If Everyone Returned, The Island Would Sink: Urbanisation and Migration in Vanuatu 9781789206227

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If Everyone Returned, the Island Would Sink

Pacific Perspectives

Studies of the European Society for Oceanists

General Editors: Edvard Hviding, University of Bergen, and Toon van Meijl, Radboud University Oceania is of enduring contemporary significance in global trajectories of history, politics, economy and ecology, and has remained influential for diverse approaches to studying and understanding human life worlds. The books published in this series explore Oceanic values and imaginations, documenting the unique position of the Pacific region – its cultural and linguistic diversity, its ecological and geographical distinctness, and always fascinating experiments with social formations. This series thus conveys the political, economic and moral alternatives that Oceania offers the contemporary world. Volume 7

If Everyone Returned, the Island Would Sink Urbanisation and Migration in Vanuatu Kirstie Petrou Volume 6

Pacific Realities Changing Perspectives on Resilience and Resistance Edited by Laurent Dousset and Mélissa Nayral Volume 5

In the Absence of the Gift New Forms of Value and Personhood in a Papua New Guinea Community Anders Emil Rasmussen

Volume 4

Living Kinship in the Pacific Edited by Christina Toren and Simonne Pauwels Volume 3

Belonging in Oceania Movement, Place-Making and Multiple Identifications Edited by Elfriede Hermann, Wolfgang Kempf and Toon van Meijl Volume 2

Pacific Futures Projects, Politics and Interests Edited by Will Rollason Volume 1

The Ethnographic Experiment A.M. Hocart and W.H.R. Rivers in Island Melanesia, 1908 Edited by Edvard Hviding and Cato Berg

If Everyone Returned, the Island Would Sink Urbanisation and Migration in Vanuatu ♦l♦

Kirstie Petrou

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2020 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2020 Kirstie Petrou

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. cataloging record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number: 2019044659 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-78920-621-0 hardback ISBN 978-1-78920-622-7 ebook

To Phoebe and Floyd

Contents

Contents

♦l♦

List of Figures and Tablesviii Acknowledgementsx Introduction1 1 Urbanisation and Migration Rapid Change but Enduring Patterns

11

2 Subsistence Realities, Material Dreams Rural Lives and Livelihoods

37

3 It’s Like We Live in Town Already Island Social Organisation

67

4 The Everyday Ordinariness of Mobility Persistent Patterns of Rural Outmigration

87

5 I Just Came to Visit My Kin The Evolution of Urban Permanence

106

6 Friends, Lovers and Stranger Danger Urban Social Worlds

136

7 Living on Money Urban Economic Life

161

Conclusion. Fluidity and Flexibility A Generation of Paamese Migration and Urban Experiences

182

Glossary of Frequently Used Bislama Terms190 References191 Index201

Figures and Tables ♦l♦

Figures Figure 1.1 Figure 1.2 Figure 1.3 Figure 1.4 Figure 1.5 Figure 2.1 Figure 2.2 Figure 2.3 Figure 2.4 Figure 2.5 Figure 2.6 Figure 2.7 Figure 3.1 Figure 3.2 Figure 5.1 Figure 5.2 Figure 5.3 Figure 5.4 Figure 6.1 Figure 6.2 Figure 6.3 Figure 6.4

Vanuatu.13 Port Vila, 1955. 16 Port Vila, late 1970s. 17 Port Vila, 2011. 18 Urban population distribution, Port Vila, 2009. 19 Paama.39 The Liro Council Area, 1999. 41 Liro area population, 1982. 43 Liro area population, 2011. 44 Liro area housing, 2011. 47 Livelihood strategies employed by Liro area households, 2011.58 Average weekly income earned from different activities. 63 House wall construction, Paama, 2011. 75 Roof weaving, Paama, 2011. 76 Urban Liro area population, Port Vila, 1983. 107 Urban Liro area population, Port Vila, 2011. 108 Population of second-generation Liro area Paamese, 2011.109 Population of first-generation Liro area Paamese, 2011. 109 Residential location and dominant housing type, Liro area Paamese, Port Vila, 2011. 138 Housing in formal residential areas. 139 Housing in formal residential areas. 140 Housing at Manples settlement. 141

♦ Figure 6.5 Figure 6.6 Figure 6.7 Figure 7.1 Figure 7.2

Figures and Tables  ix

Housing and water storage at Manples settlement. 142 A new car parked at Manples settlement. 143 Playing cards, Port Vila, 2011. 155 A Paamese-owned kava bar, Port Vila, 2011. 173 Average monthly expenditure on essential items, Port Vila, 2011.174

Tables Table 1.1 Paamese participation in plantation labour migration, 1868–1939.23 Table 2.1 Location of Paamese population in Vanuatu. 40 Table 2.2 Typical weekly, monthly and yearly expenditures, 2011. 65 Table 3.1 Weekly activity schedule for the Liro area, 2011. 74 Table 4.1 Location of Liro area migrants, 1982 and 2011. 93 Table 5.1 Average number of years spent in Port Vila by age group, 1983 and 2011. 118 Table 5.2 Proportion of adult life spent in Port Vila by age group, 1983 and 2011. 119 Table 7.1 Labour force participation of urban Paamese, 1983 and 2011.165 Table 7.2 Average incomes of economically active urban Paamese, 1983 and 2011. 172

