burden gradually began to fall on her daughter, Neti, once Neti had graduated from high school. Earlier in this book, I showed that Tongans describe Melbourne as a place where relatively few familial obligations exist in comparison with Sydney or New Zealand: however, they are not completely free of such obligations. For example, Pele told me about a visit to her sister, Sālote, who lives in a part of regional Australia where no other Tongans live. Pele thought that she should move there with her children precisely for this reason: It’s so easy to live there. There’s no kavenga. I get paid, can pay all my bills, and the rest of my money is sitting in my bank account. There are no Tongan funerals, and no one asks for help. I haven’t touched my



Diasporic Gifts  89 money, and then my next payment comes. I can save my money, but not in Melbourne. Too much asking, asking.

To fully understand what Pele said, it is important to take into account why she did not need to use her money during her holiday: her sister Sālote had to look after her. From Sālote’s point of view, she had incurred an obligation to look after her visiting sister. To understand how and why Pele struggled in Melbourne, a place where supposedly less kavenga exists, we need to look closely at her daily experiences. Pele was kind enough to allow me to record the kinds of gift-giving activities she engaged in during one month in 2008. As the following vignettes illustrate, even within this short space of time, she had to engage in various kinds of gift-giving. The following section uses local and the transnational scales to analyze the flow of Pele’s gifts to demonstrate the intertwined relationships between these two scales. I was fortunate enough to be staying in her household during this period, so I was able to observe these transactions firsthand. The proportion of the contributions in relation to her overall household income is more important than the actual amount spent. Pele’s household income is approximately $500 a week, close to the minimum wage in Australia at that time.4 On June 30, Pele packed three boxes of used clothes to give to one of her paternal aunts (mehikitanga) in Tonga. She had carefully categorized the clothes she had stored in a shed, which she had bought from secondhand clothes shops and outlet stores. Moreover, her sister Sālote, who works in a secondhand clothes shop, regularly sent bags of clothes to her relatives in Australia. When Pele received the bags, she decided which clothes she would keep for herself and her children and which she would save to send to others. She removed any price tags from secondhand shops and outlet stores but left the original price tags. She explained that this would demonstrate how generous she was. Smiling beside me, she showed me one of the price tags and said, “I spent only ten dollars for this dress, but they think I spent seventy!” She packed clothes for all age and gender groups, explaining that if they did not like some of the things, they could sell them. While she was packing, she repeatedly told me she felt sorry for Tonga, demonstrating pity, which is one of the important elements of Tongan love (‘ofa). She continued that although she lived in Australia where people could get everything they needed, people in Tonga could not. She did not show any frustration and did not complain. She believed, she said, that it was important for

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her to help her family in Tonga, but thought that people in the diaspora should not ask for help. Mandy Thomas discusses the case of Vietnamese people who surreptitiously sold some of the gifts they received (1999). Pele, however, expected that some of her gifts would become commodities for people to sell. This case thus illustrates the doubly ambiguous nature of diasporic gifts: their dual status as gifts and commodities, and the complex flow of gifts locally, transnationally, and within Tonga. As the goods flow from one person to another, the distance and the status of the flows change. Another distinctive feature of Tongan diasporic gifts is that senders do not hesitate to reveal their gifts’ monetary value because the price becomes one of the criteria for assessing the giver’s generosity. Shortly after this, Pele visited her second cousin in Melbourne because the woman’s mother had passed away in New Zealand. The funeral was going to be held in New Zealand, and the family would attend. Distant relatives such as Pele and members of the church visited to express their condolences prior to the family’s departure. Pele’s daughter, Neti, and her first cousin, Besi, bought some groceries to make a cake; Neti paid for the shopping, and Besi provided a lift because neither Pele nor Neti had a vehicle. Pele was well known for her baking and always baked cakes for funerals and celebrations. In addition to the cake, Pele also placed one hundred dollars in a card. The cake would be consumed in the recipient’s household in Melbourne and the money would be used for the recipient’s trip to New Zealand or the funeral. This is a clear case of what Helen Lee terms “indirect transnationalism” (2007b, 2009). Indirect transnationalism refers to processes whereby a person is not intending to financially contribute to people or institutions overseas, but by being involved in local gift-giving activities, such as fundraising, they may indirectly be involved in gift-giving beyond national borders (Lee 2009). Although Lee raises this concept in the context of remittances of children of migrants, this case shows it is relevant to the migrant generation as well. On July 5, Pele’s older sister in Melbourne, Susana, rang her to tell her that she needed a bag of cassava for a visitor. At that time, Pele was involved in a business selling imported frozen Tongan staples such as taro, cassava, and yams. The business is owned by a couple in Melbourne, who asked Pele to help them. Because she is related to the husband’s side of the family and he ranks higher than she does, Pele felt obliged to agree. It is quite common for Tongan households to have a big deep freezer; however, Pele had two deep freezers at home, so when her (extended)



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family hosted a feast, she was expected to store all the food, including pigs and fish. When they were not planning for feasts, the two freezers were big enough for the needs of the business. People thus knew that Pele always had staples on hand, even though these did not technically belong to her. The couple came to her house regularly to add more stock or take some for delivery, and asked Pele to sell goods for them as well. Usually, Pele did not actively engage in sales, but occasionally people bought from her instead of contacting the couple. The problem was that some failed to pay, including her close relatives, leaving Pele to pay the couple herself. At thirty dollars per bag, this became a burden even when only a few people did not pay. Refusing to help the couple or refusing to give goods to those without money was something that she simply could not do as she found it too hard to say no to people.5 Pele’s predicament is closely related to the three Tongan concepts of love, respect, and mutual assistance as well as to that of shame. Because generosity and mutual help are Tongan virtues, when people make a material or physical request (kole), it is dishonorable to refuse. If Pele had refused the couple’s request for the use of her freezers or the requests of her relatives for goods, she would have been seen as acting improperly and risked being shamed. Pele’s involvement with the business exemplifies an interlaced, transnational, and local network. To explain, first, the commodities were imported from Tonga (transnational); second, they landed in Pele’s freezers (local); third, goods ended up going to members of her family without payment (gifts); and, finally, Pele had to personally pay for all the goods that were given out rather than paid for (commodity). Kinship networks between Pele and the couple compelled Pele to help them; however, she did not feel free to disclose that she could not pay for all the bags she “sold” because they were commercial transactions. In contrast, the bond between Pele and her sister compelled her to be generous toward her relatives without “commercial” constraints. On July 15, she again packed clothes and plates to send to Tonga because she had received a request from one of her friends in Tonga, unrelated to her, who promised that she would send ngatu (bark cloth) in return. As mentioned elsewhere, such traditional goods are especially important in gift-giving rituals. This flow from Pele to her acquaintance did not take the form of gift-giving but instead of gift-exchange. This transaction can be summarized as a transnational material exchange between Melbourne and Tonga. On July 19 and 21, and from July 22 through July 27, Pele had visitors

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from Tonga, Brisbane, and regional Victoria, respectively. In each case, she bought groceries. Pele’s dinner normally consisted of one meal of soup, fish, or chicken; however, when she had visitors, she cooked three or four dishes in addition to the main dish and salads. Hosting visitors generously is important for showing the ability of the host or hostess to follow proper etiquette and display Tongan virtue; however, this can be quite stressful, especially when guests stay for a long time. For example, one of my informants held a big twenty-first birthday, inviting about 150 guests. Relatives from America, New Zealand, and Sydney came and some stayed at her house for a week. When she talked about their stay, she said she had been stressed because a family with babies had come without any diapers or formula and had expected her father to buy these items. Moreover, it is quite common for the host to give cash to the visitors for the return trip. Although the transaction occurs face to face, it can be considered transnational gift-giving if the visitor is taking the money back home, or buying goods for family back home. What these vignettes illustrate is the dynamic of intricate local and transnational ties. Some flows occur within Melbourne and others are directed interstate or overseas. Some comprise multiple transactions in different scales—face-to-face, local, and transnational. Further, sometimes several people’s contributions are required for a single flow. Indeed, even Pele’s daughter and niece made contributions, which can be considered indirect transnationalism. Although Pele felt empathy for her relatives, she confided that she found it frustrating to give a hundred dollars to her second cousin and to host her relatives. She felt torn between her responsibility to fulfill familial obligations and her need and desire to establish her own life in Melbourne. She said that when she was still single, she concentrated on sending money to her family members in Tonga and on contributing to her family’s affiliated church in Melbourne. Look at me now. If I only concentrate on my own family [Pele, Neti, and her son Isi], I could own my house by now, I wouldn’t have to worry about rent or bills, but I gave all my money to my family [Pele’s siblings in the diaspora and family members in Tonga] and the church so now I have nothing. Tongan people have to change. Too much kavenga is no good.

To meet familial obligations is intimately tied to the antagonism “between different ways of defining one’s life project” (Besnier 2011,



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22). The question of whether a person follows Tongan virtues is generally asked of migrant children. Pele’s case illustrates that this question is relevant not only to those who grew up outside, but also in Tonga.

The Daughter’s Role Vis-à-Vis Diasporic Gifts Surrounded by various local organizations and families in the diaspora as well as Tongans soliciting donations, mothers like Pele are under a great deal of pressure. Although torn between her responsibility to abide by Tongan morality and her desire to establish her own life in Melbourne, Pele expected her adult daughter Neti to contribute her labor and money to the household’s daily needs and to meeting familial obligations. This is because age influences the degree of expectation regarding engagement with the Tongan social field. Just as older women whose children have grown up tend to be released from the ideal image of femininity—performing a clownish dance beside a delicate performance by young women—older women can also be set free from managing household budgets. This enables them to focus on giving extremely large sums of money to church celebrations because they can expect children or grandchildren to cover the financial mess this causes in their lives (Besnier 2011, 69). Considering how age intersects with gender, daughters of Tongan migrants in their twenties and thirties are at the stage of life when demands of them are intense. As becomes clear in the discussions that follow, young women of Tongan descent have roles to play as daughters as well as wives if they have Tongan partners. D A U G H T E R S ’ R O L E S AT H O M E

The wife of a newcomer from Tonga and a mother of two, Rose often complained to me that she felt unfairly treated because her mother in Melbourne constantly asked her for financial help but rarely asked her older brother even though he was still single and could afford to help. Rose’s mother is a respected member of her church. A preacher and a Sunday school teacher, she also organizes youth group activities. Keen to contribute to her church in many ways, she tries to donate as much money as possible, regardless of her daily needs. She also tries to contribute the most food at each feast held by the church. Behind the scenes, Rose is always expected to help. Ironically, Rose rarely attends her mother’s church, so from the congregation’s point of view all of the efforts would appear to be those of her mother. However, Rose

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frequently helps with her mother’s living expenses because her donations to the church mean that she would run out of money if Rose did not help. The way Rose helps her mother is similar to classic cases of international remittances, which show that migrants send money for their parents to donate to churches (see, for example, Cowling 1990; James 1991; Macpherson 1994). Because both Rose and her mother live in Australia, these diasporic gifts do not directly move beyond national borders (though some of the money may be donated to Tonga later), but the motivations of gift-giving are similar. Lina, in her late forties, has a son and a daughter who are about to graduate, respectively, from tertiary and vocational studies. She believes they should live with her until they marry. She said, “my husband and I have spent a lot of money and energy to raise them. Now it’s time for them to contribute to our household.” The degree of expectation for children to contribute to the parents’ welfare largely depends on the financial situation of the household. Lina’s household is rather well-off given that the family owns a three-bedroom house and two relatively new cars. Thus, Lina’s expectation that her children will contribute is more a matter of discipline, she wants her children to show their love and care for herself and her husband. In contrast, the expectation tends to be higher in households in which families struggle to make a living. This is especially true for migrants who end up retiring at an early age because of sickness, such as heart disease and diabetes, which are common among Tongans. In such cases, the children are expected to play a significant role as providers for the household. For example, Pele’s daughter Neti was in charge of paying some of the household bills and occasionally contributed money for groceries and labor, such as helping with the cooking. She clearly stated that she did not want to pursue familial obligations the way her mother did, but she also felt responsible for looking after Pele. Neti compared her mother’s life with that of her betteroff aunt in the regional town. “She can afford to buy properties and cars, but my mum always has to struggle because she spends all the money on relatives and church. I don’t want to struggle like her, but I know I need to help her because she only has me.” On one occasion, when she gave Pele a hundred dollars so that her mother could contribute to her high school’s student association in Tonga, I asked why she gave her the money. She answered, “because my mum is Tongan, she wants to look good. I don’t really care about the school in Tonga, it’s not my business but I still need to help her.” Here, Pele’s fatongia, a duty to give money to her student association, is covered by Neti’s meeting her kavenga. In this



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sense, one could argue that migrants’ fatongia can be fulfilled by their children’s kavenga (Nishitani 2019) . I heard similar stories from other daughters in the diaspora who, willingly or reluctantly, support their parents. However, Neti supports far fewer kin than Pele does. Neti only helps other people when her mother asks her to do so. DAUGHTERS AS COURIERS FOR DIASPORIC GIFTS

Another important role of daughters is acting as couriers of diasporic gifts when they visit their relatives in the diaspora and Tonga. Some migrants send their children to Tonga and make them stay with their relatives for long periods to receive proper Tongan discipline, to learn Tongan, or simply to be looked after because both parents are working (James 1991; Lee 2003, 2016). The point of this practice is not only to teach the children the Tongan way but also to strengthen familial bonds so that they can become future “second-generation remitters” (James 1991, 17). In addition to long-term stays in Tonga, children of migrants go to Tonga or other places to visit their families on holiday, as discussed in chapter 3. On these trips, they act as couriers carrying gifts from their parents and bringing gifts back from places they have been. While I was staying at a Tongan home in Tonga, three teenage girls from Auckland were spending their holiday there. They had arrived with clothing for young and old, perfumes, and DVDs. When they left for Auckland, they left everything, including their own clothes and cosmetics, even their suitcases. Instead, they took boxes of seafood, cooked food, and mats. On the day before their departure, the female relatives gathered at the house and prepared the foods to be packed. To take seafood to New Zealand or Australia, they freeze the food and secure the appropriate documents from the Ministry of Fisheries. When people go to Tonga, the protocol seems to be that they leave almost all their belongings at the house where they stayed. When a young woman in her late twenties living in Melbourne came back from Tonga, she told me that she needed to buy many clothes, a digital camera, and a new mobile phone because she had left everything in Tonga. Travelers’ belongings are thus transformed into gifts, but the travelers do not return home empty-handed; they bring back gifts from Tonga, such as food and traditional wealth. Daughters’ jobs as couriers are not limited to trips between the two countries but extend within the diaspora. For example, when Mele went to her relatives’ house in New Zealand for the Christmas holidays, her parents packed large amounts of

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traditional wealth to show their appreciation to the relatives for hosting her. When she came back, she brought boxes of New Zealand mussels and fabric for making Tongan clothes, which her parents redistributed among their relatives and church members in Melbourne. D A U G H T E R S ’ R O L E S AT C H U R C H E S

Daughters’ roles are not limited to the family. They also play important roles in their affiliated church youth group. Table 3 shows the activities of a youth group within a given month. During the Christmas season, the group was busy performing Tongan dances at festivals and singing Christmas carols. Two fundraising events were also held for Sunday school and a remote church in Tonga. At the fundraising events, daughters play important roles as dancers. At Tongan fundraising events, money is usually raised during dance performances. As the dancers perform, audience members place money on the dancers’ bodies ( fakapale), which are coated in oil. Although boys in the youth group also perform a war dance (kailao) and a few dances with girls, their dance performances, which start when they enter the youth group, are few in number. In contrast, girls start performing at fundraising events when they are from five to seven years old. They perform a variety of styles, from a Tongan traditional solo dance (tau‘olunga) and a group dance (ula) to other generic Pacific Island dances, such as a Hawaiian hula and a Tahitian dance (tamure). All dance performances are done by young single females up to around their late twenties. Daughters perform several dances, wearing different costumes for each. When not

Table 3. Activities of a Youth Group within a Given Month Financial 2006

Event

Activity

Donation

November 25

Second-generation festival

Dance performance

None

December 2

Multicultural festival

Dance performance

None

December 9

Sunday school fundraising

Serving food and preparation

$1,170

December 10

Christmas carols

Singing performance

None

December 22

Fundraising for minister on a remote island in Tonga

Dance and serving food

$8,410



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performing, they help their mothers in the kitchen and the boys typically wait outside for the events to finish. Lia, in her early twenties, is well known for her tau‘olunga performance and a regular dancer at various events. When I asked her about how she saw all the fundraising events and helping relatives, she explained, “It’s so natural to me. I started to learn tau‘olunga when I was really young. Also I feel good when I’m helping people. I saw my parents help our families and that’s how I grew up. So I’d love to follow my parents’ way. I want to help my families.” Class differences help explain her positive view: her household has a middle-class lifestyle and her parents can manage both household needs and requests from families. The financial and physical support expected of daughters differs according to each household. Significantly, daughters play important roles in the ongoing flows of goods, money, and services. Monetary support and physical services are inextricably linked by the Tongan cultural values of love and care in the daughters’ daily lives. DAUGHTERS AS WIVES AND GIRLFRIENDS

In addition to their roles as daughters, married women also need to play that of wife.6 In the Tongan kinship hierarchy, the husband’s side of the family is of higher rank than the wife’s side, and goods and money flow from the lower to the higher ranking side. Therefore, a husband’s family has the right to expect prestation from the wife’s. Because familial responsibilities to the natal family do not disappear after marriage, wives have double obligations: first to their husband’s family and second to their natal family (Evans 1999, 147–148). Although both husbands and wives maintain roles as sons and daughters in their natal families, women bear a greater burden than men. Wives are in charge of keeping the household and must find any money the husband needs for his natal family. Because men in the diaspora do not raise livestock or grow garden produce, their gifts must be purchased. Diasporic gifts in these instances may therefore be construed as monetary issues. Women as both wives and daughters are thus concerned with gifts that are women’s products, men’s products, and money. As explained earlier, the difference in the degree of familial obligations is used to describe the difference between Melbourne and other areas in the Tongan diaspora. This contrast also emerges when daughters talk about who to marry. That is, if they marry a pālangi, they can be

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released from familial obligations to their husbands’ families, whereas if they marry a Tongan, they have to carry on the obligations. Although the daughters and mothers share this view, most daughters still prefer to find partners with Tongan or Pacific Islander backgrounds. The degree to which and the ways in which wives support their husbands’ families can vary according to the situation of the partner’s household. Young women who have partners in Tonga are more involved in the flow of goods and money. Lasini has a fiancé in Tonga. She fell in love with him when she went to Tonga for a holiday a few years before my fieldwork. The degree of her involvement had been increasing because they were planning to get married. When they started the relationship, Lasini first left him her mobile phone with a SIM card so they could keep in touch even after she left Tonga. She occasionally sent small sums of money for him to top up phone credit because international phone call rates are cheaper in Tonga than in Australia. When some of her family members were about to visit Tonga, she bought runners and clothes from famous sports brands, all of which are difficult to find in Tonga, for them to give to him. A year later, they were engaged and her commitment to his family increased. She started to provide regular financial support to his family. Instead of remitting directly to his household, she used a service run in Australia by Tongans who own several small local shops ( fale koloa) in Tonga that sell imported foods and daily consumables from New Zealand or Australia. Customers in Tonga can buy items with cash, but if they need help from overseas relatives, they can ring relatives in Australia and tell them what they need. The relatives in Australia know the prices in Australian dollars; all they have to do is transfer the money to the shop owner’s account. As soon as the relatives in Australia pay the money to the owner in Australia, the customers in Tonga can pick up the items. According to Lasini, this system was much more convenient than sending money or goods, which involves extra charges or shipping costs, and also meant that she knew the money would be used in the way she wanted. She used this service fortnightly and spent seventy dollars to buy meat for them. I asked whether she worried about her future with him, especially her financial future. She just laughed, and said, “What can you do? I love him. So I should love his family too. And, once he comes here, he can work and he can send money, not me.” Commitment to one’s in-laws remains a feature even of relationships that develop outside Tonga. For example, Moana, in her early thirties, married a Tongan man who grew up in Auckland. They met at a Tongan gathering held in Sydney, had a long-distance relationship for a few



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years, and finally married a few years before I met her. The couple and her parents live in Melbourne, and the husband’s family in Auckland. Moana’s family distances themselves from Tongan gatherings. Both of her parents have full-time jobs and own a four-bedroom house in a relatively affluent residential area. Her in-laws are not as financially stable and she often felt that they and her husband were “more Tongan” than she and her family. She realized how stressful kavenga was after she married. Her in-laws regularly asked the couple to send money when they were going to fundraising events or when their church held misinale (annual church donation). She said, I’m happy to help them when they need our support. But I want them to use the money to make their life better. I’m always upset because they use the money for church all the time. Last Christmas, we gave a nice dining table set for their house, and later, we visited their house. Then they were still using their old dining table and chairs. I asked where the new set was, then they said they gave them away to their church! What a waste!

She was also frustrated with her husband’s attitude: We always argue about these issues. He has no doubts about sending money to his parents. But we have to think about our own life. We need to save money for our future. But he doesn’t really care about it. He is really a Tongan. The way he was brought up is very different from mine.

According to Moana, her parents did not ask for money from their children and were not as concerned about familial obligations as her inlaws, who had a stronger commitment to the Tongan social field. Because of the higher number of Tongan migrants in Auckland, her husband’s family has a denser web of networks than Moana’s in Melbourne. This case illustrates that not only family members in Tonga but also those in the diaspora require financial support from their children to meet their obligations. The third example is that of Sitani, who married a Tongan in Melbourne. Both grew up in Melbourne but are affiliated with different churches. They met at a Polynesian nightclub in Melbourne and married in 2003. They did not regularly contribute financially to their parents’ households but occasionally did help out when their parents needed money for misinale or family events. One substantial contribution they

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made was for the twenty-first birthday of a younger sister of Sitani’s husband. The husband’s family had planned on holding a big birthday reception, the budget for which was A$15,000. They had started planning and saving for the party a year earlier. Sitani and her husband helped out by depositing A$150 into the account every two weeks. Sitani and her sisters-in-law are close and visit each other frequently. Their relationship could be one of the reasons she was not stressed about contributing to the party; as I listened to her story, she never once complained about contributing. In the three cases I have presented of women with partners from Tonga, Auckland, and Melbourne, diasporic gifts go to the places where the in-laws reside. The women are not opposed to supporting their inlaws; their pain comes when their gifts are used for unintended purposes. As wives they are providing monetary contributions to their in-laws, but they also continue in their roles as daughters to their natal family, even though the amount and frequency of gifts is now less than they provided when they were single.