Acknowledgements ♦l♦

I

am indebted to the Paamese community, who welcomed me with open arms and adopted me as one of their own. These are their stories, and I hope I have done them justice. In the course of my research, Alik Hopman and Rosita, Ruta and White Morsen, Marinet and Mesek, and their families all treated me as a sister and a daughter and went above and beyond to help me in any way they could. Tangkyu venuk. All names used in the text that follows are pseudonyms. This book would never have been written were it not for John Connell, who introduced me to Vanuatu and continues to generously read and ‘scribble’ on the various manuscripts I send his way. Thank you. From John, I travelled to Gerald Haberkorn, who unearthed boxes of decades-old field notes from storage and regaled me with tales of Paama from the early 1980s. Gerald’s generosity and hospitality added the valuable longitudinal view to this book. On the home front, Simon has continued to humour me in my academic pursuits, and cleared the house of children at critical moments, while Nan has provided an endlessly patient playmate for these same small, noisy people. Darren acted as a valuable second set of eyes during proof reading, reminding me why we have been friends for more than twenty years. Some parts of the chapters that follow were derived from my previous publications, as listed in the reference list at the end of the book. In particular, some elements of chapters 5 and 7 draw on my 2018 Population Space and Place article. Chapter 5 uses some material from my 2017 Journal de la Société des Océanistes article, co-authored with John Connell. This includes some direct quotes taken from interviews with Paamese. Parts of the introduction and chapters 2, 4 and 5 use and adapt material from my article in Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 26, no. 1 (2017) published by Sage (© Scalabrini Migration Center). Unless otherwise indicated, the photos that appear throughout the book were taken by me in 2011. The maps were skilfully drawn by David Tran of the Hugo Centre for Migration and Population Research at the University of Adelaide. This research was partially funded by AusAID. Thank you to Simon Cramp and the Governance for Growth team in Port Vila for their assistance.

Introduction ♦l♦

When August was fifteen years old, he left his small home island of Paama to attend a wedding in Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu. After the celebrations ended, August’s uncle did what all urban kin ‘should’ do, and found him a job in town. Twenty-five years later, August was living in one of Vila’s many informal settlements, married to a woman from a different island and still working for the same employer. While most of August’s children lived with him in Vila, one daughter lived on Paama with her uncle, who was caretaking the family’s rural assets. August’s other children had limited knowledge of their rural ‘home’ and spoke little of the Paamese language, preferring instead to communicate in Bislama, the Pidgin English that is Vanuatu’s lingua franca. Unlike many of his kin, August held steady employment as airport ground staff, meaning he was able to slowly stockpile materials for the permanent house he planned to one day build in town. He dreamed of eventually returning to Paama, but first he had various goals to achieve, such as putting his children through school and setting himself up as a successful businessman on ‘the island’, the phrase that most Paamese use to describe what they perceive of as home. Yet, marrying a wife from a different island inevitably made return difficult. August had benefitted from his life in town, but believed island life was superior and longed for the simpler ways of his rural village.

F

ocusing on those who, like August, belong to the urban Paamese community in Vanuatu, and their kin on Paama, this book uses longitudinal data to explore continuity and change in urbanisation and migration over a generation. It reveals, at the very least, that migration and urbanisation are fraught with uncertainties and imponderables. Paamese experiences of mobility and town are populated by themes familiar throughout the Pacific and elsewhere in the Global South, where urbanisation has occurred relatively recently and rapidly, urban life is characterised by precarity, and rural villages are thought of as the ‘proper’ place to live. Theirs are stories of

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unintended ­permanence, ambivalence and longing, and geographically separated families that remain intimately connected. Such stories are becoming increasingly common as urban populations continue to grow; by 2030, some 60 per cent of the world’s population will probably live in urban areas (UN HABITAT 2014). In the Global South, the scale and velocity of urbanisation has outstripped that of developed nations, megacities have emerged, and new urban hierarchies and networks have evolved (Davis 2006). While Pacific Island cities may be small by global standards, a combination of rapid urbanisation and high population growth means infrastructure and services have been unable to keep pace with population needs, and, for many, urban life is ­characterised by the grind of poverty and hardship. In the Global South, rural-urban migration has been a key driver of urban population growth, and remains significant in many regions. Yet, as international mobility has become increasingly common and technology has facilitated new forms of and opportunities for mobility, rural-urban migration has largely disappeared from research agendas, despite internal moves usually being the most significant form of global mobility in terms of population shifts. As studies of international and internal mobility generally draw upon different data sources, methodologies, funding opportunities and disciplines, they tend to be treated as separate phenomena, and research at the international scale has contributed little to understandings of internal migration (King and Skeldon 2010). Consequently, contemporary patterns of rural-urban migration are often poorly understood, with the result that policy and planning – where they exist – are seldom effective. In the Melanesian states of Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the Solomon Islands, migration is almost solely internal, and while the relative contribution of natural increase to urban population growth is rising, rural-urban migration has historically been at the root of rapidly expanding urban populations (Connell and Lea 1994). Nonetheless, and despite mounting evidence to the contrary (e.g. Lindstrom 2011; Mecartney 2001; Petrou and Connell 2017) popular discourse has it that migration to town is temporary and that problems such as limited housing, high unemployment and rising poverty and inequality would resolve themselves if only migrants would just return ‘home’. Yet, evidence from around the Pacific suggests many have nowhere else to go, as access rights to rural land and resources are eroding and many second-generation migrants have limited experience of these rural ‘home’ places (Kraemer 2013; Thornton 2017). At the same time, town life is precarious; urban residents struggle to earn cash incomes as economies stagnate, housing tenure is uncertain and informal ­settlements – which are home to a significant and growing proportion of urban populations  – are often located on marginal land. Furthermore,