Sisters: Recipients of Gifts Whereas daughters mainly play the role of givers in diasporic giftgiving, as sisters, they can also be recipients of gifts from their brothers. As mentioned, in the Tongan kinship system sisters rank higher than brothers. Thus sisters are entitled to ask for financial support from their brothers. Although parents tend to ask for more financial support from their daughters than from their sons, sisters can alleviate their financial pressures by asking for their brothers’ help. For example, recall Rose, who complained that she was under more pressure than her brother to give money to her mother. In fact, she sometimes asked for her brother’s help, especially after she gave money to her mother or her mother-in-law in Tonga. Some of the money that flows to Tongan churches or people in Tonga may thus originally have come from daughters’ brothers. In some cases, people unconsciously engage with the kinship hierarchy system without knowing its rules. For example, I once loaned a book on Tongan history and culture to Pele’s nephew Lisiate. When he returned it, he said he was especially fascinated by the kinship hierarchy system and the unique relationships between brothers and sisters. He had not been aware, he told me, of the Tongan idea that sisters rank higher than brothers. He seemed to be convinced, saying, “That’s why I give money to my sister!” I was surprised, as I told him, that he did not know the



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rule but still gave money to his sister. He responded by saying he simply helped her when she was struggling, invoking the “you have to help your family” reasoning similar to that of daughters when they explained their involvement with gift-giving. As discussed in chapter 3, many children of migrants I spoke with did not articulate the rules within the Tongan social field. However, the ideal female image of “staying” is reproduced through the repetitive performance of immobility even though daughters are not conscious of the structure. Similarly, although Lisiate did not know the kinship ranking system, the flows of gifts still proceeded from the lower ranked to the higher—that is, from a brother to his sister. Therefore, although gifts seem to continue to flow along the lines of the kinship ranking system, the motivations for involvement with gift-giving are changing. Instead of referring to rank, some children of migrants are motivated to play the role of giver to help their family members. However, the flows of gifts from brothers to sisters can cause tensions between sisters and sisters-in-law. It is not unusual to hear sisters-inlaw complaining about each other. Newly married couples deal with multiple projects: establishing and stabilizing their new family as well as responding to requests from natal kin members (Johnston-Ataata 2019). I heard stories of women who were upset about a brother’s wife because marriage had made it harder for the brother to respond to his sister’s request for financial support. Another typical story is from the other side, when a wife complains about her sisters-in-law who ask for financial help from her husband. In contrast, as in Sitani’s case, some people have good relationships with their in-laws and happily support them. In other cases, people create tensions, and in still others they try to establish some leeway regarding obligations from natal family members, which is discussed in chapter 6.

Complexities of Diasporic Gifts Considering the situations in which migrants help their families pursue their familial obligations in Tonga, Cathy Small, who observed one Tongan extended family for more than three decades, states that “Tongans left Tonga to be better Tongans—to develop themselves and their families and to improve their lot and status among other Tongans” (1997, 186). It was a paradox of sorts: you must have foreign family, but with Tongan ways of thinking; your relatives must go to America, but stay Tongan

102  Chapter 4 in their heart. . . . “Staying Tongan” means maintaining one’s identity as a Tongan, but more important, it also means thinking and behaving in a Tongan manner. . . . You should help your family and maintain an attitude of love and generosity toward them. (171–172)

In light of the distinction between fatongia and kavenga, we can reframe what Small is saying in terms of fatongia. To ensure stable and sustained diasporic gifts, it is important to follow Tongan cultural values. However, as we have seen in Pele’s story, migrants themselves fluctuate between the cultural values that motivate them to help their families and individual goals to “build their own life.” Pele’s diasporic gifts are a mixture of fatongia and kavenga and made up of various aspects of the Tongan idea of love (‘ofa). When she sent gifts to relatives in Tonga, she did not complain, she simply mentioned that she felt sorry for people in Tonga. However, when she tried to show her generosity or love to her kin members in the diaspora, she expressed some of the pain she experienced in doing so. This is because the Tongan emotional concept of love has to be performed in behavior no matter how a person feels. This performative nature of love is also applicable to daughters. Although the concern of daughters shifts from impressing people in the Tongan social field—by giving generous gifts at church, for example—to helping their family members, both natal and affine, showing that love continues to be a core value. As discussed in chapter 3, many daughters expressed their family-oriented sociality: they enjoy living among Tongan relationships. Despite their aspirations to build their own lives, they still help their parents and in-laws by sometimes paying their bills for them or topping up familial donations. The question of why they do not concentrate on their own goals is explained by the performative nature of Tongan love. When Neti was employed in a small casual job and earned money, one of her maternal aunts asked Neti to pay her airfare to Tonga. Although Neti had planned to use the money she had earned for herself, her mother told her to give it to her aunt. Neti did as she was told. I asked her why she listened to her mother and aunt. She said, “At least they can’t blame me and tell people that I don’t love them.” In other words, giving money works as a performance to express their love. Failing to do so invokes criticism that the person is being ta‘e ‘ofa, “unkind, inconsiderate, greedy, bad mannered and disrespectful” (Kavaliku 1977, 65). In her article “Sending Dollars Shows Feeling,” Deirdre McKay explores relationships between Filipino migrants and their family members at home: “Emotions expressed within the same



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culture are not necessarily transparent to others who share that culture. People’s emotional performances often entail quite conscious forms of work as they attempt to suppress the expression of some emotions while ‘showing’ or intentionally revealing others” (2007, 181). In the act of giving gifts, feelings of annoyance and pain are suppressed, and the giver’s love has to be explicit in the act. Although many of the daughters who appear in this chapter are involved with gift-giving to close family members—whether parents or parents-in-law, I cannot argue that all the daughters show ‘ofa toward their close kin members. For example, Elizabeth left her close family members in New Zealand and lives with her relatives in Melbourne. According to her, she was raised by her grandparents and thus does not have a close relationship with her parents. She said that she would support her grandparents but would not send money to her parents because she did not love them, adding, “they didn’t look after me at all, so why would I give money to them?” Relationships between parents and children are ideally reciprocal. Parents show love toward their children by feeding, disciplining, and often investing in education for them. In turn, children are expected to return their parents’ love by looking after them when they are old (see Morton 1996). Thus Elizabeth did not hesitate to tell me that she did not want to support her biological parents because they had not looked after her. In contrast, Neti, mentioned earlier, has close relationships with her mother and her aunts, which motivated her to show her love by giving money. Finally, the cases I discuss in this chapter lead us to think about the multiple ambiguities of diasporic gifts. First, the ambiguity and distinction between commodities and gifts has been discussed extensively in anthropology (Appadurai 1988; Besnier 2011; Gregory 1994; Mauss 1966; Osteen 2002; Sahlins 1972; Thomas 1999). This ambiguity characterizes the Tongan diasporic gift-giving that both mothers and daughters practice. Whereas mothers prepare clothes to send to relatives in need in Tonga, daughters leave their belongings when they visit their families there. The status of gifts is also ambiguous because clothes can be worn or sold by recipients. Also, diasporic gifts can be used in unintended ways by recipients with different values. When she had to support her fiancé’s family, Lasini tried to avoid unintended usage of money by using ordering services so they could get enough food rather than using the money for something else. Similarly, Moana, who married a New Zealand–born man of Tongan descent, was upset when her gift was donated to the church.

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The second ambiguity is related to the concepts of local and t­ ransnational. As cases in this chapter illustrate, we can find multidirectional flows in multiple scales (neighborhood, local, regional, interstate, and transnational) in the Tongan social field. A local interaction may turn into a cross-border interaction, and vice versa. Thus the use of multiple scales in fact interrupts the continuum of the flow of gifts and prevents researchers from capturing the overall picture of how the gift-giving is practiced. Instead, applying the framework of the Tongan social field and following people’s relationships enables us to overcome the ambiguity of the multiple scales and portrays the complicated flows from one relationship to the other. The last ambiguity is closely related to the second. When it becomes clear that a gift may not stop at the recipient but flow on to somebody else, who is the actual recipient of the gift? Because most of the financial support from daughters is interlaced with the familial obligations of their parents or their husbands’ families, most of their final gift destinations are not their families but instead someone else, such as relatives of higher rank or churches. Even though their direct recipients, families, benefit in the sense that they are able to pursue their familial obligations and gain repute, they are also givers and the flows of gifts do not stop with them. The cases discussed here appear to show a narrowing of the potential recipients of diasporic gifts for the generation of daughters. Although mothers continue to stay busy pursuing their duties, daughter’s giftgiving has become less frequent. However, because the daughters are raised in the middle of diasporic gift-giving, they have specific roles as couriers or as dancers at fundraisers, for example. That is, they are already incorporated in a system of flows of gifts in the Tongan social field. In addition, even though ties with one’s extended family members may “decay” over time (Brown 1998, 107) given that daughters tend not to contribute to their extended families to the same extent as their mothers, new networks are continually being created through relationships with Tongan men in Tonga and the diaspora. Despite the disparity between the extent of daughters’ and mothers’ relationships within the Tongan social field and the content of their diasporic gifts, the flow of these gifts continues across the generations.

CHAPTER 5

Social Media in the Everyday Lives of Mothers and Daughters

As this book makes clear, Tongan cultural values are often embodied in the practices of people regardless of whether they are consciously willing to abide by them. The concept of vā, the Tongan idea of sociospatial ties, illustrates that social matters more than physical distance. People in the field often do not hesitate to make financial sacrifices and commitments to people who live physically far away from them. This chapter explores how social media adds another layer to the Tongan social field and enable both mothers and daughters to keep in touch with people both in close proximity and at a distance. Although the women I spoke with vary greatly in terms of experience and outlook, they share a sense of the importance of kin relations. Even Lu‘isa, who tries to escape from people in the field, has a close relationship with her cousin, and her relatives occupy a significant part of her thoughts albeit in the sense that she consciously tries to avoid them. In fact, the significance of kinship is the key to understanding the process through which social media have been “installed” in the Tongan social field. By coincidence, 2006, when I started my initial fieldwork, corresponded with the time when the social networking site Bebo was introduced and became extremely popular among Tongans in both the diaspora and Tonga. Although communication technologies such as landline telephones, mobile phones, and the internet were already in use, social media brought some interesting influences to the Tongan 105

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social field. The initial popularity of Bebo decreased over time, and most global users—including Tongans—switched to Facebook. As a result, in August 2013, the Bebo website was taken down; its content is no longer accessible. Although the platform has changed, the significance of social media has continued to the point that it has become an increasingly integral component of the Tongan social field. This chapter examines the historical process by which that has happened. Current Tongan usage of Facebook largely characterizes the social media use I refer to here. I argue that technology has not completely changed the nature of the Tongan social field but instead highlighted and emphasized its characteristics, its tendency to prioritize social over geographical distance. When we take a historical view in examining technology and society, it is easy to fall into the trap of technological determinism and ask, “How does technology change society?” However, many theoretical developments in media studies and anthropology argue that technologies and society and culture influence each other (see, for example, MacKenzie and Wajcman 1999; Ito 2008; Madianou and Miller 2012; Miller and Horst 2012; Silverstone 2005; Wajcman 2002). I also take this view of their dialectical relationship and argue that each culture and society shapes technologies (Madianou and Miller 2012, 142). A consideration of the cultural specificity of how technology is used is an essential aspect of this research.

From Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 It has been three decades since the internet was introduced in 1989. Within this time, as related technologies have developed, the ways people communicate with each other have been transformed and diversified. Along with this shift, the methods and perspectives of social scientists who study internet phenomena have also changed. Although the technologies and changes have developed by degrees, the overall shift is usually referred to as a shift from Web 1.0 (1990s to early 2000s) to Web 2.0 (since 2003, 2004). The two phases have distinctive characteristics, and I argue that they have influenced scholarly works published in each phase in different ways. Each phase has given birth to important platforms: online discussion boards in Web 1.0 and social media in Web 2.0. Throughout both phases, email has played an important role in enabling migrants and their children to keep in touch with people in the homeland and across the diaspora (Wilding 2006). For this chapter, however, I mainly discuss personal websites and platform-based com-



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puter-mediated communications, such as discussion boards and social media. Generally speaking, the Web 1.0 phase was characterized by static internet practices. During that phase, webmasters were in charge of creating their sites, internet surfers were mainly viewers, and interactions among the surfers were limited to platforms such as discussion forums. One of the reasons for those static practices is that websites could only be created by those who had literacy in HTML (hyper text markup language), which was at the time the foundation of web pages. Given the need for this specialized knowledge, it was believed that creating personal websites was limited to the West (Shields 1996) or at least to industrialized societies. Anthropologists helped refute that assumption, however. For example, Daniel Miller and Don Slater, who conducted their fieldwork in Trinidad in 1999, argued at the time that “using the Internet is becoming integral to ‘being Trini’ ” (2000, 1), and analyzed how Trinidadian personal web creators expressed their cultural identity through personal websites. Also, by the late 1990s, “there were over 50 Pacific-related websites, in addition to many Pacific-oriented homepages created by individuals” (Morton 1999, 239). In Web 1.0, computer-mediated communication (CMC) via online discussion forums drew the attention of social scientists. An online discussion forum is a website feature where people with shared interests can exchange information, socialize with other participants, and express their thoughts on specific themes such as politics, sexuality, ethnicity, and so on. Participants often remain anonymous and communication among them proceeds indirectly and asynchronously, a number of viewers not actively participating but instead simply observing (“lurking”). In some cases, online discussion forums can mediate among individuals by providing options for users to publicize their email addresses when they post comments, thus allowing others to communicate directly with them. However, this does not mean that they lose their anonymity because participants are not usually required to disclose personal details such as name and gender (Morton 2001b). One of the important issues that arose in analyses of CMC during the Web 1.0 phase was that the internet had abolished the significance of geographical distance among users (Castells 1997). Given access to an internet connection, people were able to communicate directly with one another by email or anonymously in online discussion forums. This led to the emergence of ethnic online communities that enhanced communication among diasporic peoples (Bernal 2005; Franklin 2001, 2003,

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2004; Howard 1999; Howard and Rensel 2012; Lee 2003; Morton 1999). In regard to Pacific Islanders, for example, Helen Morton focused on the Kava Bowl discussion forum and argued that the site “extends the international Tongan community and provides a forum for a range of social interactions to occur” (Morton 1999, 235). Kava Bowl was founded by a diasporic Tongan; the Rotuman Forum was established for diasporic Rotuman people (Howard 1999; Howard and Rensel 2012).1 The nature of the online space where CMCs take place has also been explored. To differentiate between the online and offline worlds, various terms are used to refer to the former—cyberspace (Escobar 1994), virtual community (Rheingold 1993), online community, and so on. Howard Rheingold, himself a keen user of CMC, explored virtual communities by focusing on WELL (Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link). He argued that, in virtual communities, “the place-like aspects and tool-like aspects only partially overlap” (1993, 56). The “place-like aspects” refer to a community where people socialize with each other, and the “tool-like aspects” refer to people’s use of CMC to collect information they need (56). It was the former “place-like aspect” that received more attention from the social sciences. Helen Morton describes one of the characteristic points of this “community”: The participants tend to have very little connection with each other beyond their interactions on computer screens. Even when they do meet in person it is as members of that particular group, through their shared interest in the focus of the group; that is, without the group existing they would have no reason to meet in “RL” (real life). (2001a, 3)

Scholars tried to capture the unique nature of online communications, but were also cautious about overemphasizing the difference between the online and the offline. Cyberspace is not only technical jargon but also prevalent in popular culture, such as science fiction (Gibson 1984) and gaming culture, which tend to define “cyber space as a space apart from the corporeal world” (Agre 1999, 1). Social scientists therefore attempt to differentiate the academic version of cyberspace from the popular view. They find that the boundary between the online and the offline is blurred (Morton 2001a, 4), or that the online world is embedded in real life because the shared interest, which constructs an internet-based group, mostly derives from their problems or interests in real life (Agre 1999, 3). Daniel Miller and Don Slater spearheaded this discussion, arguing that “the Internet is not a monolithic or placeless ‘cyberspace’; rather, it



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is numerous new technologies, used by diverse people, in diverse realworld locations” (2000, 1). They argue that emphasizing virtuality leads to misunderstandings of actual internet practice, and that it is important to acknowledge continuity between the two spaces: online practices “happen within mundane social structures and relations that they may transform but that they cannot escape into a self-enclosed cyberian apartness” (6). Despite warnings against seeing the online space as having a distinctive border, focusing on the space created online was a popular perspective in the Web 1.0 phase.2 However, since the mid-2000s, different types of internet practices have emerged. This phase, called Web 2.0, offers dynamic, interactive internet experiences. Websites offer platforms on which both webmasters and internet surfers contribute to the site. These technologies are typified by Wikis such as Wikipedia, embedded videos such as YouTube, social network sites such as Facebook, and blogs. These websites merely offer a platform and are designed for content to be developed by ordinary internet users without any professional knowledge. General users can easily upload text, pictures, and videos, an innovation that lets site visitors be creators as well as viewers. Between 2000 and 2010, although online discussion forums did not disappear, and people with shared interests continued to use them, various social network sites—such as Facebook, Myspace, and Bebo— were launched. By the late 2000s, accessing social network sites became a global phenomenon. According to Nielsen Media Research, in 2008, “two-thirds of the world’s internet population visit a social network or blogging site and the sector now accounts for almost 10 percent of all internet time” (Nielsen 2009, 1).3 The report also showed that social network and blogging websites overtook personal email to become the world’s fourth most popular online sector after search engines, portals, and software applications (1). Studies on social network sites were initially led by the field of youth studies because young people tend to be earlier adopters of new media than adults (Ito 2010; Roberts and Foehr 2008). One of the leading scholars in this area, danah boyd, writing with Nicole Ellison, provides a good definition of social network sites:4 web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system . . . What

110  Chapter 5 makes social network sites unique is not that they allow individuals to meet strangers, but rather that they enable users to articulate and make visible their social networks . . . On many of the large SNSs [social network sites], participants are not necessarily “networking” or looking to meet new people; instead, they are primarily communicating with people who are already a part of their extended social network. (2007, 211)

Ellison and boyd say that because users do not necessarily try to connect with new people, “social network site” is a more appropriate term than “social networking site.” Thus, social network sites are different from discussion forums because the former are designed for those who want to keep in touch with people they already know in real life. The discussion boards’ focal concept of anonymity is therefore no longer relevant in the context of social media, which has flourished under Web 2.0. Some ethnographic studies in cyberspace continue to focus on online games, examining intertwined relationships between the online and the offline (Boellstorff 2008; Golub 2010). Studies of social network sites, however, tend to approach the subjects from an offline perspective, examining their usage by understanding the users’ everyday lives (boyd 2008, 2010; Horst 2009; Horst, Herr-Stephenson, and Robinson 2010). One of the most important contributions of the early work in youth studies has been the emphasis on the importance of contextualizing the use of technologies in people’s everyday lives. We use the metaphor of ecology to emphasize the characteristics of an overall technical, social, cultural, and place-based system, in which the components are not decomposable, or separable. The everyday practices of youth, existing structural conditions, infrastructures of place, and technologies are all dynamically interrelated; the meanings, uses, functions, flows, and interconnections in young people’s daily lives located in particular settings are also situated within young people’s wider media ecologies. (Horst, Herr-Stephenson, and Robinson 2010, 31)

This concept of ecology clarifies that practices that arise from the internet are actually embedded in broader social and cultural contexts. Although this definition refers to young people, it is useful for thinking about the range of generations engaging in activities on the internet. Although studies have focused considerable attention on Western youth (boyd 2008; Gershon 2010; Ito 2010; Livingstone 2008), an increasing number of works deal with a diversity of “media ecologies” and



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highlight, in particular, the cultural specificity of the use of new media. Researchers have explored area-specific platforms, such as Cyworld in South Korea (Hjorth 2009), mixi in Japan (Takahashi 2010), and Facebook as used in Trinidad (Miller 2011). Migration studies also pay attention to the ability of social network sites to connect a diasporic population and their homeland (Collins 2009; Madianou and Miller 2012; McKay 2010; Oosterbaan 2010). In his ethnography about Facebook in Trinidad, Daniel Miller says, Different people were using different combinations of web-surfing, emailing, instant messaging and so forth. The internet was whatever any particular group of users had made it into. No one population was more “proper” or “authentic” than any others. For an anthropologist studying in Trinidad, the internet itself was something created by what Trinidadians do online. (2011, xiii)

For women I spoke with, both daughters and mothers, the social network sites seemed to constitute a major part of their internet practices. Although Bebo and Facebook were founded in “the West,” Tongans use these sites differently than members of mainstream society do. By providing an ethnographic account of how daughters and mothers started to use social network sites in their everyday lives, I explore how Tongan users make social media Tongan.

From Bebo to Facebook Because the development of technologies is extremely rapid these days, the usage of social network sites has thoroughly changed in the decade since I started doing fieldwork in 2006. In their ethnography of Trinidad, Miller and Slater note, In a year or two’s time, when much of the web will be transfigured by high bandwidth facilities, as well as by completed telecommunications deregulation, the common-sense view of what “the Internet” is and what one should write about will have again been transformed. (2000, 14–15)

My intensive fieldwork between 2006 and 2009 coincided with the rise and fall of Bebo, a site once regarded by some as having achieved victory over other social media during the “social networking wars” (Cellan-Jones 2011, para. 1). At the time of writing, Facebook ­continues

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to occupy a leading position; other social media venues, such as Twitter, Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Instagram, are also widely popular. Although Bebo never had the same worldwide reach as Facebook in 2019, it was extremely popular in Europe—especially in the UK for a while— and among Tongans, some other Pacific Islanders, and Indigenous Australians. Bebo (an acronym for blog early blog often) was founded by a British man, Michael Birch, and his American wife Xochi in January 2005 (Burkeman 2006). One of its key characteristics was that users could upload music, videos and photos, update their blogs, send messages to their friends both publicly and privately, and play online games all in one place. The Bebo home page described the service this way: Share the Real You: Share your individuality with your own customized place on the web. Express & Entertain: Millions of photos and videos from fellow Bebo members! Stay in the Loop: Keep your friends in the loop regardless of where they are. Online Gaming: Play some of the top social games with your friends!

Bebo’s temporary global popularity is illustrated in the statistics: by the end of 2005, twenty-five million people had joined, and it was described as “the fastest-growing social networking site in the world” (Burkeman 2006, para. 1). Michael Birch’s original internet plans were aimed at an older age group—thirtysomethings—but he soon learnt that social networking online depends on finding a focus based on more than age—a classroom, for instance, or a particular hobby. “I wanted it to be a place where I could exchange photos and keep in touch with my family in England,” he said on Friday from his home in San Francisco. “But you can’t control who finds websites popular. Teenagers are always the early adopters online because they have more time on their hands and less money—and social networks are free.” (Garfield 2006, para. 6)

According to the Observer, in June 2006, Bebo was the sixth most popular site in the UK, bigger than AOL, Amazon, and BBC, clocking one hundred million page views every day (Garfield 2006). In Ireland, it was the second most-visited website after Google (Burkeman 2006).



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The media description of Bebo users in Britain is different from what I observed about Tongan users in Australia. According to The Guardian, Bebo was used predominantly by the thirteen- to twenty-four-year-old age group (Smithers 2008). One of its reporters described a typical Bebo user by saying that they usually “speak in text-message language, may rave about tattoos or Avril Lavigne, and generally disregard the topics of Beethoven or constitutional reform. The age profile is younger than that of Myspace or Friendster” (Burkeman 2006, para. 5). By contrast, the age range of Tongan users was much broader: not only young people but their mothers also became enthusiastic users of Bebo; their main purpose in using the website was to keep in touch with kin and church members. Bebo’s popularity reached its zenith in 2008, when it became the world’s third largest social network website, behind Myspace and Facebook, and claimed to have more than forty million monthly users globally (Johnson 2008). However, this boom did not last long. By February 2010, Bebo’s global unique visitors totaled 12.8 million, Facebook 462 million (Kiss 2010). The truth seems to be that social networking may, like other networking trends, be one of those elements of the internet where the winner takes nearly all: if your friends have a Myspace and a Bebo and a Facebook account, but are spending more and more time on Facebook, where will you go? The outcome is inevitable, even if it only happens slowly. (Arthur and Kiss 2009, para. 19)

Although Bebo’s short period of popularity in the UK occurred at the same time that Tongans were using the site in Australia, Tongans used it in a different way. DAUGHTERS ON BEBO

In late 2006, at the start of my fieldwork, the daughters’ main topic of conversation at morning tea after Sunday church services already revolved around Bebo, which indicates their early adoption of the site. At this early stage, the age range of users of Tongan descent was still narrow and young—late teens to early thirties. Although some young men also used Bebo, it seemed the daughters were generally more passionate about the site. Although one of the women I spoke with had registered for Bebo in January 2005, the month the site was established, most of the daughters started in late 2005 and early 2006. Bebo’s prominent place

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in lives was illustrated by the way young women farewelled each other after church: “See you on Bebo!!” Generally speaking, studies on migrants and communication technologies tend to be concerned with transnational interactions between diasporic people and their family members in the homeland (McKay 2010; Wilding 2006). However, the daughters were using Bebo not only to keep in touch with their kin members across the diaspora and in Tonga but also to communicate with peers from church. This is similar to boyd’s teenage informants in the United States: “Conversations and interactions that begin in person do not end when friends are separated” (boyd 2010, 80). The prepaid mobile phones with limited credit used by most research participants were not suitable for staying in contact with peers and cousins; Bebo became a more affordable alternative for socializing with “friends” both in close proximity and at a distance. This upsurge in Bebo use was not limited to those who lived in Melbourne but happened across the diaspora and in Tonga as well.5 This is illustrated in participants’ friend lists (Nishitani 2011). In early 2007, to explore their range of contacts, I asked some of the daughters to participate in a research survey regarding their friend lists on Bebo. Because at that time I believed that Bebo was used by youth in Australia in general, I expected to acquire data that would show the proportions of both people of Tongan descent and non-Tongans in their friend lists. Participants were asked to construct a circle graph that specified the composition of their friend lists based on cultural backgrounds: Tongans, other Pacific Islanders, pālangi, and other. I also asked them to include where the people lived, whether Melbourne, Australia, Tonga, or other countries. Contrary to my expectations, the lists were dominated by Tongan categories and variations were in where they lived: Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland, and Tonga. Their friends who did not live in Melbourne were mainly kin members and those whom they had met at events, such as church conferences or family gatherings (weddings and birthdays). In addition to people who had already met face-to-face, the lists typically included those the daughters had not met before. Most of the Tongans used real names when they created their accounts on Bebo and included additional personal details so that relatives they had not met before could find them: date of birth, gender, relationship status, country, zip or postal code, and hometown. Bebo also offered a space called “Me, myself, and I” where users could write “Things that describe who you are” in up to a thousand words. Although Bebo suggested writing about favorite films, music, sports, and the like, many Tongans



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introduced genealogical information, including their parents’ full names and the villages they came from. Even though most children of migrants were born abroad, many recorded the names of their parents’ villages. Some Tongan users even recorded the names of their grandparents and the villages where they had been born. One participant explained that this information would enable other family members, with whom contact had been lost, to find them. She told me that she would search her family name and her mother’s maiden name, and then ask her parents whether they were related to the people she found. If related, she sent messages to these other users and started socializing with them through the internet. Although the daughters did not necessarily communicate frequently with these relatives they had not met, they could still see their uploaded photographs and share news across the diaspora and with people in Tonga. On the one hand, Bebo satisfied the needs of those who were interested only in contacting people in the Tongan social field. On the other, people who also wanted to interact with their non-Tongan friends used Facebook or Myspace in addition to Bebo. The differences in which site a person used depended on their degree of engagement with the Tongan social field. For example, Neti, who often interacts with both her cousins and non-Tongan friends, used Myspace to keep in touch with her non-Tongan high school friends and Bebo to communicate with her cousins and church peers. However, Mele, who lives comfortably within the Tongan social field, only used Bebo, and Lu‘isa, who tries to escape the Tongan social field, used Facebook and avoided Bebo. Mele, interestingly, did not see Bebo as Tongan, but those who used multiple social network sites or distanced themselves from Tongans associated Bebo with Tongan users. Mele only realized that she mainly contacted Tongans when I asked her to categorize her friend list. In contrast, when I asked Lu‘isa whether she used Bebo, she said, “No way, there are too many Tongans!” Although Australia started to provide third-generation mobile telecommunication services in 2005, which enabled people to use mobile internet, the cost of this service was still high and the quality low. Daughters therefore used computers rather than mobile phones to check Bebo. At that time, “going on the internet” largely meant “going on Bebo” for many of my Tongan interlocutors. I had many opportunities to observe the daughters’ usage of the internet and came across only one who used the chat room of “ethnic communities” like Planet Tonga to communicate with anonymous Tongans (Morton 1999; Lee 2003). She enjoyed

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chatting online anonymously, but also used Bebo to keep in touch with people related to her. Although young Tongan men also used Bebo, the discussions in previous chapters explain why girls rely on the site: the limited face-to-face contact between the daughters of Tongan migrants who live in scattered locations, a gender ideology that controls young women’s mobility, and strict parental controls over single women’s chastity. Young women are not only required to stay at home or within the field but are also expected to nofo ma‘u (sit still), which is “used in its broader sense of staying or remaining fixed in one place” (Morton 1996, 103). In Tonga, one of the ways in which women can sit still is while working in groups to make mats and bark cloth, which provides a great opportunity for women in a village to socialize and exchange news. By contrast, in Melbourne, Tongan women do not have many opportunities to socialize face-toface in their everyday lives, apart from going to Tongan churches. It is not surprising that Bebo was welcomed by the daughters to fulfill their needs to communicate with peers from the church as well as their kin members at various distances without deviating from the ideal image of femininity. They were able to sit still in front of computers to socialize in the Tongan social field. This is particularly relevant for those who do not have close relatives nearby. For example, unlike Neti who not only socialized online via Bebo but also could drop in on her cousins who lived in the area, Lina’s daughter Finau relied on Bebo to socialize with her first cousins in Auckland and sometimes with cousins in Tonga. Although she also used Bebo to communicate with her peers at the Tongan church, she said she preferred to socialize with her family because “my family is the most important thing in my life.” In early 2007, although not everyone had computers, almost all the daughters I spoke with had accounts on Bebo. Some of them went on the internet at school, at their workplaces, or in internet cafés, but it was also common for them to visit the households of extended family members who had a computer with internet access. In these households, desktop computers were usually located in a lounge room so that every household member and visitor could use the internet. Indeed, whenever I visited Tongan families who had computers, they always asked me whether I needed to go online. Even households that did not have a computer would be able to access the internet at an extended family member’s household. For example, one extended family consisting of three households in Melbourne shared two computers, and another of



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four households shared one computer. Thus those who did not have internet access at home could and did easily check their Bebo somewhere else. As discussed, the daughters’ limited freedom formed fixed patterns of mobility, so cousins’ houses were one of the most acceptable places to “hang out.” The shared nature of the computers shaped the way the daughters used them: they were not only socializing with “friends” online but also socializing face-to-face with their cousins or church peers who were with them in front of the computer. In addition to carrying out individual activities, such as sending messages to friends, girls typically looked at other people’s pages with their peers and chatted about pictures or music uploaded to Bebo. Even at a social occasion, such as a barbeque party at the house of a church member, while men and boys socialized outside, the daughters would gather in front of a computer and log on to Bebo to talk about pictures or someone’s messages on the wall. Thus Bebo not only connected dispersed people but also provided topics for the daughters to chat about face-to-face in front of the computer. One of the common activities for daughters was to access each of their friends’ pages and write on each other’s walls. Usually it started with, “Hi, just dropping by to say hi. How are you going?” Bebo provided a function called “sending love,” adding a love heart to the message they wrote on their friends’ walls. Sending love this way was popular at the time. Bebo offered only three loves a day, so users could not give their love to everyone. Profile pages featured a love heart counter, so it was obvious how many loves each user had received. Sending loves to kin members or church peers was one of the ways the young women took care of their relationships. Daughters were also keen to upload photos, but not many people had digital cameras and those on mobile phones were generally low quality. Thus whenever I took pictures, they always asked me to upload them to my Bebo albums. Bebo offered a function that enabled other users to copy uploaded photos and save them in their own albums with different captions. In addition, Bebo also provided a function for creating slide shows; users could select pictures from their albums, edit additional captions for the slide show, and add uploaded music and animated objects such as twinkling stars and floating love hearts. The daughters created slide shows of their family members, or events such as birthdays and informal gatherings, which also illustrated their family-oriented nature. Bebo also had a function called Video Box, which enabled users to upload videos or retrieve clips from YouTube. Because few people

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had video recorders at the time, they used Video Box to collect their favorite music from YouTube. Musical tastes varied, of course, but they mainly collected Tongan music: sometimes traditional but mainly more modern, a mixture of reggae, R&B, and hip-hop beats, often referred to as Island mix. At this stage, the mothers generally did not have a good impression of Bebo, and most of them lacked the computer literacy to send emails or surf the internet. When I asked what they thought about their daughters’ enthusiasm for Bebo, their key replies were “waste of time,” “sticky nose,” and “gossip.” One mother of a sixteen-year-old daughter said that she had deleted her daughter’s Bebo account when she discovered that her daughter had contacted some boys and communicated in what the mother considered inappropriate ways. She had actually joined Bebo to check whether her daughter had created another account on the site. Indeed, most mothers’ first impressions were generally negative—partly because they feared that their daughters would interact with strangers online, and that they could not prevent this unless they prohibited them from using the internet at all. However, some mothers had a more positive view. One mother in her forties, who had an eighteen-year-old daughter in high school and three sons, said that she enjoyed browsing Bebo with her daughter. She carefully monitored her daughter’s usage of the internet and allowed her to access Bebo on weekends. On the weekends, she went on Bebo using a computer in the lounge, and I observed several times that she called her mother to look at uploaded pictures of their extended family. The daughter asked questions such as, “Mum, who is she? I’ve never seen her.” The mother would then come to look at the picture and explain how they were related. The mother told me she enjoyed looking at pictures of her family members and that she could never have imagined that such technology would develop. She also wanted her daughter to be successful at her schooling, so if the daughter spent too long on the computer, she would get angry, but otherwise the mother’s view was, “Bebo is fine.” MOTHERS ON BEBO

In late 2007, when I returned to Melbourne, I observed that more and more mothers had begun using Bebo. They did so, generally, in one of two ways. First, mothers who had positive attitudes toward Bebo were gradually introduced to the site by their daughters, who played an im-



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portant role in teaching them the basic computer skills that they needed to learn. A side effect of this was that some mothers learned to write as young people on the internet do. One young woman once told me, for example, that she felt uncomfortable when she received messages from her mum saying, “hey, hope u fine be good luv yah” because this seemed inappropriate for her mother’s age. The second way mothers began using Bebo was when other mothers introduced them to its benefits. One of those who had told me that Bebo was “rubbish” and a “waste of time” in early 2007 later enthusiastically explained how it helped her connect with her old friends and family members. She said, “I found my high school community on Bebo. So I wrote on the wall to say hello. Then two of my classmates gave me requests to become friends on Bebo. One friend lives in New Zealand and the other lives in America now.” Her previous belief that Bebo was rubbish had changed not because of her daughter but instead her older sister, whose daughter’s influence had led her to become a keen user. However, not all daughters welcomed their mothers as participants because their mothers’ presence enabled them to see what their daughters uploaded on the site. At the same time, it was difficult for daughters to ignore or refuse friend requests from their mothers and their aunts. In studies of teenagers’ social media use, parents are usually positioned in opposition to their children. For example, boyd describes the new media environments that encompass “persistence, searchability, replicability, and invisible audiences” as “unfamiliar to the adults that are guiding them through social life” (2008, 138). Therefore, youth practices are “largely segregated from but dependent on adult social worlds. Within these contexts of normative youth sociability, adults . . . are generally relegated to the role of provisioning or monitoring youth media ecologies rather than as coparticipants” (83). In boyd’s research, young people in the United States use social network sites to socialize with peers at school in ways that prevent sharing with adult social worlds. In contrast, the daughters of Tongan migrants used Bebo to contact people in the Tongan social field, with which their mothers were also involved. Therefore, the mothers’ initial negative attitude disappeared and they also took advantage of the opportunity Bebo offered to find people to whom they were related, and became part of the “invisible audience” so they could collect information about people in the Tongan social field online. However, mothers and daughters used Bebo differently, at least to some extent. First, whereas daughters used Bebo not only on their own

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but also with other cousins or church peers when they visited their homes, mothers usually used it on their own or with their daughters. Mothers who already had access to the internet on computers at home were able to join Bebo, but those who did not were not. Second, whereas daughters were more concerned with uploading their own pictures or pictures of events in which they were involved, mothers focused on creating albums by collecting photos—from those of newborn babies taken on mobile phones to scanned old pictures of deceased kin—uploaded by their relatives, both close family and distant kin members. Also, many mothers, especially those who claim to be related to the royal line, made albums of photos of the royal family. Although Tongans’ preference for communicating with kin and kin-like members is itself a telling characteristic, decorating one’s social media page with pictures of family members and landscapes in Tonga was also an activity that made Bebo Tongan. Posting historical images of the homeland on social network sites is common among migrants generally. When she explores Filipino migrants’ usage of Facebook, Deirdre McKay focuses on historical images of the Philippines they upload. She finds that they use “appropriate” historical photographs of buildings and portraits taken in the Philippines “as aspects of themselves” (2010, 495). “By presenting a self through photographs, a user can claim features of a photographic context, environment or history to suggest that aspects of the images reflect their own personal dispositions, aesthetic understanding or cultural sophistication” (481). As mentioned, many Tongan users introduce themselves on social media using the names of their parents and their parents’ home villages. The combinations of introductory texts, photographs of kin members, and Island-themed music and photographs present on each user’s page both locate Bebo in the Tongan social field and symbolize each user’s belonging and identity within that field. Over the same years, Bebo had also become popular in the capital city of Tonga, Nuku‘alofa. Although home internet access is limited in Tonga, Nuku‘alofa has several internet cafés.6 Some cater to foreign tourists, others target the locals. When I went to Tonga in 2007, all the computer screens I saw being used in internet cafés showed pages of Bebo and, unlike Melbourne, both men and women were on the site. I also observed differences in how Tongan migrant women from Melbourne and those who live in Tonga used the Nuku‘alofa cafés. Those from overseas uploaded photos of their holidays in Tonga and wrote to their extended families in Melbourne about the wonderful time they were having there;



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local Tongan women, meanwhile, checked messages and photographs from their relatives overseas. Diasporic Tongan women visiting Tonga chose whichever café was most convenient each time, whereas local Tongan women always went to the same one, which usually was run by their relatives and therefore free. Bebo also helped disseminate news from Tonga; the story of Tae, a young Tongan girl who had cancer, reached members of the Tongan diaspora, for example. It did in part because Tae and her family had begun to write a journal on the website. When she died in August of 2008, services for her were held in Melbourne. A magazine in Tonga published a story about a visit she received from the late King Tupou V as part of the coronation celebrations: As her parents Taholo and Sina had moved to Fiji to work, Tae was enrolled to do Form Five at the Suva International High School. The day before school started, Tae was told the cancer had spread to her lungs. She would not make it. The Doctors said she had three to six months to live. In April, Tae, her parents and two sisters, ‘Amelia and Joy returned to Tonga. Meanwhile updates continued on her website (www​ .­taekamifund​.org) and her optimism and faith remained. She planned her funeral, kept in touch with friends on bebo [sic], read books and vowed to live everyday as if it was her last. Visitors poured in to see her and others to pray. Schoolmates, family, friends, one of New Zealand’s top bands Spacifix and Laughing Samoans visited. . . . The support was overwhelming, but no one would have envisaged a visit from the King. . . . In addition to an airbook laptop, internet connection and [a] mobile phone, the King presented her with a Medal of Valor. (Enoka 2008, 69)

After she died, a group profile called REST-IN-PEACE TAE KAMI was established on Bebo, and people wrote messages to her. People could create group profiles on Bebo as well as their individual profile pages. Bebo provided the groups function as a space for fans of particular singers or actors to gather, but Tongans created characteristically Tongan group pages. First were those based on family names, where, once you joined, you could meet people with the same family name and discover relatives. Both mothers and daughters joined not only their family name group but also other family groups genealogically relevant to them. Second were groups based on schools in Tonga. Some high school alumni organizations ran their own websites, but various others, from Sunday schools to colleges, emerged. School groups were

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particularly popular among mothers because they offered opportunities to reconnect with old classmates. Third were groups based on villages. As George Marcus pointed out in the 1980s, kinship ties rather than villages are the focus of community organization in Tonga (1981, 57); however, for my Tongan interlocutors in Melbourne, both daughters and mothers, joining the group pages for their family villages was popular. Village groups not only connected people in dispersed locations but also created opportunities for them to meet face-to-face, such as at reunions. A group organizer would propose a date for the event, and group members would save money to attend. These three groups—­families, schools, and villages—operated not only to help Tongans maintain their existing networks but also to retrieve lost connections. Mothers’ involvement with Bebo enabled daughters to learn about their mothers’ networks and about distant relatives in the diaspora and in Tonga. The uploaded photographs of Tongan rituals, which mothers collected, became learning materials for their children. Users could also understand how Tongan ways of life are practiced in different ways in different geographical areas. On one occasion, Neti and I watched as Pele surfed Bebo. We looked at one of their distant relative’s albums of the twenty-first birthday of a boy in Auckland. Neti was surprised to see that a large event had been held for a boy because in Melbourne elaborate birthday parties are held only for daughters. As she looked at the photographs, she exclaimed, “Oh my god, this is too much! Look at the koloa [traditional gifts]!” Pele responded, “I know. People in New Zealand are showing off.” As discussed, geographical differences in the Tongan social field are often explained by the relative size of Tongan populations and their degree of commitment to Tongan cultural values. When many Tongans live close to each other in the diaspora, they have more relationships to look after and thus more obligations to meet. As more and more photographs of Tongan cultural practices were uploaded to Bebo, they helped explain the differences between diasporic populations, and perhaps led to the evolution of stereotypes among people who had never physically traveled to different geographical places in the Tongan social field. The period from 2007 to 2008 can be considered the golden age of Bebo. Just as mothers had passed on values and practices to their daughters, the daughters introduced Bebo to their mothers. Bebo became part of the Tongan social field, and mothers enthusiastically attempted to retrieve their lost relationships with people who had migrated elsewhere.7 The “installation” of the social network site in the Tongan social field



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seemed to be complete. For both mothers and daughters, Bebo became an important tool to create, maintain, and retrieve ties with kin and kin-like members, and uploaded photos and other information became important resources for gaining genealogical and cultural knowledge. D A U G H T E R S A N D FA C E B O O K

In 2009, many daughters moved from Bebo to Facebook, and an increasing number began accessing it on their mobile phones. One of the reasons for this change was that the ability to install the Facebook application on a mobile phone precluded the need to visit their extended families to use a computer. It had been common to see several daughters browsing a computer together when they visited each other. The scene was replaced by that of daughters browsing individual mobile phones in pairs or groups. Some daughters deleted their accounts and left Bebo. Their reasons varied; one daughter felt that because so many elders were on Bebo she was no longer comfortable having them see her photos and messages. Another daughter said simply that Bebo had become “boring” because her friends were increasingly using Facebook. This shift upset Lu‘isa, who avoided Bebo and had been using Facebook to interact with non-Tongans. She told me she had begun to receive many friend requests from her kin members, which she could not reject. Her attempts to escape the field had now failed online. However, quite a few daughters kept their accounts on Bebo until it closed down in August 2013. Some left their accounts active but did not access them; others continued to access them, though not as often as Facebook. The reason they did so was to keep in touch with family members (particularly the older generations) who still used the site. Because Bebo remained popular among the older generations, who were more comfortable with communication in Tongan, the daughters who stayed on Bebo began to use more Tongan than English. For example, Rose accessed both platforms, and although she used English slang and text language on Facebook, she mainly used Tongan on Bebo, both formally and in casual text language, such as “o4 a2 kimou3” (“ ‘ofa atu kimoutolu,” love you all) or “fe2 hake?” (“fefe hake?” how are you?). She often uploaded pictures of her children on both sites but wrote captions for them in different languages—English on Facebook and Tongan on Bebo. For example, for a child named Sione junior, she would write “Sione junior” as the caption on Facebook, but “Sione leka” on Bebo. Using more than one medium made the users more aware of the a­ udiences of their

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­ ersonal pages on social network sites. For Rose, Bebo and Facebook p were, respectively, tools for communicating with older Tongan migrants and with her cousins and peers within the Tongan social field, and this difference was reflected in her choice of language on each site.