♦

Introduction  3

as cultural and language groups are thrown together in ways never experienced in traditional society, inter-ethnic tensions can result, leading to conflict, accusations of witchcraft and violence (Rio 2011). There are no easy solutions to these problems, which are compounded by a lack of data to plan effectively, scarce resources to enact policy and planning, limited management expertise and the ever-present threat of climate change. While there is now a growing recognition of urban planning issues (e.g. Keen 2017; Keen et al. 2017), and the need to address them, many aspects of urban (and rural) life remain poorly understood. Rapid urbanisation and migration are but two manifestations of the increasing globalisation of economies, cultures and societies. Yet, rather than resulting in a global monoculture, local communities’ experiences of these processes are rarely, if ever, uniform or straightforward. Rather, local encounters with modernity are often messy and non-linear, and vary over time and space (Connell 2018; Lindstrom 2018). As promises of a ‘modern’ future that is better and different from the past have failed to materialise in many areas of the Global South, local values have informed these experiences of ‘alternative’ or ‘fractured’ modernities (Gregory and Altman 2018). Indeed, there is an extensive literature on the ability of existing social structures to accommodate and adapt to change while remaining grounded in local ideologies and institutions (e.g. Connell 2007; Curry 2003; Curry et al. 2012; Thornton et al. 2010); generalisations about how modernity will or ‘should’ unfold are nigh impossible. Even within a single community, attitudes to and negotiations of modernity and tradition vary with context; seemingly simple acts such as attending school or building a ‘modern’ brick house may be seen as both desirable markers of development and threats to traditional values (R. Smith 2018). Ambivalent experiences of ‘failed’ or ‘stalled’ modernity are, for now, largely limited to those who live precariously in remote locations of the Global South such as Melanesia. However, Bruce Knauft (2019) argues that as promises of ever-expanding economic growth fail to be met globally, and lifestyles begin to stagnate, Melanesian experiences may be forerunners to an increasingly common global condition. This book seeks to follow processes of migration and urbanisation over a period of almost three decades and examine what this has meant for the people of the small island of Paama. It will consider their role in the urban expansion of Port Vila, the implications for broad understandings of changing rural and urban livelihoods, the opportunities and pitfalls of modernity and tradition (such as urban living, cash cropping and persistent social values), the contested nature of change, and the multiple challenges of securing ‘development’ and achieving resilience in a small island state.

4  If Everyone Returned, the Island Would Sink

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Longitudinal Research: Looking to the Past to Understand the Present Using data collected at different points in time, longitudinal research emphasises temporal processes. In the case of migration and urbanisation, restudies challenge the simplistic notion that migration ends upon arrival, usually in urban destinations (e.g. Kemper 2002; Kemper and Foster 1975), and emphasise the significance of ongoing interactions between urban and rural populations. More generally, longitudinal restudies chart processes of continuity and change, rather than simply offering conjectures (Vandergeest and Rigg 2012), and distinguish one-off events at a particular time from ongoing patterns and processes (Howard and Rensel 2004; Meggitt 1979). Restudies further enable researchers to ‘check’ their interpretations of past events (Harrison 2001; O. Lewis 1951), which in turn provides opportunities to reflect upon changes to disciplines and research methods over time (N. Lewis 2018; Lutkehaus 1995). In addition, restudies may allow researchers to revisit places that have changed in unpredictable ways whether through natural disaster (Connell and Lutkehaus 2017) or human agency such as civil war or violence (Connell 2007; McDougall 2016), facilitating new understandings and interpretations. Longitudinal research can thus highlight the non-linear and often unpredictable routes that change may take. It is not uncommon for researchers to work with one community (‘their’ community) for an extended period. Nonetheless, comprehensive restudies of the Pacific, and elsewhere, remain rare (Connell 2007). Various reasons account for this, including changes to research interests, academic disciplines and study sites over time (Carucci 2004; Flinn 2004); time constraints, particularly where field sites may be remote or difficult to access (Howard and Barker 2004); and a fear that restudies may be seen as repetitive rather than innovative, with associated funding issues. In addition, previous researchers may be reluctant to share ‘their’ field sites with newcomers (Foster 1979), preventing the next generation from taking up where they left off. Some projects simply do not lend themselves to longitudinal restudies, but many topics, urbanisation and migration amongst them, benefit significantly from a longitudinal view. In the Pacific, longitudinal research most often takes the form of ruralbased ethnographies, and there has been a perhaps natural tendency to concentrate on highlighting change rather than processes of continuity. As a result, themes such as modernity, individualism, monetisation and technological change are common. Thus, in PNG, Knauft’s (2002) reflections on working with the Gebusi between the 1980s and 1998, and Deborah Gewertz and Frederick Errington’s (1991) intermittent fifteen years of research with the Chambri both described periods of transition

♦

Introduction  5

and negotiations of modernity, while discussion of continuity was mostly absent. Similarly, writing about her experiences in Tonga spanning three decades from the 1980s, Cathy Small (2011) focused on the decreasing reciprocity, and increased individualism, that resulted from penetration of the cash economy into all aspects of village life. The presence of new technology (satellite dishes, electronics, etc.), vehicles and new housing styles provided a constant visual reminder of these changes. Cluny Macpherson and La’avasa Macpherson’s (2009) reflections on forty years of research in Samoa focused on the global forces that had driven change, as Samoans became more connected to the outside world. Similarly, Anne Chambers and Keith Chambers (2018) found that over the four decades in which they had worked in Tuvalu, the ‘distinctiveness’ of island life had decreased, as many Tuvaluans sought to engage with the wider world. By contrast, in Tokelau, Antony Hooper (1993) noted the continuity of village structures between 1967 and 1981, but his analysis concentrated on changes to the village’s ‘ideological productive style’. On the Sepik island of Kairiru in PNG, Michael French Smith (2002, 2013) discovered that issues including land tenure, leadership and access to cash, which had been a source of conflict in the 1970s, continued to provide fodder for disagreements a generation later. Kinship exerted as powerful an influence on livelihoods as it had previously done. Again, however, Smith’s main concern was with islanders’ interpretations and negotiations of modernity. Thus, while recognition of continuity is not altogether absent, it is often only a minor focus of existing restudies, and change appears more exciting and occasionally dramatic. Indeed, returning researchers may be disappointed when restudies reveal predicted pathways to modernity have not materialised (Connell and Lee 2018b), and it is not surprising, therefore, that some appear tempted to forecast impending change, even where ­continuity has hitherto been significant (e.g. Firth 1959). Of course, there are several important exceptions to this focus on change, both in the Pacific and elsewhere. Some of these restudies are ethnographic; in PNG, Nancy Lutkehaus (1995) recorded the persistence of chiefly leadership amongst the Manam, an aspect of social life that her predecessor Camilla Wedgwood had predicted would disappear. Based on her work with Tongans dating back to 1979, Helen Lee (2018) argued Tongan child socialisation was characterised by fundamental continuities, namely the persistence of Tongan cultural values, and the relative lack of change in quotidian aspects of life. Continuity and change were far from being linear and predictable, and in Bougainville (PNG), John Connell (2018) found that while Siwai life had undergone massive change between 1988 and 2001, economic life had remained largely unchanged from 2001 to 2016, a source of frustration for many villagers. Most often, however, continuities seem to be

6  If Everyone Returned, the Island Would Sink

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observed in livelihood studies, perhaps because such data is quantitative and hence less susceptible to changing interpretations or research approaches, or simply because livelihoods rarely change quickly (Connell and Lee 2018a). Thus, returning to Raymond Firth’s field site, the tiny Polynesian island of Tikopia in the Solomon Islands, Ole Mertz and colleagues (2010) recorded great continuity in food production and consumption systems between the 1930s and 2002. Similarly, on Bellona Island in the Solomon Islands, Torben Birch-Thomsen and colleagues (2010) ­ discovered that despite increased population, a greater reliance on imported foodstuffs and non-agricultural livelihood strategies meant land use patterns had remained relatively unchanged since the 1960s. In some instances, change was itself a form of continuity; in Chimbu (PNG), changing land tenure systems were not a postcolonial phenomenon but rather represented a continuous pattern over the last century (Brown et al. 1990). On the atoll of Ontong Java in the Solomon Islands, both resilience and adaptability marked islanders’ mobility and ability to cope with changing livelihood opportunities since the 1970s; continuity and change were both evident as the bêche-de-mer trade brought cycles of prosperity and economic collapse (Christensen 2011; Christensen and Gough 2012). Finally, returning to Kadavu Island (Fiji) more than twenty years after his original fieldwork, Michael Sofer (2009, 2018) found the island’s economy and patterns of production remained largely unchanged. Continuity of livelihood strategies, which are both resilient and adaptable, has thus been relatively well documented for certain regions of the Pacific but especially on the smaller, more remote islands, distant from obvious forces of change. Although Vanuatu has been the subject of numerous ethnographic studies, longitudinal restudies remain surprisingly rare. In South West Bay, on Malakula, Joan Larcom (1983) drew upon Bernard Deacon’s work to inform her own research with the Mewun, for whom she concluded place was of longstanding importance. She argued this was an insight she might have missed without access to Deacon’s own data. A decade after the original study at Port Vila Central Hospital, Yan Lai and Robert Grace (2014) predicted rates of decline in traditional medicine use meant it would soon disappear; change was anticipated to proceed along a straight line from tradition to modernity. In contrast, Lamont Lindstrom’s (2011, 2018) work over several decades with Samaria villagers from Tanna highlighted the unpredictable, cyclic routes that change may take. Based on his general observations over the period, Lindstrom concluded urban Tannese were part of the first generation of one-way migrants to Port Vila, and most would never return ‘home’ to Tanna. Even so, change had not followed a simple trajectory from tradition to modernity, and customary practices that were once in decline, such as traditional dance, had been revived to attract

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Introduction  7

the tourist dollar. Thorgeir Kolshus’s (2017) work with Mota islanders, too, emphasised the unanticipated nature of change, as islanders’ mobility reflected altered conditions in town and home places; whereas Vila was once perceived as a place of opportunity, as town life became increasingly difficult, Mota island came to represent a comparative safe haven from urban hardship. Michael Allen (2011) and others in John Taylor and Nick Thieberger’s (2011) edited collection provided general reflections on longterm research associations and collaborations with various communities throughout Vanuatu, spanning colonial times through to the present day. For the most part, however, these restudies focused on simply noting broad changes, as research interests had changed over time, and collecting detailed longitudinal data was not always feasible, particularly when returns to the field were brief (e.g. Lindstrom 2011) or disappointingly superficial. While existing restudies have often highlighted the fairly predictable aspects of change, other, more fundamental organising principles of cultural life have invariably persisted. Yet, this continuity (as well as many changes) would not always have been apparent without the use of longitudinal data. Recognising the extra insight that may be gained from employing a longitudinal lens, this book was fortunate in being able to utilise Gerald Haberkorn’s (1987, 1989) detailed study of Paamese rural-urban mobility and urbanisation, centred on fieldwork spanning 1982 to 1983, as baseline data. Haberkorn’s findings are compared with similar data collected roughly a generation later, in 2011. Drawing upon these two data sets, this book asks how processes of urbanisation and migration have changed or persisted, and seeks to record why this might have been so, rather than merely speculate on how this has occurred.