The Era of Polymedia: After 2010 Since Bebo closed in 2013, Facebook has become the online tool for keeping in touch with people in the Tongan social field, both in wider Australian society and beyond. Young people upload pictures taken with non-Tongan colleagues as well as kin members and responses to status updates include comments by both Tongans and non-Tongans. It seems impossible, however, to argue from the technological deterministic view that the shift from Bebo to Facebook has led Tongan users to intermingle more with non-Tongans. Instead, the way in which Facebook is used seems to reflect users’ actual social networks (Miller 2011), consolidating into a single list a user’s entire social network, both inside and outside the Tongan social field. Those who live among kin and kin-like friends in the field continue to use Facebook to maintain these relationships. It is not possible to predict whether the upsurge of Tongan Facebook users will continue. For some young people, Facebook seems to have become increasingly like Bebo in the sense that they need to bear in mind that their mothers or relatives are online with them, which Mirca Madianou aptly terms being “ambient co-present” (2016). Just as young people moved from Bebo to Facebook to escape their mothers’ eyes, growing numbers of young people now use Snapchat alongside Facebook. Although they still upload photographs of family events such as birthdays or christenings to Facebook, some images and videos are shared only on Snapchat and other media where the mothers are not present. Although each website or platform may well change over time, the importance of social media is unlikely to decline. Together with other communication technologies, social media is intricately entangled with the Tongan social field. In fact, improvements in the accessibility and the increasing diversity of communication tools appear to have strengthened the significance of technology in people’s engagement with the Tongan social field. In 2012, Pele, who only started using a computer when she joined Bebo, rang me to ask for help to install a webcam on her desktop computer so that she could use Skype to talk with her relatives and friends. Her typing speed has improved because she loves instant



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messaging on Facebook. With the help of VoIPs (voice over internet protocols), such as Skype and Viber, users can talk by phone without worrying about the cost. Mirca Madianou and Daniel Millar coined the term “polymedia” to refer to this new communicative environment in which multiple media choices are available (2012). One of the characteristics of the era is that when a person uses a particular communicative medium, “it appears in that instance as cost-less” (126), thus people decide which medium to use based on reasons other than cost. A topic about business, for example, may be more appropriate to communicate by email than by Messenger app. As we have seen in this chapter, in the late 2000s, the choice of communication channel was often made in relation to cost: young people appreciated Bebo because it ensured connectivity without worrying about credit or bills. By contrast, options for people to communicate using free wifi in public spaces or at a workplace are now numerous. Or, as long as they pay a monthly fixed fee for an internet connection, “it makes no difference if one sends 10 or 100 emails” (126). It will be important to explore people’s engagement with the Tongan social field and their choice of communication channels when cost is no longer a consideration. As the field becomes increasingly entangled with technology, how Tongan cultural values operate within it using various media channels continues to be an important topic.

Relationships in Proximity and at a Distance This chapter explores the historical process of how social network sites emerged and became constitutive of the Tongan social field. I contextualize both the development of internet technologies and the progress of research on people’s use of the internet. I also explore the process of the installation of social network sites in the Tongan social field by both the daughters and mothers. The ethnicity-based discussion boards such as Kava Bowl, which emerged in the late 1990s, and social network sites such as Bebo and Facebook have, of course, similarities and differences. Both provided platforms for users in dispersed, different geographical locations to communicate without having to travel or move, and arguably provided a sense of community. On the one hand, the sense of community conveyed by online discussion boards is derived from the users’ shared interest in being Tongan, be they migrants, children of migrants, or spouses of Tongans (Lee 2003). Users could remain anonymous if they wished, and discussion board participation was not necessarily in

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real time. By contrast, the sense of community that social network sites produce is similar to the idea of vā, space created between kin and kinlike people (Ka‘ili 2005). The participants connected on the website had existing relationships even if they had not met face-to-face. Although social network sites play an important role in creating and maintaining people’s sociality on a larger scale, Daniel Miller and Heather Horst criticize the idea that presupposes or fetishizes a “greater authenticity or reality to the predigital” (2012, 4). They argue against a widespread nostalgic discourse in media that views the predigital era as a “more natural and less-mediated state” (12) because not only technologies but also other elements, such as kinship, mediate relationships. Thus, even before the advent of social network sites, the relationships between Tongan migrants and their children have always been mediated by kinship ties. Because social network sites in the Tongan social field are intricately related to kinship ties, the findings in this chapter challenge the idea that the development of technologies and modernization could lead to a replacement of long-standing older forms of ties, such as kinship, with individualism (Bauman 2003; Castells 1996; Giddens 1992; Putnam 2000; Sennett 1977). Barry Wellman and his colleagues, for example, describe this shift as “networked individualism.” The turn toward networked individualism before and during the age of the Internet suggests more people maneuvering through multiple communities of choice where kinship and neighboring contacts become more of a choice rather than a requirement. . . . Rather than a unified neighborhood, people increasingly operate in a number of specialized communities that rarely grab their entire, impassioned or sustained attention. (2003, para. 69)

For my interlocutors, however, both daughters and mothers, kinship contacts can be described as both a choice and a requirement. Kin members are important and often enjoyable partners with whom to socialize but they also entail familial obligations because commitments to kin members are an important requirement in both creating and maintaining the Tongan social field. Having grown up in the field of relationships, the daughters—the initial adopters of Bebo—were not ordered by their mothers to connect with kin. Instead, they actively cultivate the field and enjoy connecting with their kin members and church peers both locally and remotely. However, connecting can also be described as a



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requirement when we consider people like Lu‘isa, who tried to escape from the field, yet still found it hard to reject the friend requests from kin members. Finally, the use of social network sites has enabled users to prioritize socially close relationships regardless of physical location and geographical distance. In the prevalent discourse, communication technologies are said to solve the problem of long distances and bring about a distanceless world. For example, Manuel Castells raises many examples of technologies that allow for various activities at a distance, such as medical care, university education, child-monitoring systems, economic transactions, and war (1996). Similarly, the migration literature understands the impact of communication technologies in overcoming distances and maintaining transnational relationships. The emphasis on long-distance relationships either unintentionally filters out or takes for granted and dismisses important relationships in geographically close locations. Framing the field through relationships enables ethnographers to capture more precise sociality that comprises socially close relationships both in proximity and at a distance. Relationships in online networks, however, are not the same as those in real life. The important limitation of the internet and technology is that they are effective only when they are accessible. As mentioned in chapter 2, the infrastructure of communication technologies in Tonga is limited, and the difference between the diaspora and Tonga affects the users’ friends lists in that lists do not include many socially close members in Tonga. Even if users in the diaspora look after ties by sending remittances and meeting obligations, those relationships may not exist online. The same is applicable the other way around. Some friends online do not have strong ties that entice users to start creating new commitments. The new searchability on social network sites has enabled users to find people who are genealogically related. Both daughters and mothers enjoy finding new relationships online, but this does not mean that each relationship will lead to new practical commitments of gift-giving. As mentioned in chapter 1, the Tongan social field can be visualized as layers of tracing paper each depicting different types of networks of relationships. The “installment” of social media in the Tongan social field can be understood as another sheet of tracing paper.

CHAPTER 6

Making Things Happen Communication Flows and Diasporic Drama

As discussed in chapter 5, social media has been quickly absorbed into the Tongan social field and become a requisite constitutive element of it. In his ethnography of Trinidadian-specific ways of using Facebook, Daniel Miller concludes that “the main impact of Facebook is on aspects of those relationships such as dating, feelings of isolation and boredom, gossip, maintaining long-distance relationships, sharing of news and other rather similar unremarkable activities” (2011, 218; emphasis added). Like Miller’s finding, chapter 5 demonstrates that daughters and mothers in the Tongan social field use social media to socialize online; for both, the preference for socializing with people within the Tongan social field extends to their use of social media. This chapter explores how communication flows, which travel along the range of communication technologies—landline telephones, mobile phones, and the internet—are used in “political practice in the everyday” (Besnier 2009, 1). In his ethnography of gossip and people in Nukulaelae Atoll in Tuvalu, Niko Besnier defines gossip as “political action” and argues that it is important to focus not only on “sites in which politics operates in canonical ways (e.g. meetings, councils, courtrooms)” but also on “sites that are much less straightforwardly political, including interactions that are woven into the ordinariness of everyday existence” (190). Even in ordinary lives in the kitchen hut, for example, people engage with “the assertion of power and its contestation, the construc128



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tion and destruction of reputations, the manipulation of truths, and the formation of alliances and conflicts among people and positions” (189). Like Nukulaelae people in Tuvalu, Tongan women engage with informal social controls over each other through “talk” (Bernstein 1983). As discussed throughout this book, following Tongan cultural values is an important skill for people in the Tongan social field because it helps maintain relationships and may improve reputation, or at least avoid unwanted shame. However, people often have individualistic desires that deviate from these given cultural values. In this context, people engage with everyday politics to “make things happen” in the way that they want. In the past, social controls through communication occurred in face-to-face conversation in village streets or in spaces such as kitchen huts or church gatherings (Bernstein 1983). However, this has begun to change in the face of technology. As becomes apparent in the case studies in this chapter, people in different locations—both in proximity and at a ­distance—participate in the small politics of everyday lives, and this is made possible by the prevalence of a range of communication technologies. Generally speaking, the central components of communication “usually involve senders (producers), messages (codes), and receivers (audiences)” (Scott and Marshall 2009, 105), and communication technologies help deliver the messages to recipients. In this context, many studies on migration and media tend to discuss communication technologies in relation to how users maintain relationships with people in their homeland or use their own networks as social capital in host soci­ eties (see, for example, Uy-Tioco 2007; Wilding 2006). Recent studies have also shifted their focus to the impact of technologies on relationships, not only helping maintain but also disrupting them (Gershon 2010; Madianou and Miller 2012). Nonetheless, room is still left in which to explore how everyday politics play out in the web of relationships that is the Tongan social field. The focus of this chapter is “family drama,” a term my informants use when family members overreact to what seem to be small issues but that sometimes create conflicts among them. Based on the Tongan kinship hierarchy, each family member is expected to practice an ideal role in relation to other family members. However, each person also has individualistic desires to pursue, which can deviate from these ideal roles. Although the hierarchy seems rigid in structure, “there exists a degree of ambiguity—both in the social structure itself and in the interpretation

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of people’s actions—which allows for a good deal of movement” (Bernstein 1983, 2). The case studies in this chapter illustrate how each person uses communication technologies to bring about a desirable outcome for themselves, which sometimes causes familial drama.

Communication Flows: Landline Telephones, Mobile Phones, and the Internet As communication technologies have continued to develop, they have also become increasingly accessible, especially in post-industrialized societies. It is no longer unusual for a person to own several communication devices, such as a computer, an iPad, and a mobile phone. Further, the growing popularity of the various media for communicating online, such as social media and email as well as instant messaging, diversifies our ways of communicating. What characterizes the situation today is that as the available options of communication channels diversify, when a new service emerges, existing channels tend not to be abandoned. Instead, the new one is “added to the others,” leading to a diversification of communication channels (Broadbent 2012, 138). For example, landlines remain in use despite the prevalence of mobile phones, just as email remains despite the emergence of both texting and private messaging functions on social media. In the wake of these changes, scholars have broadened their focus from a specific channel and begun asking how people communicate through multiple media sites (Baym 2010; Gershon 2010; Madianou and Miller 2012). This shift in focus helps in examining intertwined relationships among the different technologies and how people, consciously or unconsciously, choose the most appropriate method of communication; a choice that depends on various criteria, such as the receiver and the content of the message (Gershon 2010; Madianou and Miller 2012). As will become clear, people use different communication technologies in everyday politics to achieve the outcome they want. What is important here is that even familial dramas that start from information posted online do not remain online but are extended through phone calls and discussed in face-to-face conversations. Thus, although the phenomena explored in this chapter emerge online, I argue that they cannot be fully understood from online fieldwork alone. The internet is instead simply one of various methods used to connect with others in a way that is seamless with their everyday lives. To examine people’s use of various technologies, I focus on com-



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munication flows and relationships between senders and recipients of information. In this context, two theoretical insights are useful. First is the nature of information flows, which Nick Couldry (2008), a specialist in media studies, discusses. He says that “media flows” are composed of “flows of production, circulation, interpretation or reception, and recirculation, as interpretations flow back into production or outwards into general social and cultural life” (380). These flows are not necessarily smooth and permanent, and researchers need to take into account aspects of “discontinuity and asymmetry” (381). That is, things do not always “flow,” and when they do flow, they do not flow evenly. Couldry’s insight is useful for understanding the everyday politics and diasporic dramas of Tongan families because these happen when information flows through multiple communication technologies. This approach permits us, rather than focusing on a single method such as the mobile phone, to contrast and explore different modes of communication. As the case studies that follow illustrate, information is produced, circulated, and received through various communication technologies and also discontinued and broken by people not answering phone calls or unfriending others on social media. Thus, concentrating on a single medium of communication cannot possibly capture diasporic dramas; it is, instead, by following communications across multiple media that we are able to capture the overall dynamics. Also, the technologies are distributed unevenly among kin members because of the first and second levels of the digital divide: the division between the “haves” and “have nots” and the respective differences in their online skills (Hargittai 2002, para. 1). In regard to the first level, although many Tongan families in the diaspora have access to a variety of communication technologies, those in Tonga primarily have landline telephones, though prepaid mobile phones are widely used, and only limited access to the internet (Good 2012). This asymmetrical distribution of technologies influences flows of communications. Also, even though mothers have been introduced to social media and have become eager users of the internet, daughters are often far more familiar with it. As the case studies reveal, young people can take advantage of this gap in both knowledge and accessibility to make things turn out as they wish. Communication flows are not only mediated by communication technologies; they also continue via face-to-face conversation. Given that women tend to travel frequently and to many places, these movements cause communication flows to be long distance, which sometimes

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provokes problems. For example, when people act as couriers carrying souvenirs to other geographical areas, they also bring news or gossip. Vika told me a story about a problem that arose with her mother-inlaw in Tonga when her husband’s female relative, Lupe, visited Tonga. Before Lupe left, Vika bought some gifts, including bottles of perfume, and asked Lupe to take them to her mother-in-law. Vika could not afford expensive, famous brands, so had bought more affordable, off-brand perfume, hoping that her mother-in-law would not realize the difference. The problem arose when Lupe gave the gifts to Vika’s mother-inlaw and told her that Vika had said she would not be able to understand the difference between the perfumes because she lives in uta (the bush). The mother-in-law was offended and called Vika on her mobile phone to reproach her. Although I cannot be sure whether Vika actually spoke behind her mother-in-law’s back, this quarrel occurred because of Lupe’s movement from Melbourne to Tonga. The second useful theoretical insight leads us to focus on the relationships within which the communications take place. In their examination of communication technologies that Filipino female migrants in the UK and their children in the Philippines use, Madianou and Miller argue that the ways in which parents and children maintain relationships and use the technologies are influenced “by the quality of the pre-existing relationship” (2012, 144). What is important here is the social organization and nature of relationships among a particular group. Therefore, when I describe the familial dramas, I also examine the nature of the relationships in which the communications took place. Before following how information is circulated and can invoke diasporic dramas, I describe the settings of the field inhabited by mothers, daughters, and communication technologies, and then examine how the technologies help the users bring about the outcomes they want.

Media Ecology and the Use of Information The most common communication technologies among the Tongan mothers and daughters in Australia with whom I spoke, are telephones— both landline and mobiles—and social media. Although every woman has her own mobile phone, the ability to call or text depends on whether a user has credit. Thus, both mothers and daughters tend to prefer to use landlines. However, each household has only one landline, and the shared bill can lead to arguments among household members who blame each other for using the line too much. In fact, the two types of phones



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complement each other and are equally important for people to engage with the Tongan social field and broader Australian society. A landline telephone in a Tongan household is usually located in the kitchen, which is classified as the women’s sphere. During my fieldwork, I was surprised by the long phone calls that mothers made to their relatives every day, sometimes for as long as two or three hours. The substance of phone calls vary: people exchange news about dispersed family members, not only direct, close family members but also distant relatives; ask each other whether they are going to bingo or gossip about recent winners; and inquire about family trees and genealogical information. For example, having left Tonga much later than her sisters, Pele knows more about people in their village than her siblings because her mother taught her about the family tree. Her sisters sometimes ring Pele to ask about people they have found on social media. In chapter 5, we saw that mothers explain genealogical information to their daughters in front of the computer at home. However, in this case, Pele’s sisters who left Tonga in the 1970s ask their younger sister by phone about people online. The information family members glean from phone calls are sometimes brought up at the dinner table and shared with household members. However, the flows of information can be gendered and do not necessarily circulate equally even among nuclear family members. On the one hand are common expressions that both mothers and daughters use about Tongans—for example, that “Tongans cannot shut their mouth.” That is, once you tell one person something, everyone will know. On the other hand, I often observed that fathers or sons were often totally excluded from news which female family and church members had already shared. Pele’s nephew Lisiate said, “I’m always the last person to know about my family. No one tells me nothing!” For example, he did not know about his cousin’s birthday party until the last minute, when his cousin Neti asked whether he was going. Lisiate is far less engaged with family members than his sister. Although his sister also lives separately from her mother, she keeps updated with most news through phone calls. In fact, they ring each other several times a day, every day. Therefore, the gendered structural location of “boys go, girls stay” influences the uneven circulation of information. A notable difference in the use of communication technologies between mothers and daughters is that mothers tend to be able to memorize many phone numbers. This aptitude has been lost among daughters, who are accustomed to ringing from mobile phones, which store numbers. I was often impressed by mothers who used landline

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t­ elephones to call kin and Tongan church members without checking their address books. This difference underscores that mothers have been using landline telephones for a long time to create and maintain the Tongan social field. Having grown accustomed to using telephones in different geographical locations, mothers are good at engaging in everyday politics while staying at home. For example, when I started living with Pele, she attempted to enhance my reputation by spreading information about how I was “a good girl” in the Tongan cultural context. In the early stages of my fieldwork, when I was still ignorant about the expectations of people in the field that I would act in accordance with Tongan cultural values, I unintentionally gave the impression that I was mean with money because I bought drinks only for adults, not for toddlers who accompanied their parents when we went to a market. Pele, who had not gone to the market with me, knew all the details of my misbehavior on that day because the news reached her even though she was not a regular churchgoer. Pele asked if this were true, and when I admitted it, she sighed and advised me that I should have given to everyone given how important a value generosity is for Tongans. Observing my shock and regret, Pele proposed helping me improve my reputation. To preempt the cementing of my bad reputation, Pele attempted to spread the word that I was in fact generous in contributing to her household. To support her argument, when she knew she was going to have visitors, she told me to come home with a bag of household necessities, such as toilet paper and a box of washing powder. Once, when I returned from the supermarket with some shopping, a visitor said, “it’s very different from what I heard about you.” After she left, Pele smiled and told me that the visitor would talk about what she had seen to other people. Thus she managed impressions of my character by staging my performances and ensuring the presence of witnesses. When Pele made phone calls, she explained to people that she had decided to treat me like a real daughter, which meant that she did not ask me for board. Instead, as a family member, she expected me to contribute to her household. Her logic not only functioned to undermine damaging impressions of me but also enhanced her reputation as a loving woman. For Pele, telephone calls are an integral part of how you present yourself in the Tongan social field. Pele’s plan was well executed. I later found out that Pele’s visitor did speak about my contribution to Pele’s household to others. Rumor can thus be overturned by what one sees for oneself, that is, by performance. This argument is further bolstered by the comment women often make



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when they hear gossip: “You shouldn’t fully believe the gossip until you actually hear from the person.” Witnessing actual behavior or hearing directly from the person being gossiped about are the most reliable sources of information, then, but social media is also seen as a strongly credible source. Whereas telephones are used primarily for one-to-one communications, social media transmits information from one to many. A mother in Melbourne can see pictures of her great-uncle’s funeral in Tonga even though she could not attend. Similarly, a daughter can find out that her cousin in New Zealand is going to Tonga for a holiday from her status update even if the message is not specifically addressed to her. People can collect a great deal of information without being present or even directly engaging in any communication themselves. Young people who played an important role in introducing social media into the Tongan social field are well versed in the distinctive characteristics of each communication technology and making the most of different media. For example, when my preliminary three-month fieldwork was near its end, Mele, a youth group leader at a Tongan church, planned to take me out for dinner. Mele usually drove me around, but her brother came to pick me up in the evening. While he was driving, he kept glancing at his mobile phone, and every time he stopped at a light he checked his phone and sent text messages. Mele and the rest of her family members were at the church picking up something, he said, so we had to go there. When we got to the church, he texted again and told me to wait in the car, but then Mele rang my mobile, saying that she needed my help and asked me to come to the church hall. Because so many cars were parked along the street, and the church car park was also full, I began to suspect something. The church hall was dark but as soon as I entered the hall, suddenly the lights were turned on and about sixty people shouted, “SURPRISE!” It was a farewell party for me. I was amazed to see that the church hall was decorated with colorful streamers, balloons, and a sign reading, “Farewell Makiko.” People had brought soft drinks and finger foods such as sandwiches, party pies, and sausage rolls. One family provided a “DJ set” including a large stereo sound system so that we could have a disco night. Everything was well organized. Tongan households dispersed across the suburbs of Melbourne had been organized through communication flows on multiple technologies. According to Mele, the preparation for the party was conducted by telephone, text message, email, and private messaging on social media.

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Besides private messaging she did not use social media in planning because of its public nature and her need to reduce the risk of my finding out. Because our social media friends lists overlapped, they avoided communicating by public comments altogether. Moreover, text messages helped Mele’s brother communicate with her without divulging the plan to me: the portable nature of the phone made it easier for him to let Mele know where we were. I was also surprised to see that the people at the party were not only the regular members of the youth group but also nonregular members I had gotten to know outside the church. It was as if I had drawn up the guest list. How did they know who I interacted with outside church and how did they contact them? First, most female youth group members knew my acquaintances from uploaded photos on social media as well as through kinship networks. Many people I spoke with—both mothers and daughters—said jokingly that every Tongan was somehow genealogically related. Thus my Tongan friends who I met outside the church were likely to be related to someone who attended, so they were able to talk about me at home or by phone. In addition, even if they did not have kinship connections, my friends on social media could see the uploaded photos of me with others and deduce the people with whom I spent time. As mentioned in chapter 5, at the time of my fieldwork not many people had digital cameras and those on their mobile phones did not produce good quality photos. I was therefore often asked to take pictures and upload them onto my Bebo page so that they could store them in their own albums. Thus the audience of my pictures included not only my friends but also the contacts of the other friends in the photographs. This enabled the party organizer to get a good sense of who should be invited without asking me. Although social media has benefits, it is not only “social glue” (Vertovec 2004, 219) but also a “social fragmenter” that disrupts social relations. As discussed, the Tongan social field requires the actions of participants to adhere to Tongan cultural values and is built by people behaving accordingly. A person needs to be aware of interpersonal relations as well as the public eye to avoid shame. Traditionally in Tonga, the public eye was technologically unmediated. Witnesses of misbehavior were present at the event, be it a feast, church service, or in a village street, and the information spread through face-to-face communications as gossip (Bernstein 1983). In the contemporary diaspora, in addition to the technologically unmediated public eye, social media serve as the public eye (boyd 2008). The friends on social media can be “invisible audiences” who may run across information not necessarily intended



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for all friends (boyd 2008, 135; see also Madianou 2016). Because the friends lists of mothers and daughters are mainly Tongans, the invisible audiences have similar cultural values. This makes it easy to see how Tongans on social media might feel that “the free flow of information on the Internet can make us less free” (Solove 2007, 2). A person’s reputation is “to a great extent dependent on others’ judgements” (Morton 1996, 75). The line between whether a user of social media enhances, loses, or jeopardizes their reputation is a fine one (Miller 2011, 205–215). For example, a picture of piles of traditional wealth at a wedding ceremony may impress some online viewers by showing how generous the giver was. However, a picture of a brand-new van could make a viewer think the uploader is trying to show off. Because reputation depends on how others judge the information, users have to imagine what other people would think, according to Tongan conventions. This often involves a difficult decision because “the reduced social cues” of communications among a dispersed population “lead to ambiguities” (Madianou and Miller 2012, 148), which allow audiences to interpret the information in different ways. Because one role of Tongan mothers is to secure the family’s reputation by watching over what is happening among family members, mothers in the diaspora have to worry about their daughters’ behavior not only in the physical space but also online. The following three case studies of diasporic dramas occurred when each person tried to make things happen in a specific way that did not necessarily match with the intentions of other family members. Among kin members, each person has an expected role as a daughter, mother, or niece. However, people do not necessarily play their expected roles, and communication technologies may help them deviate from the cultural values or cause trouble among kin members.