Translocalism: Many Homes, One Community Before proceeding any further, it is important to note that while Pacific populations are often described as being either ‘urban’ or ‘rural’ (indeed, the chapters of this book are organised in this manner), this is an artificial division that does not reflect the daily lived realities of these communities. Rather, ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ populations are deeply intertwined within a steady flow of goods, people and information travelling back and forth between the two locations: in many respects, geographical location is irrelevant to the maintenance of kinship ties. At the same time, it would be quite incorrect to suggest life in rural areas is at all identical with that in urban areas. In fact, there is an increasing gap between urban and rural lives and outcomes, which largely relates to structural factors including the concentration of education, employment and other services in town. Put simply, and despite their ongoing interconnection, the lived realities of

8  If Everyone Returned, the Island Would Sink

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migrants and non-migrants remain grounded in particular physical locations (Brickell and Datta 2011). Consequently, ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ remain important categories for Pacific Islanders’ understandings and negotiations of opportunities, experiences and behavioural norms. Nonetheless, there are certain similarities between the two locations that are often glossed over: urban residents may live largely subsistence lifestyles, while houses in rural areas may be built and furnished with many of the trappings normally associated with urban lifestyles (brick houses with fridges and so forth). There is thus a ‘blurring’ of divides between rural and urban populations, in terms of both physical environments and social lives, as migrant and non-migrant communities remain part of a single multilocal social network. Focusing on these translocal connections not only emphasises the inherently spatial nature of mobility as it links locations across space and place, but by examining how global level processes are experienced at the local level, translocalism also highlights the connections and commonalities between seemingly isolated communities – such as the Paamese – and the wider world.

Book Outline Having now introduced the main themes of this book, chapter 1 provides a short history of urbanisation and migration in Vanuatu, drawing parallels with the wider Pacific, as well as other nations of the Global South, and says something of the methodology and data collection employed in this research. It highlights the enduring cultural importance of mobility and how it has evolved over time, alongside the recent and rapid rise of urban areas. Unplanned urbanisation, together with significant and sustained population growth, has resulted in problems relating to urban housing, environmental degradation, unemployment and crime, but urban planning is yet in its infancy. Chapter 2 introduces the realities of life on Paama, a small, mountainous outer island known for its high levels of outmigration. Despite its small size and propensity for outmigration, Paama is in many ways similar to other rural areas of Vanuatu and more generally to the Global South in its orientation to subsistence agriculture, small-scale market production and close kinship relations. For rural Paamese, substantial continuity was evident in lives and livelihoods, and many aspects of village demography had scarcely changed. Despite an increasing desire for consumer items such as DVD players and mobile phones, livelihood opportunities remained much the same as a generation ago, and the mismatch between rural income and expenditure persisted and increased, as aspirations and expectations have grown. Paama thus provides a useful local case study whose conclusions are of much wider significance.

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Introduction  9

Chapter 3 focuses on the rural social environment and its influence on livelihood opportunities. Little had changed in social organisation or in time-consuming community work commitments that continued to limit villagers’ ability to engage in livelihood activities, and fuelled rural outmigration, as Paamese could not meet their financial needs locally. The introduction of mobile phones not only facilitated the flow of goods to and from town but also increased both the ease and speed at which remittance requests were made and information was shared. Nonetheless, from a rural perspective, phones primarily reinforced pre-existing relationships and, in the absence of other changes, had not revolutionised social organisation or livelihood opportunities. Influenced by the largely unchanged access to social, human, natural and financial capital, Paamese successfully combined on- and off-island livelihood strategies, much as they had been doing for at least a generation. Chapter 4 considers patterns of island-based mobility including attitudes towards and experiences of migration. Despite the widely acknowledged difficulties associated with town life, including limited housing, high unemployment and the need to pay for things that are free on Paama, migration to town continued much as it had done for generations. This was explained by the strong culture of migration and the poverty of opportunities on the island; mobility to access education, employment and health services was perceived as a necessity. At the same time, mobility norms reflected and had evolved alongside wider changes to social norms. Mobility from an urban perspective is discussed in chapter 5. The trend towards urban permanence continued, however much that was unintended, yet migrants remained ambivalent about urban life, and many claimed they would one day return home. When that failed to occur, as was the case for August, a second generation, many of whom had little real experience of Paama, steadily emerged as an urban proletariat. These individuals represent Vanuatu’s first most obviously urban generation, and face an uncertain future as urban opportunities (employment, housing and even the availability of peri-urban agricultural land) diminish. The ongoing role of kin relationships in determining urban commitment and opportunities is highlighted; just as in the past, kin ties continued to structure migration flows and opportunities both to and from Port Vila. Urban sociality is discussed in chapter 6. In town, people of all kinds lived together in informal settlements and formal suburbs; housing was not an indicator of socio-economic status, and the line between formal and informal living was blurred. Port Vila itself was a vibrant, exciting place, but it was also fraught with danger and uncertainty as Paamese found themselves negotiating new social relationships that did not exist in homogenous rural villages. Whereas in the past, the urban Paamese community was small and

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tight-knit, by 2011 the ‘community’ had grown and splintered. Evidence was emerging of tentative class formation, and Paamese had begun to form new social networks based on place of residence, employment and church affiliation. As in the past, kin networks remained integral to urban survival, but they were no longer the only networks Paamese relied upon. Chapter 7 details the realities and economic hardships associated with contemporary urban life, including access to education, high unemployment and the necessary involvement in the cash economy. For most urban residents, meeting even basic needs was a struggle. Women’s employment levels had increased, but so too had levels of unemployment. The gap between those who earned cash incomes and those who did not was significant, and although remittances were vital in reinforcing and sustaining ties with rural kin, many urban Paamese could no longer afford to participate in this exchange. While economic and social success were not unheard of, and social mobility was possible, for most Paamese migrants, life in town was often difficult, yet for many there was no option but to remain. Chapter 8 concludes by drawing together the themes raised in previous chapters and reflects upon the extra insights offered by longitudinal data. It highlights the continuity in many aspects of Paamese livelihoods and mobility, which simultaneously reflected broader processes of social and economic change, through which migrants from a small Vanuatu island in the capital city have not always fared well. At the same time, new social situations available in the urban environment had led to distinct forms of hybrid social organisation that blended the traditional and the modern. Underscoring all of this, however, was the enduring significance of kinship bonds, the importance of maintaining kin relationships and cherishing and nurturing rural roots in a variety of ways.