Three Diasporic Dramas I explain these case studies by tracing the communication flows and examining the relationships of the people involved. D R A M A A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N F L O W S

The first story is about Lasini and her family. Lasini is in her twenties and was born in Melbourne. Although she did not have a computer in her household, she was a regular user of Bebo. She often went to Lose’s house, which is only a ten-minute drive from her own. Lose is the wife

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of a cousin on Lasini’s maternal side. Another family within their extended family—an aunt’s household—also owns a computer, but Lasini preferred to visit Lose’s house to use the internet. Lasini explained that she felt it was easier to visit Lose’s house because they were in the same generation. The aunt is much older than both of them. Nonetheless, it seems that kinship hierarchy also plays a role in the relations between Lasini and Lose. Although Tonga is a patriarchal society, the unique brother-sister relationship gives certain power to women. A wife is expected to be obedient to her husband but can wield certain power over her brothers. For example, as discussed in chapter 4, a woman can ask for goods from brothers and brothers are expected to give what has been asked. This relationship transcends generations. Thus, in Lasini’s case, Lasini has power over not only to her own brother but also over her maternal male cousins and thus over their wives. Similarly, her maternal female cousins are seen as sisters. Lasini rings up her female cousins almost every day from her mobile phone unless her mother is not using the landline. This kinship ranking system leads maternal female cousins to have closer relationships than paternal cousins because the father’s side ranks higher than the mother’s. Under this system, Lasini and Lose are not equal: Lasini ranks higher than Lose, which made it easier for her to use the computer in Lose’s house. This difference can be illustrated from Lose’s point of view. She expressed her ambivalent feelings toward the frequent visits by Lasini and her other in-laws, “They just come, and go straight to the computer. They sometimes don’t even say hello to me. It’s nice to see them because otherwise I only stay home and look after my son.” The ambivalent relationship between Lasini and Lose is also expressed in their Bebo friend lists: Lose and Lasini were not friends online. Lose explained that this was because she did not want her in-laws to make public comments about her and her family. Lose lives physically close to her affines and helps prepare for feasts at Lasini’s house whenever she is needed. Lasini and her parents complain that it is hard for them to reach Lose by telephone, however. Lose tries to distance herself from her affines by not answering phone calls and not becoming friends online. Lose is in a particularly vulnerable position; because none of her natal family members live in Melbourne, no physical place there comforts her. For her, the internet is for maintaining ties with her family members in the diaspora and Tonga. One day, Lasini visited Lose’s house as usual, and took a photo of



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Lose’s five-year-old son and uploaded it to Bebo. As a caption, she wrote, “my little nephew still needs toilet training lol” as a joke. Lose did not know about this because she was not social media friends with Lasini. However, Lose’s sister-in-law, her husband’s brother’s wife in New South Wales, found it problematic. The wife rang her husband’s aunt, Malia, in Queensland to complain about Lasini’s comment because the wife and Malia had a close relationship. Although Malia did not have an account on Bebo, she was upset and rang her sister, Katalina, in Victoria. Katalina had a Bebo account so she checked Lasini’s page and told Lasini off by writing on her wall publicly. Katalina wrote that Lasini needs to respect family members and should not have written on Bebo because everyone can see it. The irony is that Katalina told her not to disclose information needlessly, but wrote her own comments on Lasini’s public wall, where “everyone” could read them. Lasini was so upset that she unfriended her aunt. Interestingly, Lose, who was physically close to Lasini, did not appear throughout the drama. She was informed about the incident by her sister-in-law but did not directly complain to Lasini. The reason she did not is that openly showing that she was upset would not have been acceptable. “A ‘bad’ man or woman is one who is fa‘a ita or often angry” (Bernstein 1983, 59). Because Lose lives close to her affine, it is safer not to say anything and to let her sister-in-law complain. The sister-in-law does not have to deal with her affines, including Lasini, as often as Lose because she lives in New South Wales where many of her own natal family members live. She is not as vulnerable as Lose. Once the story was divulged to Lasini’s aunts, the drama transformed from a conflict between affines to one between generations. Although being a higher rank than Lose and her son allowed Lasini to tease him, it was unacceptable from her aunts’ perspective because in the Tongan cultural context, the ideal higher-ranked person is characterized by “restraint, relative immobility, proper behavior, and authority” (Morton 1996, 79). Thus, from the aunts’ perspective, Lasini’s comment on the internet was not appropriate. In addition, in Tongan kinship terms, a mother’s sister is also categorized as a mother. Because Lasini and her aunts form a mother-daughter-like relationship, her aunts are entitled to chastise her. Lasini was not upset that her aunt reprimanded her, only the way she did so. Lasini thought it would have been more appropriate for her aunt to use a one-to-one communication method such as phone call or private message. The way that Katalina rebuked Lasini is reminiscent

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of Louise Bernstein’s account of having witnessed a father in a village in Tonga in the 1970s publicly beat his daughter when she came home late (1983, 131). She explained it this way: “by bringing the matter into the public realm he was showing the villagers that his daughter was very well looked after . . . and he was publicly shaming the girl, which would encourage her not to repeat her offense” (131–132). Because Katalina is a “mother” to Lasini in the Tongan cultural context, it is acceptable for her to reprimand Lasini openly. However, Lasini has developed a different “netiquette” to determine expectations and norms for online interactions. “The selection of media is viewed as a moral act to be judged” (Madianou and Miller 2012, 138). In her study on media usage by university students in the United States, Ilana Gershon shows that students can be outraged by improper usage of media to break up romantic relationships (2010). From Lasini’s point of view, Katalina should have used a different method, and her anger drove her to unfriend her aunt. In some cases, unfriending online reflects actual relationships such as break-ups between boyfriends and girlfriends (see Gershon 2010). However, in this case, Lasini did not attempt to cut off any ties with her aunt, simply prevented Katalina from seeing what she writes. According to Lasini, to avoid further conflict with her aunt, she made an excuse that something had gone wrong with the website, and that not only Katalina but also some of her own friends had disappeared from her list. By articulating that it was not her intention but a technology fault, she found leeway that allowed her to stop having regular online contact with her aunt. They see each other at family gatherings, and Lasini has to do what Katalina tells her at the preparations for feasts. Thus their kinship relationship is not broken; contact is simply avoided on social media. Like Lose in refusing to answer phone calls or become friends with her affines, Lasini creates distance by not allowing herself to be technologically mediated by her aunt. D R A M A A N D B L O C K E D C O M M U N I C AT I O N F L O W S

The second case involves Pele and her family members. Although Pele does not engage in face-to-face interactions with Tongans as often as regular church members, she does use communication technologies to keep in touch with them. Although she memorizes many phone numbers, she also has a palm-sized address book filled with the phone numbers of her kin and members of the Tongan church she attends. Her mobile phone contact list includes some non-Tongan people she knows



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through her work or her children’s school, but is mostly Tongans. For Pele, evening is her socializing time. Around eight, after they finish dinner, her sisters, cousins, or friends ring her landline telephone and mobile phone. If she does not receive any calls, she calls someone herself. Most of the calls she makes and receives are within Australia; it was too expensive, she explained, to make international phone calls even with phone cards. She also uses social media to keep in touch with people across the diaspora. Lasini’s family drama happened within Australia. Pele’s drama encompasses both the diaspora and Tonga. After her parents passed away in the 1980s, all of her siblings—except the eldest brother, who inherited their father’s land—moved to Australia. The brother in Tonga has three sons. The siblings in Australia sponsored the two younger nephews, Semisi and Sione, to move to Australia; the oldest has remained in Tonga to look after the family land. The siblings, including Pele, and the two nephews, have unequal relationships in two ways. First, in the kinship ranking system, Pele ranks higher than her nephews. Paternal aunts such as Pele are called mehikitanga and are considered to have authoritative power over their nephews. Second, Semisi and Sione are indebted to their aunts and uncle because it is their paternal families who brought them to Australia and set up their new lives: paying airfares, giving guidance for visa applications, and finding their jobs. Semisi and Sione have to return these favors by contributing goods and services, such as helping out at feasts or mowing the lawn, as explained in chapter 2. Semisi left for New South Wales, where his maternal family lives, but Sione has stayed in Melbourne and thus is under more pressure from their paternal family than his brother Semisi. One day, Semisi, in New South Wales, asked his mother on the Tongan island of Vava‘u to visit the main island, Tongatapu, to attend the funeral of his wife’s relative on their behalf. Semisi sent money for her flight but only enough to pay for a one-way ticket to Tongatapu. He promised that he would send money for the return flight the following week. His mother bought a ticket and went to Tonga. A week passed but Semisi did not contact her. She tried to ring both Semisi and his brother Sione in Melbourne, but she could not reach either of them, leaving her stranded in Tongatapu. Semisi’s mother’s niece in Tonga then wrote about her aunt’s situation online. She wrote that her aunt was stuck in Tongatapu because her children had not sent her money. Pele saw this news online and was extremely embarrassed. She immediately tried to reach her nephews but they did not answer her calls. According to

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Pele, she could not ignore this issue and was ashamed that the news was visible online. To resolve this problem, she sent money to her sister-inlaw so she could return to Vava‘u. Lasini’s drama unfolded through the circulation of information. This drama took place due to a sequence of discontinuity of communication flows across multiple media. First, Semisi did not send money to his mother; second, neither Semisi nor Sione answered the phone calls from their mother; and, third, they did not answer the phone calls from their paternal aunt, Pele. Although Pele struggles to make ends meet, that invisible audiences could see the drama on the internet drove her to send money to her sister-in-law. Because Pele ranks higher than Semisi’s mother, Semisi’s mother is not in a position to ask for money from her sister-in-law. However, digital media enables a subversion of this hierarchy. Although Pele was upset that she had to provide the money, she did not complain. Instead, she chose to perform the virtue of generosity to regain her family’s reputation. If the niece who wrote the story online were to be punished, it would have been by her mother or her maternal aunt, Semisi and Sione’s mother. However, the unevenly distributed technologies saved her because her “mothers” in Tonga do not have access to the internet. As discussed, although several generations use social media in the diaspora, it is mainly youth on the main island who access the internet in Tonga. Thus, unlike Lasini in Melbourne, the daughter in Tonga has more freedom regarding what she can write online because her close kin in Tonga do not go online. When I asked Sione why he did not answer the phone calls from his mother and aunt, he explained, “if I answer, I have to say yes. I can’t say no to my mum or aunties. So, when I don’t have money, I don’t answer the phone calls.” He continued, “They don’t ring me to say hello or ask how I am. They ring me when they need help.” Although he did not want to act against Tongan cultural ideals and ruin any relationships, he also could not sacrifice the needs of his wife and child by sending money to Tonga. By not answering phone calls, he can avoid both directly violating the cultural values and giving money away. Sione said that he answered calls from his family members only when he could afford to help them. His mobile phone not only notifies him of the caller’s identity but thus also indirectly warns him of the caller’s intention. Avoiding remitting by not answering phone calls is a common strategy in several cultures. For example, for Somali refugees in the United Kingdom, “early morning phone calls” are requests for remittance by



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families and relatives at home (Lindley 2010). “Some evade contact by ignoring early morning phone calls, avoiding giving their phone number to people back home, and even changing phone numbers” (137). These strategies eventually make callers give up. However, they may also disrupt or sever the kinship ties and the person may receive moral accusations (131). To avoid such risks, Sione made excuses by blaming technology—that his mobile phone was broken, that he put the bat­teries of his landline telephone into his TV remote because he did not have spare ones, that his mobile phone was on silent and he did not realize it, that he did not have enough credit to ring them back, and so on. Just as Lasini blamed social media, Sione tried to justify himself by blaming the telephone. Although it is said that people in general tend to forget the materiality of digital technology (Miller and Horst 2012, 25), in this context Sione is using it as his excuse. Although his “mothers” do not believe these excuses, they do not accuse Sione of lying. As Sione said, he still financially supports both his mother and aunts when he can afford to do so. Thus it is not wise for them to blame him too much, which would adversely affect their relationship and thus potentially lessen the possibility of receiving gifts and services from Sione in the future. More important, the Tongan cultural ideal of a chiefly person as loving and caring also prevents “mothers” from continuing conflicts among kin members. D R A M A A N D T H E C O N T R O L O F C O M M U N I C AT I O N F L O W S

The third drama revolves around a common problem that many daughters of Tongan migrants encounter at important life stages, that is, how to take control of their own celebratory events, such as a twenty-first birthday or a wedding. These events not only function to celebrate individuals but are also closely related to the reputations of the families hosting them. Thus parents and relatives often become involved in the process of planning events, such as deciding the size of the event and who to invite. A girl who recently had her twenty-first birthday complained, “I wanted to invite some of my friends from my uni[versity], but I couldn’t.” Her mother arranged a guest list filled with extended family and church members. The girl continued, “She didn’t say I couldn’t invite my friends, but I knew our budget. So, I gave up inviting my friends.” Another girl who told me in 2007 that she “hates” koloa (traditional wealth) had a large twenty-first birthday in 2009 that involved large donations of traditional wealth. In 2007, she explained that she

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disliked koloa because it can provoke many arguments among family members about how it is to be distributed. She even wished she did not understand Tongan when such arguments occurred. Although guests at twenty-first birthday celebrations often bring birthday presents for the birthday girls or boys, they also give piles of koloa, which will be redistributed to the host family’s kin members based on kinship hierarchy. Deciding who is going to become fahu, “ritual head of the ceremony” (Rogers 1977, 164) can sometimes become a heated topic because fahu not only is an honorable role but also comes with the entitlement to receive “the best of the food and koloa redistributed on such occasions” (Morton 1996, 288n6). In addition, according to Garth Rogers, who conducted his fieldwork in Tonga in the late 1960s and early 1970s, “there is little consensus . . . as to who should be the fahu at a particular occasion; the issue is often debated and argued about” (1977, 167). Although the girl did not want to have Tongan traditional gift-giving at her birthday precisely because of the possibility of such arguments, her opinion was disregarded. Because the relationships between parents and daughters, and aunts and nieces are not equal, it is hard for daughters to have any say in how these events are run. Another drama centers on Rose’s endeavor to plan her wedding just as she wanted it to be. Because Rose and her husband already had two school-age children and their budget was limited, they planned to have a small wedding with only close family members. Although Rose’s mother cares about her status at her church, she did not disagree with the plan because she understood their situation and because the couple had been in a de facto relationship for a considerable number of years. To hold a small, affordable wedding, the couple and Rose’s mother did their best to control the circulation of information about the wedding because once it had spread within the Tongan social field, they would be unable to control all the communication flows. News of weddings excites people but often upsets those who are not invited. The couple risked not only upsetting people but also losing control over the number coming to the reception, which would have caused financial problems or brought shame to the family if they could not provide enough food for all the guests. Thus, if the news spread, they would have no choice but to hold a bigger event than they wanted. Careful control of communication flows was the key to success. Fortunately, most of her husband’s parents and siblings were in Tonga and the United States. The geographical distance made it easier for the couple to take control of the event. Although distance does not



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necessarily matter in the context of caring for one’s relationships, such as sending money and keeping in touch through phone calls, it was an advantage in Rose’s case in terms of controlling information. Given the travel costs, family members in the United States and Tonga did not intend to attend and thus did not interfere with the couple’s plan. Rose’s paternal family members are non-Tongans who would also not interfere. Rose’s concern was about her maternal aunt ‘Ana, who loves large events. Rose and her mother worried that if they told ‘Ana, they might end up having to invite all the church members, and this would mean that they could not have held the wedding as planned. Rose therefore set the date of the wedding for when ‘Ana was going to Tonga to carry out repairs on the house she had built with her husband. At that time, ‘Ana’s daughter Sela was living in Tonga with her husband and in-laws. She had to live with her husband to prove that their relationship was genuine so that her husband could acquire residency in Australia. This was good timing for Rose. Rose and Sela have a close relationship. When Sela was in Australia, communication flows between the two were frequent and they referred to each other as sister. They usually saw each other face-to-face as well as socializing by telephone and social media. Their relationship, however, cannot be described solely as that of close sisters because politics separates them. Interestingly, the alliance between them tends to be weaker than that of each one with her mother: when their mothers disagree, they tend to side with them. Thus it would be difficult for Rose to have a smooth relationship with Sela if she excluded ‘Ana from the loop, yet it was impossible for Rose to only invite Sela without ‘Ana’s knowing, and Sela would be upset if she knew about Rose’s intention. Since Sela had left for Tonga, Rose and Sela had stopped communicating regularly. Because Sela’s partner and his family members in Tonga were unemployed, Sela had to use her savings to look after her affines. She could not afford to make a phone call just to socialize with Rose or go to an internet café to log onto social media. These differences in access to communication technologies had ruptured the communication flows between Rose and Sela; unless Rose contacted Sela by telephone, they did not communicate. Taking advantage of this timing, Rose invited her close relatives to her wedding by telephone and explained that they planned to have a small wedding. She informed most of the guests about the wedding several months in advance, but tried to keep it secret from her uncle, ‘Ana’s husband, because he would certainly tell ‘Ana and Sela. Rose intended to

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invite him but wanted to tell him at the last minute, a few weeks before the wedding. With only a few weeks left, ‘Ana would not be able to do anything to interfere with the plans. Because communication flows are often gendered, as discussed, Rose did not have to make any particular effort not to tell her uncle because she hardly talked with him unless she met him face-to-face. Interestingly, the other close relatives who were invited to the wedding cooperated with Rose’s plan because they also did not want to spend much money on the wedding. Rose’s idea also helped them reduce the extent of their familial obligations. When the wedding date was close enough, Rose rang ‘Ana’s husband to invite him to the wedding. He rang both ‘Ana and Sela to tell them about the event. “They were really upset,” Rose reflected. ‘Ana rang her sister, Rose’s mother, and Sela rang Rose to ask why she chose a date when they were in Tonga and why they had not been informed; however, they could not do anything. Each had reasons for staying in Tonga and neither could afford to fly back to Melbourne just to attend the wedding. Their lack of access to communication technologies in Tonga also prevented them from spreading the information to people in Melbourne. I wondered whether ‘Ana’s and Sela’s anger would affect their relationships with Rose and her mother when they got back from Tonga, but everything seemed to return to normal. Communications continue to flow between the cousins and between their mothers, and the unit of extended family members continue to work together to meet a range of familial obligations. As many Tongans would say, familial ties are not broken so easily by a single incident. One small change is that when ‘Ana has any travel plans, she now tells her siblings and nieces and nephews the dates she will be away from Melbourne and warns them not to plan any important family events for when she is away.

Distance and Relationships Using the theory of flows of information (Couldry 2008) and considering the relationships among the senders and receivers (or nonreceivers) of information, this chapter examines how communication flows are related to everyday politics and how people use different technologies to ensure that things turn out the way they want them to turn out. All of this takes place on different geographical scales. Through the case studies, it has become clear that what used to occur within a household or village can now happen on a different scale given the mediation of



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communication technologies. Despite changes in scale, the content of conflicts and kinship relationships remain intricately related to Tongan cultural values. In this context, technologies work as “actors” to manipulate the distance between relationships (see, for example, Latour 1993). Although the range of technologies “overcome” the long distance and help people reconnect with others across the diaspora and Tonga, options such as unfriending, not answering phone calls, or even not calling create leeway to adjust the distance between oneself and people in close proximity. Moreover, given that the very nature of the communication flows includes unevenness, the digital divide between the diaspora and Tonga is also used to adjust relationships and to achieve the outcomes individuals want. Although I emphasize the differences between Australia and Tonga, they do not derive from the long distance but instead from the uneven access to communication technologies. Therefore, if communication technologies in Tonga develop to the extent that these differences in accessibility are considerably diminished, diasporic Tongans may not be able to use the asymmetric communication flows as leeway to deviate from Tongan ideals. Contrary to the views of the promoters of the individualization thesis (Giddens 1992; Bauman 2003), modernity, or specifically communication technologies, do not necessarily allow people to freely choose their relationships and not every relationship can be ended. In the case of Tongan culture, even the children of migrants who grow up overseas generally place considerable importance on kin relations. Kin relations have both positive and negative sides: they offer comfort, but they also impose obligations and emotional pain (Zontini 2010). In this context, communication technologies provide people with both convenience (to always be connected) and inconvenience (to always have to care about relationships) and ways to negotiate these problems. The disconnection of flows of communications in the previous three cases did not mean actual severed relationships. It is possible to cut off all ties with kin members and to live individualistically; however, the family dramas in this chapter do not end with disconnection. In their research on teenagers’ “drama” in the United States, Alice Marwick and danah boyd argue that the term allows teens to distinguish their actions from adult-defined practices like bullying or relational aggression. Drama blurs distinctions between the serious and frivolous as well as what is just joking and what truly hurts. Dismissing conflict as drama lets teens frame the social dynamics and

148  Chapter 6 emotional impact as inconsequential, allowing them to “save face” rather than taking on the mantle of bully or victim. (2011, 2)

Marwick and boyd’s analysis is helpful when we try to understand Tongan family dramas. As with teenagers in the United States, my informants do not use the word “drama” if the conflict is more serious and ends up rupturing relationships. Even though the stories told in this chapter do not have happy endings, ambivalent relations between affines or between generations remain rather than end with complete ruptures. Moreover, physical and social distance are intricately related and sometimes manipulated by use of communication technologies. Regardless of physical distance, people in close relationships are closely mediated by these technologies, whereas those in ambivalent relationships manipulate the social distance by not becoming friends online, unfriending, or not answering phone calls. Thus, although participants in the Tongan social field are expected to follow Tongan cultural values, they have agency to resist the hierarchy (to an extent) as well as avoid further conflicts. For example, blaming technology saves a person from being accused of not following the cultural values. Indeed, different technologies offer different ways of “speaking” and “silencing.” People use mobile phones not only to facilitate communications, but also for their functions, such as silent mode, and features—it needs credit to work—as ways to silence others. Similarly, social media offers people opportunities to communicate with each other as long as they are friends. Unfriending a person silences him or her. This context allows scope for cross-cultural comparisons of how the use of technologies influences relationships. Although in the Tongan social field not answering phone calls can paradoxically work to avoid completely breaking the relationship, not every culture has the same tendency. In her study on Filipino migrants, Deirdre McKay finds that “failing to answer the telephone and not texting back promptly are read as indications of emotional distance and displeasure, so people in all sites invest in keeping communication constant” (2007, 189). Different strategies are called for in the Tongan social field, where confronting a person and saying no causes more problems than not answering a phone call. These case studies support the view that communication technologies have become “domesticated” in the Tongan cultural context and that they allow the sustainability of the Tongan social field on a large scale (Berker et al. 2006). Technologies are used to care for relationships, help bring about the outcome desired, impress people to enhance reputation,



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and can be misused to provoke conflicts as well as jeopardize reputations. In all of these scenarios, Tongan cultural values are operating within these communications. Communication technologies make it possible for the Tongan notion of space, vā (social closeness) to transcend geographical distance. Here, we can observe the dialectical relationships across technologies, people, and culture. Although technologies indeed influence Tongan migrants’ and their children’s lives, the ways in which they are used are certainly influenced by both people and culture. Therefore, even new communication platforms, such as social media, require participants to deal with Tongan cultural values regardless of whether one wants to act “ideally.” Even if a person ignores the cultural norm and acts as they want, others in the field may problematize the behavior by referring to that norm. Thus, ironically, the use of communication technologies by the daughters of Tongan migrants is mediated by cultural values, which create a gravity that constantly pins them to the Tongan social field instead of allowing them to achieve individualistic freedom. Even though technologies offer leeway to manipulate the relationships, the kinship hierarchy and an ideal image of femininity continue to operate in the technologically mediated field. However, as this book makes clear, many daughters also feel comfortable in the field of relationships. That they may occasionally need leeway to achieve some individualistic desires does not mean that they necessarily want autonomous freedom.