Note Parts of this chapter are taken from Petrou (2017).

1

Urbanisation and Migration Rapid Change but Enduring Patterns ♦l♦

M

obility has long been important to Pacific Island societies and has been integral, both socially and economically, to key phases and directions of change in many cultures throughout the region. By contrast, urbanisation in the Pacific is characterised by recency and rapidity, but its impact and consequence have been at least as significant. Experiences of urbanisation and migration in Vanuatu, and the Pacific Islands more generally, are by no means unique to the region. As in many former colonies, but especially in Vanuatu, migration within and beyond national borders has been both enabled and constrained by colonial powers and their political legacies. Similarly, towns and cities, once a foreign concept, have become integral to social and economic life. Paamese rural-urban migration and urbanisation is thus situated in a wider regional and global context, and highlights both the commonalities and cultural distinctions that exist in how these p ­ henomena are experienced. Despite an enduring discourse of rural idylls, the Pacific is today unquestionably urban. As is true of other Melanesian capital cities, Port Vila is growing faster than any other part of Vanuatu. Nonetheless, as Hal Levine and Marlene Levine (1979) observed a generation ago, Pacific towns are not ‘closed systems’, and changes to urban areas are closely linked to similar processes occurring in rural ‘home’ places. It is therefore vital to compare and contrast urban and rural trends. To counter the common depiction of ‘modern’ urban towns versus ‘true’ and ‘traditional’ rural homes, this book highlights how rural and urban areas function as intricately connected nodes in a social field linked by established and emerging kin networks. Through the use of Gerald Haberkorn’s data and analysis of Paamese life

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from a generation ago, this book charts the way rural and urban life, and the kin linkages that sustain it, have adapted to change and, just as importantly, examines those aspects of Paamese life that have endured.

Vanuatu Vanuatu is invariably described as a y-shaped archipelago in the South West Pacific, which measures approximately 850 kilometres from north to south (Figure 1.1). The nation’s population of almost three hundred thousand is spread across some sixty-five of the archipelago’s eighty or so islands. Population distribution is predominantly rural, with just a quarter of the population living in urban areas, mainly the capital city of Port Vila and the smaller northern town of Luganville. This balance is steadily shifting, and a combination of natural increase and rural-urban migration has resulted in an urban population growth rate (2.6 per cent per annum in 2016) that has long been higher than, and often far outstripped, that of rural areas (2.3 per cent per annum in 2016) (VNSO 2011, 2017). The small but highly dispersed population brings with it serious challenges for transport and service provision, and while the recent introduction of mobile phones has improved communications (Sijapati-Basnett 2009), rural areas exemplify a poverty of opportunity with limited access to services such as healthcare and education and to employment and income-earning opportunities. There is little devolution of limited economic opportunities from urban centres, where services are concentrated, to the rural majority, and no opportunity for any economies of scale on such small islands. The larger islands of Tanna and Ambrym have recently experienced modest increases in tourist numbers, but even so, tourism remains firmly concentrated in Port Vila. Nonetheless, and even as opportunities are skewed towards town, it is urban areas where income disparity is greatest, and poverty most visible (ADB 2009). Known at the time as the New Hebrides, Vanuatu was ruled by a FrenchBritish condominium government from 1906 to 1980. Under the condominium system, the two colonial powers had full sovereignty over their own subjects, while the indigenous population was jointly administered. Renowned for its inefficiency and doubling – and in some cases tripling – of essential services, the condominium governed by ‘benign neglect’ (Tonkinson 1979), a situation exacerbated by French-British disagreements over the principles of colonial administration. Vanuatu’s first prime minister, Father Walter Lini (1980), aptly described the condominium as a ‘pandemonium’. At least until the Second World War, there were no real urban centres, and only a handful of ni-Vanuatu took any part in colonial administration. The legacy of the condominium government persists today,

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Figure 1.1  Vanuatu. Drawing by David Tran, used with permission.

and while the health system and police forces have been unified, a dual Anglophone/Francophone education system remains. Never content with the condominium government, ni-Vanuatu began to discuss independence with increasing frequency in the 1960s. Colonial

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land alienation was an important catalyst for the independence movement, coming to symbolise the indigenous lack of power in influencing the country’s future. In 1979, ni-Vanuatu opposition to condominium rule led to general elections, supported by the colonial administration, and after several delays, independence was eventually granted in July 1980. The transition from the New Hebrides to a united Vanuatu was unusual amongst Pacific Island nations in that it involved an element of violence. On Tanna, members of the John Frum cargo cult, who worship the mythical figure ‘John Frum’, objected to a centralised government. They believed unification and a modern system of government would invite meddling from the outside world and a move away from tradition, which posed a threat to the John Frum prophecy that rejecting modernity would bring wealth. However, opposition and unrest were strongest on Santo, where the Nagriamel movement, under the charismatic leadership of Jimmy Stephens, agitated for the recognition of the island as an independent state. Over a period of several weeks now referred to as the Coconut War, lively demonstrations ended in riots and kidnapping. This violence was only quelled when Prime Minister Lini called in the PNG Task Force for assistance (MacClancy 1981). After a bumpy start, Lini, and those who followed him, fostered a sense of national unity by drawing upon discourses of a Christian nation, and the uniqueness and importance of Vanuatu’s kastom.1 Like most small island states, Vanuatu’s contemporary formal economy is limited and relies heavily on urban oriented tourism and related service sectors. Subsistence agriculture is the main economic activity in rural areas, while the export industry is small and largely restricted to primary products including copra, kava, cocoa and, to a lesser extent, beef. Attempts to expand the agricultural export industry have been hampered by problems including unreliable transport and poor infrastructure. Consequently, the largely urban-based service sector, accounting for 74 per cent of gross domestic product, drives the economy. Urban employment is heavily concentrated in tourism, hospitality, government-related administration, the construction industry and financial services, the latter relating to Vanuatu’s tax haven status. Despite ongoing concerns over land alienation, real estate ‘sales’ (in reality, long-term leases) are also an important source of national revenue (ADB 2009). Employment opportunities may be concentrated in town, but urban unemployment is high and rising, and accessing jobs is heavily reliant on kin connections. The manufacturing industry is weak and largely restricted to servicing domestic needs as location, high wages relative to the Asian market and a lack of skills and raw materials pose significant barriers to expansion (Connell 2011). With a heavy reliance on tourism, aid and imports, Vanuatu’s economy is small and volatile, yet expansion is difficult.

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A Brief History of Rapid Urbanisation Urbanisation across the Pacific Islands, not least in Vanuatu, is intricately entwined with histories of colonialism. Before European ‘discovery’, most Pacific societies were organised around small hamlets with no central places. Established by colonial powers for the purposes of administration and trade, the initially tiny urban centres of the Pacific were designed as white male spaces, as colonial women – whose sexuality was considered at risk from ‘uncivilised’ natives – and indigenous Pacific Islanders – who were deemed not suited to ‘modern’ urban lifestyles – were largely excluded: a crude but basic form of apartheid that characterised the Melanesian states. Indigenous urban presence was tolerated for employment, but even when gainfully employed, Pacific Islanders were subject to various restrictions in town, including the need to carry a permit, strict curfews, low wages and, in the case of Vanuatu, urban accommodation only suitable for single men (Connell and Lea 2002; Haberkorn 1987). Segregated housing ensured that even where indigenous residence was possible, the local indigenous populations remained physically separate from the European population (Bennett 1957; Connell and Lea 1994). Colonial policies thus sought to ensure that indigenous Pacific Islanders did not settle permanently in urban areas and simultaneously discouraged and delayed the development of urban centres (Connell and Lea 2002; Fahey 1980; Koczberski et al. 2001). For the first half of the twentieth century, because of their small size and their distance from most of the national population, urban areas had little impact on the quotidian lives of Pacific Islanders. The largely administrative role of these towns, especially in Melanesia, meant their economies remained undeveloped and involved little more than some processing of raw materials until the late twentieth century and independence. The Second World War brought a first phase of change. The stationing of United States military troops throughout Vanuatu resulted in a construction boom; a large part of Port Vila’s present infrastructure dates from this period, while on Santo, and with the assistance of ni-Vanuatu labourers, the town of Luganville was constructed virtually ‘overnight’ (Connell and Lea 1994; Haberkorn 1987). In the aftermath of the war, colonial powers belatedly began to invest in their remote Pacific colonies, and urbanisation gradually became more significant, although geographical and institutional racial segregation persisted. In Port Vila, there was a clear separation of Asian and European residential areas, while the Melanesian population and their accommodation needs were excluded and discounted (Figure 1.2) (Connell and Lea 2002). Urbanisation increased rapidly throughout the 1960s and early 1970s as employment opportunities expanded, especially in the colonial bureaucracy,

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Figure 1.2  Port Vila, 1955. Source: Bennett (1957: 120), used with permission.

and businesses requiring a permanent workforce gradually emerged. The 1970s signalled the beginning of a long decade of decolonisation in many Pacific Island nations, marked by associated political, social and economic change. Restrictions on an indigenous urban presence were removed, and urban areas were, for the first time, accessible to all Pacific peoples. Quite

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quickly, urban populations expanded faster than housing and other infrastructure, and informal settlements were established throughout Melanesia, as migrants embarked on their own forms of urbanisation, sometimes described as ‘urban villages’: a sense in which migrants were recreating rural social worlds in town. This trend continues today, and it is now estimated that as many as half of Melanesian urban populations live in informal settlements, many located on marginal land with limited access to infrastructure and basic services (Jones 2016). These settlements have been broadly stereotyped as places of crime, but there is little evidence to support these claims (Goddard 2001, 2005; Mitchell 2000, 2002). Importantly, informal settlement populations are not necessarily transient, and residents are usually little different from the wider urban population in terms of demographic structure and patterns of employment. As urban populations continue to grow while infrastructure stagnates (Figures 1.3 and 1.4), land pressure, overcrowding and associated health problems have become common, and environmental degradation resulting from lack of planning is more widespread (BryantTokalau 1995). This has become a critical issue; in Vanuatu, much of Port Vila’s population, including several large, informal settlements, are located in peri-urban areas, outside the municipal boundary (Figure 1.5). The Port Vila Municipal Council remains ill equipped to regulate and manage these

Figure 1.3  Port Vila, late 1970s. Photograph by Fung Kuei, used with permission.

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Figure 1.4  Port Vila, 2011. Photograph by Kirstie Petrou.

distant places. Consequently, long-term solutions remain largely absent, with evictions and similar approaches favoured as short-term expedients (Connell 2003; Goddard 2005; Koczberski et al. 2001). In this sense too, the absence of any planning philosophy supports the notion that migrants are merely temporary and their real homes are elsewhere. Rather than seek means of including and involving their residents in urban and national development by providing basic services, urban ‘policies’ have tended to oppose informal settlements throughout Melanesia, and even informal economic activities such as markets. This has raised questions over who benefits from urbanisation, and the extent to which residents of informal settlements are effectively citizens, with rights to the city. Access to urban housing, and associated infrastructure, remains problematic for many, whereas, simultaneously, a new, increasingly visible middle class is emerging (Gewertz and Errington 1999). However, as is evident for Paamese in Port Vila, there are multiple ways of being in the city, and this book seeks to capture the variety of urban experience. Until very recently, because of the strong subsistence sector and kin support networks, poverty was rarely acknowledged as an issue facing Pacific Island nations; in some contexts, it was tolerated as ‘acceptable’ (Allen et al. 2005), and in Vanuatu it was deemed merely ‘hardship’ (ADB 2003). While poverty remains difficult to measure, in urban areas it has become increasingly visible and impossible to ignore. Improved health and rising education levels have occurred alongside a sharp decline in living standards for many urban residents who inhabit overcrowded, poorly serviced