CHAPTER 7

Conclusion Desire, Obligation, and Familial Love

More than ten years have passed since I began my fieldwork. I now live and work in Melbourne and have observed many changes in the lives of the women I spoke with while researching this book. The significance of Tongan cultural values, however, remains strong. Many of these women continue to live among their relatives and engage daily with the Tongan social field. Some are now in a new life stage, having gone from being single to married, gaining new relational identities as wives or even mothers. Having kept in touch with my core informants since my fieldwork and observed the changes in their lives, I remain impressed by how the force of gravity in the Tongan social field has the power to keep women within it. A girl who expressed her feelings of discomfort about interacting with non-Tongans, particularly with pālangi, struggled to get a job. She eventually married a Tongan man in Sydney and was introduced to a factory job there by one of his family members. Observing her life path, it is as if she is not living in Australia but instead exclusively among relationships in the Tongan social field, even though the factory is operating within wider Australian society. Yet some people seem to navigate multiple social fields well. This is particularly applicable to those who complete tertiary education. For example, the woman who told me that she would like to marry a Pacific Islander (in chapter 3) has completed her tertiary degree, has a professional job, is married to a Tongan man, and keenly engages with 150



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the Tongan social field through church and familial events. Through her examination of the Australian census, Val Colic-Peisker illuminates how class differences emerge in migrant populations in Australia and result in two distinctively different groups: “working-class ‘Ethnics’ ” and the “multicultural middle-class” (2011, 562). She argues that “ethnicity (and its analytical twin—culture) is [increasingly] not the main axis of social difference” (579). The emergence of class and socioeconomic differences are not irrelevant to the Tongan social field. Although at the time of my fieldwork, few children of migrants had tertiary education, in the late 2010s a small yet increasing number of Pacific youth, including Tongans, are going to university. Most young people in the Tongan social field, however, do not seem to achieve upward mobility. Even when they undertake tertiary education, it is still common for them to acquire jobs through kinship networks. Pioneers who have achieved successful careers outside the Tongan social field aside, the imagined boundaries between that field and wider Australia seem to be high and hard to overcome. The increase, albeit small, in the number of Tongans who are upwardly mobile makes socioeconomic differences among youth a worthy area of attention for future research. Most people in this book are of low socioeconomic status, and their experiences and opinions about Tongan familial obligations and the ways in which they engage with the Tongan social field would be quite different from those of the new generation of middle-class Tongans. However, the logic of the Tongan social field presented here continues to operate and people are expected to act accordingly within it. Those who have become mothers take their children to the same Tongan church they attended when they were growing up, and so the field of relationships expands to encompass the next generation. Just as daughters see the church congregation as family members and church peers as brothers and sisters who have grown up together, they actively encourage the next generation to nurture similar relationships in the field. A few daughters remained single but became aunts when their siblings had babies. Regardless of their status as mehikitanga (paternal aunt, having higher rank) or fa‘ē (maternal aunt, another mother), they build affectionate relationships with their siblings’ children as they grow up. Even if a brother distances himself from the Tongan social field by marrying a non-Tongan woman and not attending Tongan church regularly, his sisters may come and take his children to church. In fact, some daughters seem to become part of the force of gravity, ensuring that the future generation also nurtures relationships in the field. Earlier in

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this book, I say that paternal aunts do not necessarily exert their sacred power to demand goods and services from their brothers or brothers’ children. However, observing women bringing their brothers’ children to church, it is possible to say that mehikitanga have acquired a new role in the diaspora to serve as part of the force of gravity for future generations. Some women, of course, do not necessarily engage positively with the Tongan social field and continue to have ambivalent feelings toward it. Lu‘isa still strives to control her distance but sometimes ends up making commitments to her kin members, helping prepare for feasts or attending family gatherings. When I caught up with her in mid-2013, I told her that I had started using the metaphor of gravity to explain the pressure on Tongan women to engage with the Tongan social field. Following my explanation, she said that she needed to be conscious of the distance between herself and the field: if she does not pay attention to it, she sometimes finds herself entangled in kin relationships. Even if a person jumps up, the gravity of the earth pulls their body back down to where they started. The act of escaping from the field seems to be similar to these jumps in the sense that escaping would take more than a one-off movement: one small jump would never be enough for a person to overcome the field’s force of gravity, which always ensures movement back to it. Lu‘isa is presented in this book as an independent woman who lives by herself in urban Melbourne. Several years ago, however, she fell ill and could no longer work and continue to live by herself. When this happened, it was not friends outside the Tongan social field that supported her. It was her sister, who had been acting as a force of gravity on Lu‘isa in the Tongan social field, who took care of her while she was bedridden and let her live in her house during the long recovery time when she was not fit enough to undertake any paid work. When Lu‘isa had been trying to escape from it, she perceived the Tongan social field as a source of obligation and conservative rules. However, in her crisis, the field proved an important safety net, providing shelter and support when she desperately needed it. She has recovered, gone back to work, and is now trying to save money so that she can move out of her sister’s house and live on her own again. Because she is now living in the midst of the Tongan social field, her commitment to the field of relationships has dramatically increased. However, she continues to envision herself as retaining some distance from it. In the conversation I had with her about this book, she said that she would not necessarily agree with what she had told me during my fieldwork because her opinion and attitudes toward the Tongan social field had changed. For example, she now sees



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her mother occasionally. Changes in the life cycle and unexpected events, such as serious illness, influence how people engage with their relationships in the field. People fluctuate between a willingness to live among relationships and the desire to live individually, constantly negotiating given relationships along the continuum between these two points. To date, Pele’s goal of staying away from familial obligations does not appear to have been successful. Whenever I visit her, she complains about the familial obligations she has recently had to meet; at the same time, she also seems to enjoy performing the Tongan virtue of generosity on some of these occasions. In 2011, she secured a well-paid, full-time job; the money she now contributes is considerably more than it had been during my fieldwork. Her daughter Neti struggles to find a job and thus Pele still has to look after her children financially. Although in this book I focus on the flow of money from daughters to parents, the current situation in Pele’s household is such that the flow of money does not move in the ideal way but in the opposite direction: from a mother to older children. Pele continuously laments this situation, sometimes ringing me to vent her frustrations. In 2019, Neti decided to go to university; I sincerely wish her the very best. In December 2018, I attended Isi’s eighteenth birthday party. Pele looked very happy and proud, and many family members in Melbourne were there. The little primary school boy has grown into a very tall young man with wide shoulders, and whereas ten years ago I was able to carry him I now have to look up to see his face. After the party, my husband and I dropped Isi off where he was living with a friend rather than with Pele. In the car, he boasted about how fast he could ride a motorbike. I touched his arm and said, “Please, Isi, just look after yourself.” He smiled charmingly and said, “I will” before leaving the car to go into his friend’s house. Watching him walk away, I wondered when I would see him again. A week after the party, I heard that he had been taken to jail again. I do not remember how many times he has been arrested so far, but his teenage life has been troubled and has included repeated time in a juvenile jail in Melbourne for various offenses.1 The central focus of this book is women’s engagement with kin and kin-like relationships. For women who are strictly raised within the Tongan social field, “to go outside” the Tongan social field has implications for avoiding strict rules and familial obligations. From Lu‘isa’s perspective, her urban life and her time socializing with non-Tongan university friends gives her access to life outside the Tongan social field. However, Isi’s life shows another side of what “outside the Tongan

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social field” can mean, particularly for young boys, who have far more freedom than girls. Outside the field are multiple social fields and Australian society is scarcely monolithic. In suburbs, where socially and economically disadvantaged people live, young people risk exposing themselves to violence and drugs. Indeed, being outside the Tongan social field has various implications, and not all are necessarily linked with upward social mobility. The overrepresentation of Pacific youth in the Australian criminal justice system is evidenced in research (Ravulo 2016; Shepherd and Ilalio 2016). The future of their young people is indeed a great concern for Pacific Islander migrants, including Tongans (Nishitani and Lee 2017). Isi’s current life path and the general overrepresentation of Pacific youth in the juvenile justice system are not a result of Tongan cultural values but of structural inequality in wider Australian society and other factors outside the Tongan social field. A popular choice for Tongan youth who do gain a tertiary education is to become social workers and youth workers, which offers them a way to engage with these social issues. Rather than wanting to completely leave the Tongan social field and socially distance themselves, today’s young adults are trying to engage with the younger generation by becoming a bridge between the Tongan social field and broader Australian society. In the introduction, I argue that this ethnography demonstrates that the classic fieldwork methodology of immersion in the field is beneficial in understanding deterritorialized social worlds. Because I am a woman, long-term close interactions with Tongan women and their family members have enabled me to record not only how they think and act at a specific moment but also historical processes and changes. Throughout this book, I present intimate ethnographic case studies of mothers, daughters, and their kin members. The following section returns to the question raised in the introduction and elucidates how scholars should frame the field as well as the theoretical implications of this book.

Theorizing the Framing of the Field In the last three decades, social scientists have sought new frameworks to capture deterritorialized social worlds that are difficult to describe using the assumption that a cultural group belongs to a geographical place. This book also takes this view and demonstrates that the shape of the social field is delineated by people who are in relationships, not



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by geographical boundaries, and also that the structures of the field are reproduced through everyday practices even in the context of migration. I argue that cultural values from the ancestral country play significant roles in the diaspora and are even reproduced by the children of migrants, who embody and enact cultural practices. Although I share this research interest with many transnational scholars who examine migrants’ and their children’s social worlds, which do not follow national boundaries, I problematize the use of scales such as local and transnational because they interrupt the continuum of sociality and may not reflect the subjects’ understanding of their social worlds. The social worlds of Tongan migrants and their children present particularly rich contexts in which to pursue such a project because they have a unique concept of social space, vā. Acknowledging that Tongan migrants and their children also engage with the wider host society to live, work, and socialize in their everyday lives, this book concentrates on exploring how an ethnographer can draw a picture of the unique sociality of Tongan migrants by understanding how they frame their world. This redefined field of relationships has helped illuminate the gap between the framework of scales and the subjects’ perceptions of their social worlds because people’s social lives include relationships both in proximity and at a distance. One of the most prevalent discourses on the impact of technology on social change is that it brings about a distanceless world (Castells 1996). Focus on geographical distance inevitably leads scholars to focus on long distances and dismisses issues or relationships that occur over short distances that are also mediated by technology. Therefore, it is more precise to say that technology has made it possible for people to take control of social distances regardless of geographical distance. Thus people can nurture close communications simultaneously with those who live in proximity and at a distance and can manipulate social distance by selecting who will become their friends online or not answering phone calls. To understand social distance, we need to examine the culturally specific nature of relationships because technology and society are in a dialectical relationship. In addition, the field of relationships enables us to illuminate complicated, messy flows of information, money, and goods, which cannot be captured if the concept of scale is used. Although the transnational scale provides a framework for capturing flows between the diaspora and the home country, I show that gifts and information travel along the lines of kinship connections in proximity and at a distance. A daughter may ask her brother, who lives in a different city, to deposit money in

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her account and she may give that money to her mother face-to-face. Her mother could then give the money to her sibling, who may later represent the extended family and donate it at a fundraising event for a school in the homeland. The sequence of giving can only be captured when we closely examine people’s relationships without applying scales. Similarly, information also flows among kinship relationships both locally and transnationally via the internet, mobile phones, landline telephones, and face-to-face conversations. Here, the frame of scales or distinctions between online and offline would interrupt the continuum of flows. In contrast, the redefined field that is delineated by relationships enables us to capture these complex flows. In addition, the similarity between the flows of information and gifts has become visible because the scope of this research decentralizes communication technology and situates it as one of many constituents of sociality, rather than making it the central focus. Further, the relational framework also highlights multiple meanings of gendered mobility and power relationships. According to geographers Tim Cresswell and Tanu Priya Utengu, There are many ways in which gender is spatially produced. Perhaps the most commented on is the binary of public and private which has been mapped onto masculine and feminine, man and woman. . . . Here gender is defined, at least in part, spatially—through a geographical image. Another key spatial coding for gender . . . is the dialectics of fixity and flow—of place and mobility. . . . How people move (where, how fast, how often etc.) is demonstrably gendered and continues to reproduce gendered power hierarchies. . . . Narratives of mobility and immobility play a central role in the constitution of gender as a social and cultural construct. (2008, 2)

The case studies in this book demonstrate how the repetitive “bodily acts” (Mahmood 2012, 157; emphasis in the original) of “staying” guide women to create inward orientations of interest and reproduce the structure of the field. In the geographical context, women are sometimes mobile in the sense that they tend to travel internationally more than men. However, when we define their sociality as comprising kin and kin-like relationships, women’s mobility remains inside the field of relationships because overseas travels are movements within that field. In contrast, men have more free movement across social fields. Thus, being geographically mobile can be conceptually understood as being



Conclusion  157

immobile within the field of relationships. Although this situation can be seen as women experiencing constraints and lack of freedom, many people, including daughters of migrants, are family oriented and comfortable staying within that field. In understanding social changes in a Western setting such as Australia, generational changes among migrants tend to be strongly associated with various dichotomies created by individualist theories that allocate tradition, family, and obligation to one group, and modernity, the individual, and freedom to the other. Here, people and society are considered to be changed in a unidirectional way, from tradition to modernity. However, Carol Smart and Beccy Shipman’s work on the family relationships of migrants in Britain makes an important criticism about how the individualization thesis is “culturally monochrome” and tends to “marginalize difference” when members of minority groups do not show cases of individualization (2004, 506). Indeed, the theory of practice and field provides a lens that illuminates the complexities of people’s engagement with kin relationships and cultural values, including what they are supposed to do, what they value, what they do and do not want to do, and what they actually do (Bourdieu 1977; Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992; Ortner 1984). Although Tongan people in some contexts embody and enact Tongan cultural values, these values can become obstacles for individuals. The title of the introductory chapter to this book, “So Far Apart, Yet Too Connected,” is a quote from a daughter in reference to her kin members. Her expression resonates in the case studies in this book about mothers and daughters who place particular importance on kin members and kin-like relationships. On the one hand, the expression demonstrates her love toward her kin members. On the other, relationships that are “too connected” can also hinder each woman from pursuing her individualistic desires, especially if the desire deviates from structure. In this context, practice theory has also provided insights into the political nature of people’s sociality. Activities in everyday contexts, such as supporting extended family members, traveling, participating in cultural functions, sending goods and money, and using communication technologies can be associated with “intentional or unintentional political implications” (Ortner 1984, 148). Although this book does not examine politics in canonical contexts, such as Tonga’s political movement toward democracy, the social field is suffused with everyday politics. I demonstrate that people in the field do not merely follow the structures of the field unthinkingly but also try to compete for status,

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avoid shame, and seek leeway to deviate from cultural values. Being free from static geographical boundaries, the field of relationships itself is mobile: it can “chase” and approach a person either physically or with the help of communication technologies. In certain contexts, some people in the field may try to escape it, yet in other contexts they contribute to the gravity pulling others back into the field because, unlike geographical frameworks, the field of relationships moves and morphs. Although people sometimes try to avoid traditional obligations, they are not necessarily seeking to be liberated from kin and kin-like relationships entirely. Occasional attempts to pursue individual desires can be undertaken without surrendering the importance of family relationships. This dynamism cannot be captured by a simple dichotomy of collective versus individual or tradition versus modernity. Generational differences are explored in a focus on relational roles rather than immigrant generations. One of the important ideal roles of mothers is to pass on knowledge of genealogical relationships to their children so that they can act properly without deviating from cultural values. In other words, if a mother does not act according to the ideal, the degree of her children’s engagement with the field of relationships is likely to weaken. As chapter 2 describes, migrant siblings’ life paths and the ways sisters raise their children are varied. Regardless of whether their partner is Tongan or non-Tongan, some sisters raise their children within the social field and others possibly outside the field. These decisions strongly influence how their children engage with kin and kin-like relationships. In chapter 2, we see that the daughter whose mother did not raise her within the field had much less engagement with it, and her cousins did not chase her to make her stay, which is different from Lu‘isa’s experience. Lu‘isa struggled to escape because she had nurtured relationships with people who continued to act as the force of gravity trying to pull her back. In contrast, if a person does not nurture these relationships within the field, they are not affected by its gravity. If the ideal mother’s role is to pass on a knowledge of relationships to the next generation and guide them to follow their cultural values, the ideal daughter’s role is to stay within the field to reproduce its structure and cultivate relationships through travel, gift-giving, and use of communication technologies. One of the prominent contributions of young people was to make social network sites Tongan. When social network sites were new, they were not a constitutive element of the Tongan social field. It also would have been possible for the daughters to use social media as a tool that enabled them to go outside the Tongan social field



Conclusion  159

by contacting people outside it. However, the initial Tongan adopters of Bebo did not use the website that way but instead to connect with people within the social field, which led to the website’s becoming an important part of the field. Having been raised within the field of relationships and instilled with cultural values, many daughters not only learned and appreciated the knowledge of genealogical relationships from their parents but also became active cultivators of new relationships within the field. Although I argue that the daughters play significant roles in creating and maintaining the Tongan social field, their attitudes toward the field differ from their mothers’. The children of migrants tend to maintain fewer relationships in the Tongan social field than their mothers. Daughters also tend to commit to fewer relationships than their mothers: whereas daughters are motivated to give gifts to help their family members, their mothers do so both to care for relationships and to gain status in the field. Even if a large proportion of daughters marry Tongan men and create new relationships, their motivations for giving gifts are closely linked with performing their love for the recipients rather than the competitive nature of Tongan gift-giving practices. In addition, some children of migrants are raised outside the field and others try to completely distance themselves from it. Thus the intensity of expectations for migrant children to take care of relationships is varied and perhaps weaker than those of migrants. However, as this book shows, the majority of Tongan women in the diaspora are affected by the force of gravity exerted by the Tongan social field, and, willingly or reluctantly, continue to engage with the field of relationships in their everyday lives.

Notes

Chapter 1: “So Far Apart, Yet Too Connected” 1. Anna Tsing raises the issue of the entanglement of local with transnational or global dynamics (2005). She attempts to address the issue by reinterpreting the concept of scale not as an inflexible etic framework, but instead as an active framing of sociality by subjects: I argue that scale is not just a neutral frame for viewing the world; scale must be brought into being: proposed, practice, and evaded, as well as taken for granted. Scales are claimed and contested in cultural and political projects. A “globalism” is a commitment to the global, and there are multiple, overlapping, and somewhat contradictory globalisms; a “regionalism” is a commitment to the region; and so on. Not all claims and commitments about scale are particularly effective. Links among varied scale-making projects can bring each project vitality and power. (58) In this book, I take a different approach and try to address the problem by creating an alternative framework and defining an assemblage of relationships as a field site (for the application of Tsing’s scale in the Pacific diaspora, see Gershon 2007). 2. My informants in Melbourne use another word, vaha‘a, rather than vā. Vaha‘a and vā have similar meanings and Ka‘ili uses the two words interchangeably (2005, 90). According to a Tongan-English dictionary, vā refers to “distance between, distance apart . . . attitude, feeling, relationship, towards each other” and vaha‘a to “intervening space or time; relationship, mutual feeling or attitude” (Churchward 1959, 528). Because my discussion is based on Kai‘li’s analysis, I use vā instead of vaha‘a.

161

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Notes to Pages 8–28

3. Ping-Ann Addo identifies Tongan female gift-giving activities as a core placemaking activity for diasporic Tongans (2013). 4. For children of Pacific migrants’ engagements with wider society in the diaspora, see Mila-Schaaf 2010. 5. This expectation might have been generated by the fact that I am Japanese. Many Tongan people with whom I spoke, in both Australia and Tonga, tended to have the same stereotypic image of Japanese as respectful, polite people. Instead of using the stereotype to Other me, they generally used it to show that we—Tongans and Japanese—have much in common. This assumption seemed to increase their expectations that I would follow their values. In his research on Tongan rugby players in Japan, Niko Besnier also finds that Tongans make efforts to “construct commonality between the two societies, canonically referring to both countries as island nations, to the common emphasis on ‘tradition’ and ‘respect’ in the two soci­ eties (even though the practices of Tongan and Japanese ‘respect’ are quite different), and to both societies being headed by a sovereign” (2012, 507). 6. In his examination of vā, Ka‘ili uses a weaving metaphor, and says that vā can be understood “as the social spaces that are created among kāinga [kin and kin-like] members who are woven together genealogically, like a mat” (2005, 91).

Chapter 2: Reterritorializing the Tongan Social Field 1. These statistics capture “individuals who have used the Internet (from any location) in the last three months. The Internet can be used via a computer, mobile phone, personal digital assistant, games machine, digital TV etc.” (World Bank Open Data 2019b). 2. The Australian governmental body responsible for immigration issues undergoes frequent name changes and several structural reorganizations. Since 2006, the name has changed four times: Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (2006–2007); Department of Immigration and Citizenship (2007–2013); Department of Immigration and Border Protection (2013–2017); and Department of Home Affairs (2017–). 3. The Australian government defines overstayers as those who “fail to depart Australia before their temporary visa expires” (DIBP 2013a, para. 6). 4. The application fees for the partner visa (onshore) have been constantly increasing, which makes it more and more difficult for Tongans to apply. In 2006, when I had just begun my fieldwork, the application cost was A$1,990, which was an expensive but achievable sum for working-class Tongans. This fee increased to A$2,960 in 2011, A$4,575 in 2014, and A$6,865 in 2015 (selected years, minor increases in other years are omitted). As of November 2019, an onshore application for a permanent visa costs A$7,715. I started hearing more stories from my Tongan interlocutors about the difficulties of marrying Tongans from Tonga after 2015, when the application fee rose to close to A$7,000. 5. Australia defines unlawful noncitizens as “nationals from another country



Notes to Pages 31–49

163

who do not have the right to be in Australia,” that includes overstayers, people whose visa has been canceled, and people who have entered Australia without a visa (DIBP 2013a, para. 1). 6. “Pacific Islanders” in their research include Cook Islanders, Fijians, Maoris, Niueans, Samoans, Solomon Islanders, and Tongans (Grossman and Sharples 2010, 28). 7. Helen Lee also writes about the different experiences in New Zealand and Australia (see 2003, 134–135). 8. The degree of mobility expected of a person is determined by their relative position in the hierarchy. In the context of age differences, older people rank higher and can therefore be less mobile; young people rank lower and are expected to be more mobile. Fetching adults’ belongings is one of the most common errands for young children. These differences in expected degrees of mobility are discussed in chapter 3. 9. Informal adoption is called pusiaki in Tongan and remains a common practice in the diaspora. Tongans in Australia, however, increasingly go through legal adoption channels because informal adoption without the proper paperwork leads to problems in bureaucratic systems outside Tonga (Lee 2003, 41). The reason for adoption vary: “People may take on the care of others’ children because they are childless, or have only boys or only girls, or because their own children are growing older. . . . Illegitimacy can be a motive, as can the absence of the mother because of illness, divorce, migration or death” (Morton 1996, 56). 10. Drinking alcohol in the Tongan context risks violating the Tongan protocol of modesty and respect. Although women are not banned from drinking, it is not an appropriate activity in the context of the Tongan ideal of femininity. In addition, because relationships between brothers and sisters come under the value of respect, some conservative Tongans may be critical of brothers and sisters drinking alcohol together. 11. Helen Lee provides detailed historical accounts of Tongan churches in Melbourne (2003, 258–261). 12. Kava is a mild narcotic and has symbolic significance for Tongan culture. It is consumed exclusively by males both in formal ceremonies and on informal social occasions. “Its secular and ceremonial use has been one of the ways in which Tongans have maintained their cultural identity” (Finau, Stanhope, and Prior 1982, 35). 13. Bingo is a competitive game in which people mark off numbers on a grid as they are called out; the winner is the first to mark off all their numbers. Bingo in Australia follows a UK format, which differs from bingo in the United States or Japan. Australia uses a 3 x 9 grid of fifteen numbers. A caller calls out random numbers and the first person to get all fifteen wins a prize. One session includes ten to fifteen games, and a full playing period is usually made up of two to four sessions at a time. The printed grids are bound into books, which cost between A$2 and A$4 each. Although one book is cheap, experienced bingo players usually play five to six books at the same time. Thus, if one were to stay for all four sessions and play six books, it would cost A$48 to A$96. The typical prize money is A$50, but usually the final

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game of each session has a bigger prize, ranging from A$1,000 to A$20,000 or more, depending on the venue. 14. Empirical research on the gambling problems of Pacific people in New Zealand is considerable. Although statistically “Pacific people have lower gambling participation relative to the general population . . . those who do gamble tend to have a markedly higher risk of developing gambling problems” (Kolandai-Matchett et al. 2017, 1–2). These studies identify key features in Pacific cultures, including generous gift-giving, collectivism, and avoidance of shame that all play roles in exacerbating gambling harms. In a quantitative study of more than a thousand Pacific women in Auckland, researchers found that women who “participated in traditional gift giving events were more likely to gamble than . . . [those] who did not take part in the custom,” and “were more likely to spend NZ$20 or more per week on gambling” (Bellringer et al. 2007, 233).

Chapter 3: Boys Go, Girls Stay 1. To understand the full picture of gender issues in Tongan culture, it is essential to also consider transgender males ( fakaleitī or leitī). However, this book does not address this issue because I did not observe any leitī in Melbourne, which in no way negates the possibility of their existence there (for a detailed analysis of leitī in Tonga, see Besnier 1994, 1997, 2002, 2011; and Good 2014). 2. In urban areas such as Melbourne, people usually buy slaughtered pigs from butchers or markets, or directly from farmers. In rural areas, however, some families buy live pigs and kill them. On such occasions, young migrant men efficiently undertake each task with the assistance of older males; men born in the diaspora typically just observe without much involvement. 3. Mary Good has discussed friendship in Tongan cultural contexts (2014). As they are in the diaspora, Tongan youths in Tonga are raised to value extended family, which is reflected in their friendship practices. Tongan youth “interact most frequently with, in descending order, close kin, extended relatives and loosely related kin who often also share church affiliation, immediate neighbors (who may also be very distant relatives), neighborhood or village mates, and finally people from other villages or religious congregations” (231). 4. “Official” relationships refer to relationships openly acknowledged by everyone and partners can visit each other’s family. 5. The original text is written in Japanese. The translation of this work is my own. In the original text, Sugimoto plays with two words and creates a pun because in Japanese both “resistance” (闘争) and “escape” (逃走) sound the same, tōsō. 6. As is true of ethnic Tongans, geographical escape will not help ethnic Japanese to “quit being Japanese.” Sugimoto’s work is written in Japanese and marketed for Japanese readers in Japan in the early 1990s. That explains why his theory is geographically bounded and not directly applicable to ethnic Japanese in the diaspora. Although his juxtaposition of resistance and escape is insightful, I do not believe that those two practices will result in “quitting” that ethnicity. Sugimoto himself

Notes to Pages 72–108



165

also concludes that having lived in Australia for decades and renounced his Japanese citizenship, it is still impossible for him to “stop” being Japanese. However, much as Tongans in Tonga may not give full authenticity to diasporic Tongans (Morton 1998), for Japanese in Japan, leaving the country can itself be understood as “quitting being Japanese” from the “authentic” Japanese perspective. 7. After Neti read the draft of this book, she remarked that it is true that she only resisted her mother, not other people. She had not recognized that but on reflection after reading my description she thought, “that’s true.” However, she explained saying that she had done this because her mother mattered most to her. Neti wants her mother to know how she feels. However, in the wider Tongan social field, she does not think it is worth making that effort—it is better to follow the rules.

Chapter 4: Diasporic Gifts Epigraph. Cowell 2002, 293. 1. The marked drop in remittances since the global financial crisis of 2008 has had a significant effect on Tonga’s economy. According to a report from the National Reserve Bank of Tonga, private remittances was [sic] estimated to have peaked at $212.6 million during the year to February 2008. Private remittances fell to $180.5 million in the year ended March 2009 and fell further to a low of $153.2 million during the year ended March 2010, reflecting the impact of the global financial crisis. Private remittance has gradually increased and was estimated at $158.1 million during the year ended December 2010. (2011, para. 1) 2. Fatongia formerly referred to the enforced labor of commoners for chiefs (Lātūkefu 1974, 173). 3. Ping-Ann Addo presents cases of the creation of traditional wealth in New Zealand (Addo 2007, 2013), but I did not observe this practice in Melbourne. 4. In 2008, the national minimum weekly wage was A$543.78 before tax (Fair Work Commission 2008, para. 3). 5. Tongans who try to run businesses have great difficulties trying to keep them separate from familial obligations (Besnier 2011). 6. “Wife” in this section refers not only to the status of legal married wife but also to de facto partner status and committed relationships. Paradoxically, although parents still emphasize their daughters’ chastity and modesty by trying to impose restrictions on their freedom, an increasing number of unmarried couples with children are appearing in the Tongan diaspora.

Chapter 5: Social Media in the Everyday Lives of Mothers and Daughters 1. The Rotuma Forum is different from Kava Bowl, because whereas in the Kava Bowl users can post comments directly, in the Rotuman Forum posts are filtered

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Notes to Pages 109–153

through administrators for foul or objectionable language (Howard and Rensel 2012, 148). 2. In 2003, Miller and Slater expressed some dissatisfaction that their ethnography, written in 2000, had not had an impact on anthropological research on the internet as a whole, and that the majority of studies were still interested in the virtual space (2003, 42). 3. In the report, the term “world” includes the United States, Brazil, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and Australia (Nielsen 2009, 1). 4. The author spells her name—danah boyd—entirely in lowercase letters. 5. For Bebo usage in Tonga, see Good 2013. 6. When I went to Tonga in 2011, a telephone directory cited four internet cafés in Nuku‘alofa. 7. Because not many people in the mothers’ generation—those in their forties, fifties, and sixties—used Bebo in Tonga, the “friends” of mothers there were mainly diasporic Tongans. This digital divide between Tonga and the diaspora is discussed in chapter 6.

Chapter 7: Conclusion 1. Isi and I still talk about some shared fond memories whenever we see each other. One of them is when I used to take him to a local barber for a haircut, the unusual racial combination (a little Tongan boy with a young Japanese woman) puzzled the Australian barber. When Isi was asked who I was, he proudly explained, “Makiko is my big sister!” Although this anecdote has been part of my precious memories of fieldwork, given Isi’s many hardships, I have begun to critically reflect on fictitious kinship relationships that anthropologists often create during their fieldwork. The subjects of fieldwork welcome a researcher as part of the family, but can anthropologists commit to that relationship and to what extent? I do not have answers at this stage, but believe that I must face this question and think critically about fieldwork. Doing so is increasingly important considering that “in recent years, calls for engaged, public, and activist anthropology have ignited the discipline, making . . . interventions not only accepted but often expected” (Checker, Davis, and Schuller 2014, 408).

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Index

Actor-network theory, 12 adoption, 40–41, 163n9 alcohol: brothers and sisters drinking together, 42, 163n10; and married women, 61; and men, 47, 63; and pālangi, 54, 66–67; and women, 34, 54, 61, 65, 163n10 anga fakatonga (Tongan way), 58. See also Tongan cultural values Anglo-Australians, 10, 30, 40–42, 46–47. See also pālangi anthropology: activist, 166n1; digital, 18; and ‘double-framing’ of social fields, 7–8; frameworks of, 4–8; and gender, 13, and participant observation, 18–20, 154; place-focused fieldwork, 4; and power, 23–24; and practice theory, 82, 157; and social media, 18–19, 108–110; and technology, 106; and units of analysis, 4–5; value of, 24. See also fieldwork; scales; social fields aunts, 19, 44, 64, 103, 138; involvement in family dramas, 139–145, 151; maternal, 42, 102, 139, 142, 151; paternal, 85, 89, 141–142, 151, 152; single, 151; on social network sites, 119 Australia: author’s fieldwork in, 18; bringing seafood into, 95; and communications technology, 115, 133, 147; and immigration policy, 27–29, 162nn2–3, 162n5; material wealth of, 89; multicultural, 1,

30; as a nation state, 17, 51; population of major cities, 30–31; regional, 29, 88, 92, 94; and research participants, 15–16, 38–44, 141; schooling, 2; and Tonga, 26; Tongan organizations in, 49; Tongan population in, 30–31, 45. See also Tongan migrants in Australia Australian society, 53–56, 150; class difference among migrants, 151; and criminal justice system, 154; culture of, 11, 13, 30, 35, 57, 71; and Facebook, 124; ideal of femininity, 57; multiple social fields of, 154; and professional rugby, 50; structural inequality of, 154; undesirable aspects of, 66; and values of freedom and independence, 61, 72, 157. See also pālangi; Western society babies, 35–36, 47, 56 bark cloth (tapa cloth), 81, 86, 91, 116 Bebo, 18, 105–106, 109–126, 136–139, 159, 166n5 belonging to place, 2, 120 bingo, 49–50, 133, 163n13 birthday parties: and churches, 45; dancing at, 61; for daughters, 34, 44, 92, 100, 122, 143–144; as family events, 40, 44; and family reputation, 143; and fatongia, 84; and fieldwork, 18; financial contribution to, 100; and kinship hierarchy system,

183

184 144; as an opportunity to meet friends and partners, 70, 114; photos on social media, 117, 122, 124; for sons, 122, 153; and traditional gift giving, 144. See also gift-giving Bourdieu, Pierre, 10–11, 76, 157 chain migration, 37 childcare, 42 children of Tongan migrants: as agents of change, 55; born into a field of relationships, 35–36; church attendance of, 45–48; cross-border activities of, 5; difference from parents, 15; engagement with Tongan social field 75, 147, 159; familial obligations of, 15, 29–30, 46, 69, 81–82, 93–95, 141; foundational networks of, 36; freedom of movement across the diaspora, 27; friendships in Melbourne, 32; friendships in Tonga, 164n3; and gender ideology, 20, 52, 76; and gift-giving, 8, 21, 27, 101; and household chores, 62; physical discipline of, 72; reciprocal relationship with parents, 103; and research participant families, 11, 38–44; sent to stay in Tonga, 95; sociality of, 1–2, 4, 6–7, 25, 46, 155; and social media, 114, 122, 126; and sports, 49–51; studies of, 14; and tertiary education, 151, 153; and Tongan cultural values, 59, 84, 93, 95; young children, 35–36, 40, 47, 48, 56, 163. See also daughters; families; migrants, children of; mothers; sons christenings, 35, 45, 47; photos on social media, 124 Christianity, 26. See also church church, Tongan, vii, 20; attendance at, 17, 18, 45–48, 54, 64–65, 68, 93, 151; author’s attendance at, 1, 17–18; Bible studygroups, 45, 64; boys’ attendance at, 65; choirs, 64–65; conferences, 70, 114; distancing from, 45–46, 48, 57; donations to, 17, 37, 45–46, 54, 85–86, 88, 93–94, 99, 102–103; and dress code, 35, 46–47, 57, 65, 72; and events, 45–46, 48, 136; Free Church of Tonga, 45, 46; Free Wesleyan Church of Tonga, 45; and fundraising trips, 29, 45; and gender, 13, 57; girls’ attendance at, 35, 65–66; history of Tongan churches in Melbourne, 163n11; kava clubs, 47; and meetings, 45; and networks, 46, 48, 66, 116, 140, 151; and nonTongan churches, 46; as part of Tongan

Index social field, 6, 11–12, 18, 26, 35–36, 44–46, 48, 66; and status competitions, 45–48; 57; and Sunday school social media profiles, 121; Tongan Christian denominations, 17, 45; Uniting Church, 45; and youth groups, 18, 47, 65, 66, 93, 136 class: and attitudes to assisting family, 97; emergence of class and socioeconomic differences in Tongan social field, 151; intersection with kinship system, 42; middle-class Tongan migrants, 30, 32, 40, 42, 151; socio-economic status in relation to status within Tongan social field, 57–58; working-class Tongan migrants, 30–32, 151 communication flows: along kinship lines, 19, 155–156; and blaming technology, 143, 148; control of, 144–147; disruption of, 131, 138–140, 142–143, 145–146; face-to-face conversation, 19, 131, 136; and gender, 133; long-distance, 131, 141, 146; and multiple technologies, 19, 131, 135–136, 146, 156; nature of, 131; not answering phone calls, 21, 131, 138, 141–142, 147–148, 155; and ‘political practice’, 128–129, 134, 138–146; relationship context of, 132, 146–147 communication technologies: accessibility of, 130, 145–147; as actors, 147; choice of method of communication, 125, 130, 139–140, 145, 148; and the concept of scale, 11–12; cost of, 125, 145; digital divide due to difference in online skills, 118–119, 131; digital divide between Tonga and the diaspora, 127, 131, 142, 147, 166n7; diversity of media, 130; and fieldwork, 18; and geographically close relationships, 127, 155; and individualization, 126, 147; messaging, 130; as part of the Tongan social field, 3, 12, 18; and polymedia, 19, 124–125; relationship between online and offline worlds, 108–110, 127, 149, 156; and social distance in relationships, 147–148, 155; and social fields, 11–12; in Tonga, 26; in the Tongan diaspora, 107, 114–115, 120–121; transcending geographical distance, 107, 127, 149, 155; and virtual communities, 108. See also communication flows; computers; email; internet; landline telephones; mobile phones; online discussion boards; personal websites; Skype; social network sites; technology; Viber; Youtube

Index 185 computers: and access to social media, 19, 115, 120; and computer-mediated communication, 107–108; and learning about Tongan genealogy and culture, 133; in the lounge room, 18, 118; sharing of, 116–117, 123, 137–138; and skills, 118, 119; and socializing in the Tongan social field, 117, 124, 130 cousins, 27, 36; maternal female cousins, 42, 65, 73–75, 105, 138; paternal cousins, 43, 138; young women’s socializing with, 11, 19, 32, 44, 48, 54, 61, 66–67, 72, 76, 116–117 dance, Tongan, 61–62, 93, 96–97 dancing, 47, 56; and boys, 96; and female chastity, 61–62; for fundraising, 49, 61, 96–97, 104; and older women, 62, 93; and young girls, 96; and young women, 61–62, 96, 104 “daughter” identity, 60–61 daughters. See young women de facto relationships, 69, 144, 165n6 diaspora, Tongan, 2, 5, 11, 23, 32, 63, 155; and Bebo, 105, 114–115, 121–122; and churches, 45; and communication technologies, 21, 106, 127, 131, 136–138, 141–142, 147, 166n7; and ‘diasporic gifts’, 79–81, 86–88, 93, 95, 97, 99, 162n3; and differences between geographical places, 122; and ‘dispersed family estates’, 37; and familial obligations, 122; and fundraising, 29, 45; and gendered mobility, 64, 77; and kinship hierarchy system, 44; and marriage, 69–71, 104; and migration, 27, 36–37; and school associations, 49; and Tongan cultural values, 155; and Tongan social field, 17; and travel, 69, 77, 95. See also transnationalism discrimination. See racism drugs, 32, 67, 154 email, 106–107, 109, 118, 125, 130, 135 everyday politics, 21, 25, 129–130, 134, 146, 157. See also communication flows; family dramas Facebook, 19, 106, 109, 111–113, 115, 120, 123–125, 128 fahu, 144 faka’apa’apa (respect), 13, 47, 58–59, 81–82, 84, 91, 139, 162n5, 163n10 familial obligations, 146; and adult chil-

dren, 29–30, 46, 69, 81–82; ambivalence towards, 79, 99, 153; arising from kin relations, 85, 126, 147; and business, 90–91, 165n5; and daughters, 20–21, 94, 99; fatongia, 83–85, 165n2; flow of, 104; and gender, 87; and internal conflict, 92, 94, 138, 142, 153; in Melbourne, 33–34, 97; and pressure on families, 88, 99, 142, 146; and pressure on women, 20, 86, 88, 91, 93, 97, 99, 153; range of, 80–81; in Tonga, 86, 101; in the Tongan diaspora, 33, 53, 86; unconscious adherence to, 101. See also gift-giving; kinship hierarchy system families, 19; avoidance relationships in, 13, 42, 138, 140, 142–143, 145–146; brothers and sisters, 13–14, 42, 75, 81, 100–101, 138, 163n10; and celebratory events, 143–144; closeness to, 11, 21, 37, 38; conflict in, 74–75, 77, 101, 129, 132, 139–144, 146, 148; distancing from, 9, 21, 33–34, 40–41, 73–75, 138, 140, 145; financial difficulties, 45, 57, 88, 94, 101; and gender, 13; and holidays, 95, 120; and household composition, 44; and ideal roles of family members, 129, 137; and immigration, 27–29; importance of, 21, 36, 69, 105, 116, 147, 157–158; love towards, 8, 21, 87, 94, 98, 102–103, 117, 157, 159; and maternal family members, 41–43, 65, 73–74, 138–139; monetary and physical support of, 20–21, 37–38, 40–42, 43, 46, 74, 80–81, 86, 88, 93–95, 97–104, 127, 142–143, 152–153, 157; and paternal family members, 42–43, 85, 138, 141; and relational identities, 14–15; and reputation, 10, 37, 54, 57–58, 137, 142–143, 148; and social media group profiles, 121; and vā, 8–10. See also aunts; children of Tongan migrants; cousins; familial obligations; family dramas; grandmothers; kinship hierarchy system; marriage; mothers; parents; sons; young women family dramas, 21; across the Tongan diaspora, 141, 145–146; and communication flows, 130, 137, 139–147; conflict defined as drama, 148; definition of, 129; and gossip, 132, 134–135; management of, 134–135, 142–147; and multiple media, 131, 145; and travel, 132, 141, 144–146 fatongia (duty), 83–85, 87, 94–95, 102, 165n2 feasts, 17, 40, 91, 93, 138; at churches, 44–46, 93; and gendered division of labor, 63–64; and men, 63, 141; and pressure on

186 daughters, 64, 94, 138, 140, 152; in Tonga, 136; and women, 43, 64, 91, 93 femininity: and chastity, 34, 54, 63, 116, 165n6; and chiefly ideal, 59; and constraint, 63, 76–77; ideal femininity, 52, 59–60, 76, 149; and the ‘inside’, 13, 62–64, 66–67, 76–77, 156; and modesty, 34–35, 45–47, 50, 54, 57, 60–63; and money, 86; and older women, 93; and ‘staying’, 101, 156; and superiority, 59; Western idea of, 56–57 fieldwork, vii–ix, 15–20, 38; and communications technology, 18, 105, 111, 113, 136; and ethnographic methods, 13, 15–20; expectations that author would behave in accordance with Tongan cultural values, 13, 134, 162n5; and interviews, 19; in Melbourne, 1–2, 35, 38, 45, 56–57, 65–66, 135, 150–154; and participant observation, 18–20, 154; and responsibility to Tongan community, 24, 166n1; in Tonga, 87; and Tongan social field, 25, 73. See also research participants fiepālangi, 35 fundraising, 33; and churches, 29, 45, 88; and dancing, 61, 96–97; and familial obligations, 99; financial contributions to, 45, 86, 88, 90, 96; and flow of gifts, 90, 156; fundraising trips from Tonga, 29; and student associations in the diaspora, 49, 88; and Tongan high schools, 29, 45. See also gift-giving funerals, 33, 44, 75, 135; appropriate dress at, 72; and churches, 45; and obligations, 37, 88, 90, 141; and Tongan culture, 48; and women’s gifts, 86 gambling, 49–50, 164n14. See also bingo gender: and communication flows, 133, 146; and division of labor, 59, 62–64; and familial obligations, 3, 8, 86–87; ideology of the Tongan social field, 13, 20, 58; and mobility, 20, 52, 55, 59, 64, 67, 116, 133, 156; Polynesian gender studies, 14; reproduction of gender structure, 20, 52, 76–77; and sexual behavior, 54; and studies of migrants, 54. See also femininity; masculinity generosity. See ‘ofa gift giving, 3, 8­–9, 20; of animals and agricultural products, 86; at birthdays, 84, 143; and the body, 83; and commodities, 81, 90, 103; and competition, 82, 86, 159;

Index ‘diasporic gifts’, 80–81, 86, 90, 94, 95, 97, 100–104; emotions related to, 20–21, 83–85, 87–88, 92, 101–103; at events, 33, 40; and exchange, 91; and familial obligation, 81–85, 146; and fetokoni’aki (mutual assistance), 81–82; and financial difficulty, 45, 88, 93–94; flow of, 79–81, 90, 92, 97, 100–101, 104, 155–156; and food, 69, 81, 85–86, 90, 95, 103; at funerals, 86; of goods, 33, 83–84, 86, 89, 95; and guests, 92; and indirect transnationalism, 90, 92; and judgment, 82, 102, 134; and kinship hierarchy system, 81–82, 84, 97, 100–101, 142; of money, 20–21, 37, 45–46, 49, 80, 83–86, 90, 92, 94–95, 97–99, 102, 142, 153; and ‘ofa (love), 81–82, 102–103; and relationships, 79, 81–82, 85, 87; and remittances, 80–81, 86, 94, 98, 143, 165n1; and schools, 49, 94; theories of, 82–83; in Tonga, 86; of traditional wealth, 81, 84–86, 91, 95, 143–144, 165n3; at weddings, 84, 86, 146; of Western goods, 81; women’s responsibility for kavenga, 86–88, 91, 93–94. See also church; fundraising globalization, 3, 61 gossip, 33, 64, 74, 118, 132, 133, 135–136; and distancing from Tongan social field, 45, 48, 57, 74; as ‘political action’, 128; and Tongan church, 45, 48, 57 grandmothers: care of grandchildren, 77; geographical mobility of, 77 Hau’ofa, Epeli, 6–7 hierarchy, 58–59. See also kinship hierarchy identity, Tongan, 23, 32, 70, 102, 120, 163n12; relational, 61 illegal immigrants. See overstayers immigration policies in Australia, 27–29; 162n2 individualism, 3, 10, 15, 20–22, 147; autonomous freedom vs individualistic desires, 149, 158; and everyday politics, 129, 144; and finances, 68; and gift-giving, 87, 92; and goals, 58; and identity, 60; and technological developments, 126, 147; and tension with relationships in Tongan social field, 77, 92, 99, 102, 129, 149, 153, 157–158 Internet, 18, 105–106, 116, 125, 131, 142, 162n1, 166n2; Web 1.0, 106–109; Web 2.0, 106–107, 109

Index 187 Ka’ili, Tēvita, 8–9, 161n2, 162n6 kalapu, 47. See kava kava, 47, 49, 71, 163n12 Kavaliku, Langi, 58–59, 102 kavenga (burden), 83–85, 87–89, 92, 94–95, 99, 102 kinship hierarchy system, 15, 43–44, 62, 97, 100–101, 129, 138–141; ambiguity in, 129; entitlement to chastise, 139–140; and lack of restraint of lower-ranked people, 59–60; and mobility, 163n8; operating within communication technologies, 149; and restraint of higher ranked people, 59–60, 139 koloa, 122, 143–144 landline telephones, 18–19, 105, 130, 131–135 Latour, Bruno, 12, 147 Lilomaiava-Doktor, Sa’iliemanu, 8 mā (shame, embarrassment, humiliation), 10, 82. See also shame Marcus, George, 10, 12, 16, 23, 37, 82, 122 marriage, 27, 37, 60; and familial obligations, 97–98, 101; inter-cultural, 37, 40–43, 47, 53–54, 69, 97, 145, 151; men’s age at, 60; as reinforcing Tongan social field, 70, 76; within Tongan social field, 69–71, 76, 98, 159; women’s age at, 60. See also weddings masculinity: and commoner image, 59; ‘going’ from Tongan social field, 52, 64; ideal, 13, 52, 58–59, 62, 76; and lack of restraint, 59–60, 63; and mobility, 156; and the ‘outside’, 13, 62–64, 76. See also men; sons Mauss, Marcel, 82 mehikitanga (father’s sisters), 43–44, 85, 89, 141, 151–152 Melbourne, 3, 17, 150; churches, 45–46; cultural divisions in, 30–31; and freedom from obligations, 33–35, 70, 88, 97, 99; languages spoken in, 30; and multiculturalism, 30–33; as the ‘periphery’ of the Tongan social field, 70; population of, 30; Tongan population in, 31, 33, 51; Tongan views of, 33–34 men: and commoner image, 59; and freedom of mobility, 50, 52, 156; freedom from Tongan social field, 13, 20, 64; and gift-giving, 87, 97; and kava, 47, 49, 163n12; and money management, 86; and the outside, 62, 76, 117; pālangi, 10,

38, 42, 53, 69, 97; and partners, 60; and pigs, 63–64, 86, 164n2; sociality of, 47; and social media, 116, 120; from Tonga, 27, 71, 98, 104, 120, 159. See also masculinity; sons migrants: assimilation of, 4; and assimilation theory, 54–55; children of, 2, 5, 14, 53, 80; and communication technologies, 106, 114, 120, 127, 132, 142–143, 148; and constraints on daughters, 55; and female bearers of tradition, 55; and generational divisions, 53–55, 157; and individualization thesis, 157; and remittances, 80, 90; and reproduction of cultural values of ancestral country, 155; social worlds of, 4–8; socio-economic backgrounds of, 151. See also Tongan migrants in Australia migration: common migration patterns, 36–37; an extended family’s migration, 37–41; immigration and visa issues, 27–29, 162n4; and media studies, 111, 127, 129; studies of, 5; and Tongans, 26–30 mobile phones, 130, 132, 135, 138, 141; and fieldwork, 18–19, 105; as gifts, 95, 98, 121; and ‘political practice’, 142–143, 148; and sociality of women, 66, 74, 140; and social network sites, 115, 123; in Tonga, 26, 131 modernity, 53, 147, 157–158 modesty, 32, 34, 47, 50, 67, 163n10, 165n6 “mother” identity, 56–58, 60, 73, 76 mothers: and attitudes towards pālangi, 53–54, 67–68; and attitudes towards social media, 118–119, 122–123; and bingo, 49; as carers of children, 56–57; and clowning, 62, 93; engagement with Tongan social field, 20, 53–55, 122, 132– 134, 141; and gift-giving, 20–21, 79, 93, 104, 159; and individualism, 20, 58, 79; on individual vs relational spectrum, 15; judgment of, 57, 73; life stories of, 53–54; raising children within or outside of the Tongan social field, 158; relationships with daughters, 14, 19–21, 23, 34, 57, 64, 68, 72–74, 118, 122, 156; relationships with non-Tongan men, 40, 53–54, 158; roles of, 3, 14–15, 52–53, 55–58, 73, 86, 137, 158; as teachers of Tongan culture and values, 52–53, 55–56, 58, 63, 72, 122, 151, 158. See also mothers’ use of phones; mothers’ use of social media

188 mothers’ use of phones: landline phones, 133–134; and long phone calls to relatives, 133; to maintain Tongan social field, 132–134, 141; mobile phones, 132, 140; to present themselves in the Tongan social field, 134; and substance of phone conversations, 133 mothers’ use of social media, 19, 111, 118, 132; as an activity with daughters, 118–120, 122, 133; and computer skills, 119, 124; to connect with classmates, 122; to connect with kin, 119, 122, 127, 141; daughters’ views of, 119; and language, 119; and monitoring daughters’ behaviour, 137; and other mothers, 119; and photo albums, 120; to transmit cultural and genealogical knowledge, 122–123, 133 multiculturalism, 1–3, 45, 151; and assimilation, 4; in Melbourne, 30–33. See also marriage MySpace, 113 obedience, 16, 59, 72, 138 ‘ofa (love, generosity, pity), 58–59, 81–82, 89, 102–103 online discussion boards, 106–110, 125 overstayers, 27–29, 162n3 Pacific Islanders: and bingo, 49; and crime, 31–32, 154; family-orientation of, 36, 70; as marriage partners, 69, 98, 150; and multiculturalism, 33; negative views of in Australia, 31–32; and nightclubs, 65–66, 99; and sociality in the diaspora, 6–9 Pacific Labour Scheme, 28 pālangi. See marriage: inter-cultural; Western society parents, 8–9, 34, 46, 53; and church, 48, 64–65, 71; different treatment of daughters and sons, 54, 66, 68; disciplining of children, 72, 74; expectations of children, 13, 32, 35, 48, 50, 55, 75, 100, 153, 165n6; and gift-giving, 21, 46, 82, 96–96, 99; reciprocal relationship with children, 103; and tradition, 52–53, 55, 58, 159. See also families; mothers personal websites, 106–107 personhood, 14–15, 56. See also individualism place: belonging to, 2; concept of in anthropology, 3–5, 7–8, 11–12, 154; and virtual

Index communities, 108, 112. See also anthropology; scale; social fields Planet Tonga, 115 prestation. See gift giving pusiaki. See adoption. racism, 32–33 rank. See kinship hierarchy system remittances, 26, 37, 80, 83, 86, 90, 94, 127, 142, 165n1 research participants, 13–15, 18, 22–23, 25, 37–38; socio-economic position of, 30–31, 151; and story of one extended family, 37–44; and the Tongan social field, 10–11; update on their lives, 150– 154; and their view of this book, 22–24 respect. See faka’apa’apa rugby, 29, 50–51, 69, 162n5 scale: as an analytical concept in anthropology, 4–5, 7–9, 11, 154–156, 161n1; and communication technologies, 11–12, 146, 156; and ‘double-framing’, 7–8; and gift-giving, 104; as interrupting the continuum of sociality, 154; and the local, 3, 4, 6–8, 11, 21, 79, 89, 92, 103–104, 154–156; and Pacific Islanders, 6–7, 9; and personal networks, 12; as social construct, 4; and the transnational, 3–8, 11, 16–17, 21, 36, 79–80, 89, 91–92, 104, 114, 155. See also anthropology; social fields schools, 35; associations, 49; in Australia, 1–2, 11, 54, 65–66, 115, 141; and fundraising, 45, 49, 88, 94, 156; and social media group profiles, 121; in Tonga, 29, 45, 49, 94, 119, 121–122, 156 Seasonal Worker Programme, 28 Second-generation, 14, 27, 53–55, 57, 95. See also children of Tongan migrants shame, 22–23; avoidance of, 10, 12, 45, 56–57, 82, 129, 136, 158; and celebratory events, 144; and family status, 10; and gambling, 49–50, 164n14; and gift-giving, 45, 91, 134, 142; performing fatongia to avoid, 87; and public shaming, 139– 142; and refusing requests, 91; about relatives’ behaviour, 10, 141–142; as a result of not following Tongan cultural values, 10, 87 Skype, 125 Snapchat, 112 social fields: and communication technolo-

Index 189 gies, 11–13, 155–156; constituted by relationships, 12, 22, 25, 51, 154–156, 161n1; deterritorialized, 3, 12, 16–17, 20, 21, 22, 154; double-framing of, 7–8; multiplicity of, 11, 150, 154; and reproduction of structures in everyday practices, 155; transnational, 5. See also anthropology; scale; Tongan social field social network sites, 19, 21, 123; author’s social media page, 136; communication from one to many, 135–136, 139–142; and connecting with non-Tongans, 124; as constitutive of the Tongan social field, 18, 21, 105–106, 110, 113–122, 124–128, 158–159; and culturally-specific platforms, 111; definition of, 109–110; emergence of, 109; group profiles, 121; Instagram, 112; and ‘invisible audiences’, 136–137, 140, 142; and loss of freedom, 137, 142; and maintaining existing relationships, 126, 136; and making social networks visible, 110, 136; and news from Tonga, 121; and older generation, 123, 139; and photographs, 19, 45, 50, 112, 115, 117, 120–124, 136; and reputation, 137; and status competition, 45, 50; in Tonga, 120–121; and Tongan group profiles, 121; and Tongan language, 123; and unfriending, 131, 139–140, 147–148; and vā, 126; and youth studies, 109–110, 119. See also Bebo; communication technologies; Facebook; mothers’ use of social media; young women’s use of social media social theories of technology, 12, 106, 126 sons: and church attendance, 48; and communication flows, 133; engagement with Tongan social field, 48, 54, 142–143; and familial obligations, 142–143; financial support of sisters, 100–101; freedom and mobility of, 52, 54, 59–60, 63–67, 75; ‘going from’ Tongan social field, 52, 64; household work, 63–64; and kava circles, 47; and lack of restraint, 60; and nightclubs, 47; and non-Tongan partners, 69, 151; and outdoor socializing, 76, 117; and partners’ backgrounds, 69; and troubled lives, 153–154; use of mobile phones, 136, 142–143; use of social media, 116. See also sport sport, 49–51 status: and churches, 45, 144; and competition within the Tongan social field, 10,

12, 45, 57, 157; and families, 10, 12, 58; and female modesty, 54, 57; and giftgiving, 82, 159; and gossip, 135; high school rivalries, 49; and judgment of others, 61, 74, 137, 142; and migration to the diaspora, 37, 101; and obligations, 57; and performance, 134, 142; and reputation, 10, 37, 54, 56–58, 82, 129, 137; and schools, 49; status within the Tongan social field vs high socioeconomic status, 57–58; and Tongan social field, 58, 74. See also kinship hierarchy system technology: and control of social distances, 155; dialectical relationship with society and culture, 106, 149, 155; electronic money transfer, 25. See also communication technologies; social network sites Tonga, 26; and Christianity, 26; and communication technologies, 26, 127, 131, 142, 147; history of, 26; internet cafés, 120, 166n6; migration from, 26–27; and patriarchy, 59, 138; and population, 27; and schools, 29, 49; and social change, 26–27; and sporting teams, 29 Tongan cultural values, 10–12; and alcohol, 34, 163n10; and Christianity, 26; and communication technologies, 21, 137, 142, 148–149; complexity of people’s engagement with, 10, 15, 23, 157; deviation from, 21, 34–35, 40, 42–43, 53, 57, 59, 61, 65, 72–75, 129, 136–137, 139, 147–148, 157–158; difference from Australian cultural values, 57, 60, 69–70, 74–75, 97, 145; embodiment in practices, 105, 157; fetokoni’aki (mutual assistance), 81; and gender, 20; generosity, 8, 32, 67, 81–82, 87, 90–91, 102, 134, 142, 153; and giftgiving, 102; and globalization, 60; and kinship hierarchy system, 15, 58–59, 62, 81; ‘ofa (love), 58–59, 81; and pālangi, 35, 42, 67–68, 70; sharing, 59, 67, 70; significance of, 150; teaching of, 21, 48, 52–53, 56, 58, 63, 84, 95; and Tongan churches, 17. See also familial obligations; femininity; gift-giving; masculinity; shame; status Tongan migrants in Australia: and crime, 32–33, 153–154; history of, 26–27, 33, 35; immigration and visa issues, 27–29, 162n4; interaction with non-Tongans, 1–2, 10–13, 27, 32–33, 40–43, 49, 50, 53–54, 65–67, 74–75, 97, 115, 150; middle-class,

190 30, 32, 40, 42, 151; population of, 17, 30–31; racism of, 33; racism towards, 32; and research participants, 15–16; sociality of, 2–7, 10–11, 13, 17, 25–26, 44, 46, 53, 102, 155–157; and social work, 154; stereotypes of, 30–33; and tertiary education, 151, 153–154; upward mobility of, 50, 151; views of non-Tongans, 1–2, 32–33, 35, 40, 47, 66–70, 74, 162n5; working class, 30–32, 151. See also children of Tongan migrants; families; mothers; sons; young women Tongan social field, 2–4, 7–9, 20; based on Tongan cultural values, 10–11, 136; character of, 9–12, 18, 35–37, 70–71; circulation of goods within, 12, 104; and commitments, 8–9, 13, 17–18, 20–21, 29, 30, 33–34, 40–41, 43, 46, 49–51, 57, 69, 79; and communication technologies, 11–12, 18, 21, 133, 148; competition within, 10, 12, 57, 82; distancing from, 73–75, 147, 151, 158; and everyday politics, 129, 157; expansion of, 77; as a field of relationships, 12, 21, 25, 35–36, 104, 158; as a force of gravity, 73, 75, 77, 149–152, 158–159; gender ideology of, 13, 20, 34–35, 46, 50, 52, 54–55, 59–63, 76–77, 86; geographical differentiation of, 26, 37, 67, 70; impact of national borders on, 25, 27, 29; and kin relations, 2–3; and Melbourne, 51; reproduction of structure of, 20, 76, 101, 155–156, 158; resistance to structure of, 72–73, 75–76, 148; sense of belonging in, 11, 42, 120; and social media, 21, 122, 124–128, 136; spatiality of, 8–9, 17, 67, 70, 76, 105, 154. See also vā transnationalism, 5, 36, 90 travel, 3, 9, 12, 29, 95, 122, 125, 145–146, 157; and women, 68–69, 77, 131, 156. Twitter, 112 vā, 2, 81, 105, 154; and communication technologies, 149; meaning of, 8–10, 126, 161n2, 162n6; and social network sites, 126; and vaha’a, 161n2. See also Tongan social field Vete, Mele Fuka, 86 Viber, 125 visas. See migration weddings, 18, 45; dancing at, 61; difference between Tongan and palangi, 54; and everyday politics, 143–144; and gift-giving,

Index 86; and obligations, 33, 37; as opportunities to meet friends and partners, 70, 114 Western society, 10, 22–23, 35, 57–58, 110, 157; and churches, 46; and individualism, 14–15, 70; and money, 68–69; and Tongan notion of pālangi, 32, 33, 40, 42, 59, 66–70, 74 WhatsApp, 112 wives, 14, 27, 60; constraints on, 61–62; and flow of gifts, 101; and kinship hierarchy system, 97, 138; roles of, 40–41, 87, 93, 97–100; and Tongan social field, 76; “wife” identity, 13–14, 60–61, 150 women: chiefly ideal of, 59, 143; geographical mobility of, 157; immobility of older women, 62; relational identities of, 13–16, 61, 150, 158; relationship to Tongan social field, 13, 52–53, 156–157, 159; responsibility for managing money, 86–87, 93. See also mothers; young women work: gender division of labor, 59, 62–64, 68; housework, 65, 68; and pālangi, 68; and Tongan ‘laziness’, 68; unemployment, 42, 57 young women: adherence to Tongan cultural values, 34–35, 59–62, 71–72, 76, 78, 116; and bingo, 49; church attendance of, 48, 56, 65–66, 116; constraints on, 34–35, 52, 54–55, 57, 60–67, 71–72, 74, 77, 116, 118, 165n6; as couriers of gifts, 95–96, 104; as dancers, 61–62, 96–97, 104; distancing themselves from Tongan social field, 48, 73–75, 77–78, 115, 123, 126, 149, 152; and dress, 46–47, 57, 65, 72; and employment, 68, 73, 102, 150, 153; engagement outside of Tongan social field, 55, 66–68, 73–75, 115, 123, 153; engagement with Tongan social field, 15, 20, 35, 48, 52, 54–55, 58–59, 65–72, 74, 76–78, 102, 104, 115, 123, 126, 150–152, 159; expectations of, 13, 16, 20–21, 34, 52, 54, 59–60, 63, 86, 93–94, 97, 103, 116, 137; fluency in Tongan language, 40, 42, 55–56, 60, 74; as forces of gravity in the Tongan social field, 151–152; freedom of, 34–35, 48, 65–67, 74–75, 140, 149; and geographical mobility, 77, 156; and gift-giving, 21, 79, 92–95, 97–100, 102–104, 158–159; as “girls”, 16, 60; and household work, 63–65, 74, 94, 138, 140; and individualism, 15, 20–21, 77–79, 102, 149, 157; and landline tele-

Index 191 phones, 132; and long-distance relationships, 69–70, 98; as migrants, 13, 16; and mobile phones, 66, 74, 98, 114, 117, 123, 132–133, 138, 140; negotiation of gender ideology, 52, 65, 72; and nightclubs, 65–66, 99; and partners’ backgrounds, 69–71, 97–98, 150; as recipients of gifts, 100–101; relational identities of, 14, 16, 60–61; relationships with church peers, cousins and sisters, 19–20, 34, 42, 44, 48, 52, 54, 65–67, 74–76, 116–117, 123, 126, 138–139, 145; relationships with mothers, 14, 19, 20, 23, 34, 55–57, 72–74, 140, 153, 165n7; resistance to structure of Tongan social field, 72–73, 149; roles of, 3, 13–16, 95, 100, 158; as single women, 60–61, 69; ‘staying’ in Tongan social field, 52, 64–66, 68, 75, 77, 101–102, 116, 126, 149–150, 158; and travel, 68–69, 77, 95–96, 158; as wives, 27, 61–62, 70–71, 76, 97–101, 138 young women’s use of social media, 19; as an activity with cousins and church

peers, 117, 120, 123, 138; as an activity with mothers, 118–120, 122; and adherence to ideal femininity, 116, 158; and avoidance of mothers, 124; and Bebo, 113–119, 123–124, 137, 139; and boyfriends, 70; to connect with kin and peers within the Tongan social field, 21, 44, 114–116, 119, 126–127, 138, 158–159; and Facebook, 115, 123–124; and group profiles, 121; and immobility, 116; and learning about Tongan genealogy and culture, 122–123; on mobile phones, 123; and music, 118; and MySpace, 115; and sending love hearts, 117; to shape outcomes they want, 131, 138, 140; and shared household computers, 117, 137–138; and Snapchat, 124; and socializing in close proximity, 114, 116–117; and socializing at a distance, 114, 116; and socializing with non-Tongans, 115. See also social network sites YouTube, 109

About the Author

Makiko Nishitani is a lecturer of anthropology at La Trobe University, Melbourne. She completed her MA in social anthropology at Tokyo Metropolitan University and received a PhD in anthropology at La Trobe University. Her research interests include migration and mobilities, kinship, immigration statuses, and gender. Her current research project, a collaboration with Helen Lee, examines Pacific Islanders’ experiences working in horticultural industries in rural Australia. She connects with wider society beyond academia having participated in a public hearing of the Australian parliament and United Nations consultation on business and human rights to help make the voices of Pacific peoples who engage in farm work in Australia heard.