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Figure 1.5  Urban Population distribution, Port Vila 2009. Drawing by David Tran, used with permission.

areas. Unemployment is high, and has been for decades; in Vanuatu, Sarah Mecartney (2001) has suggested the urban population had probably already outstripped employment opportunities by the 1970s, that is, even before independence and more significant flows of rural-urban migration. Small

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markets, restrictive legislation and a lack of skills mean the informal sector remains limited, and profits from informal economic activities are low almost everywhere in Melanesia (e.g. Barber 2010; Umezaki 2010). More intangible aspects of poverty, such as social breakdown, remain difficult to quantify and are complicated, as some forms of kin support have decreased as participation in urban exchange networks has become reliant on cash (Barber 2010; Monsell-Davis 1993). While kin networks and the subsistence sector continue to play an important role in Pacific Island cultures, in an environment where cash incomes have become a necessity, they are generally unable to counteract rising poverty. Beyond broad generalisations however, little is known about how kin-based support systems, including rural-urban remittance flows, have adapted over time to cope with these changing circumstances. Regional identities remain strong, and this has sometimes resulted in ethnic tensions in urban areas (Rio 2011). These ethnic divisions, coupled with a lack of amenities, unemployment and housing issues, have together contributed to the emergence of social problems. In PNG, for example, the social structure and order that functioned in rural villages was ineffective in urban areas, and traditional leadership and authority could be avoided and ignored (Ward 2000). Limited incomes and opportunities have seen an increase in crime, domestic violence and less morally sanctioned earning opportunities like prostitution (Burry 2017; Connell 2003). Traditional controls on the use of drugs, including kava, have eroded, and as these substances have become readily available to a wider population, their use – and sometimes abuse  – has increased (McDonald and Jowitt 2000). Whereas town was once a place to escape social conflicts such as black magic, contemporary urban areas with their heterogeneous populations are places where, in a climate of uncertainty, sorcery is now said to flourish (Mitchell 2000; Rio 2011). At the same time, however, new inter-ethnic networks are emerging as individuals forge relationships outside their kin groups (Kobayashi et al. 2011; Kraemer 2013; Mecartney 2001). Through participation with second- and third-generation migrants, this book considers how their sociality and ethnic relations may or may not differ from those of the first generation. The negative view of an urban Pacific that began in colonial times persists today, with administrative reluctance to recognise urban settlers as permanent. Rural areas are still usually considered the rightful home of urban residents, even as those with limited ties to their ‘home’ area and second- and third-generation migrants may not be easily able to ‘return home’ (Connell 2011; Goddard 2001; Koczberski et al. 2001). Any change in discourse alone, however, would not be enough to deal with urban social and infrastructure issues. Limited economies constrained by small

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size, weak manufacturing industries and a reliance on low priced primary exports mean financial resources to deal with these issues are simply not available. The welfare of the poor, therefore, has been left largely in the hands of churches and non-government organisations (Connell 2003). While there is much talk of rural revitalisation to encourage return migration, urban-oriented governments have long been out of touch with the real needs of rural populations, and, where they exist, rural development and decentralisation schemes have been largely unsuccessful. The concentration of employment, education, health and other services in urban areas means development projects are channelled into towns at the expense of rural areas, critically so in an archipelago nation. For those seeking education, employment or access to s­ ervices, rural areas simply do not offer adequate opportunities.

The Ongoing Significance of Pacific Mobility: From Pre-contact to Colonial Times Mobility has long been central to social and economic life in the Pacific Islands. In Vanuatu, historical population movements were gendered, highly controlled and linked to specific social and economic functions (Bonnemaison 1985; Haberkorn 1987). There was a clear distinction between mobility with a purpose  – which was valued  – and aimless ­wandering – which was frowned upon (Jolly 1999). Men of status travelled to maintain networks of exchange and alliance, but the dangers associated with wandering into another group’s territory, along with myths of origin that linked people to their ancestral home places, ensured individuals rarely travelled far from home, and mobility was, for the most part, circular. Nonetheless, permanent relocation was not unheard of, and women and men moved to their spouse’s home place upon marriage in patrilocal and matrilocal societies, respectively. As a result, and while men dominated longer-distance moves, women in patrilocal societies such as the Paamese were often highly mobile over shorter distances. In fact, through strategically arranged marriages, women were generally the first to move into new areas, creating roads along which their kin followed. Annelin Eriksen (2008) therefore argues mobility represents a female rather than male form of sociality. Indeed, men are often characterised as trees, rooted to their place of origin, and women as birds or sticks, who fly away or can be thrown to a new place, where they establish their own roots (Bolton 2003; Bonnemaison 1994; Lind 2010). This ability of women to move and create connections in new places is considered one of their great strengths, yet, as this chapter well demonstrates, female migration has been poorly documented by existing research.

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Throughout the Pacific, traditional forms of mobility were undisturbed by any European presence until the mid-eighteenth century when, motivated by the need to discover and conquer ‘new’ territories and save souls, Europeans established a permanent presence in the region. During this period, indigenous Pacific populations began to migrate for labour and later for missionary work. In Vanuatu, labour mobility was at first directed towards domestic sandalwood plantations; between 1840 and 1860, small groups of workers travelled from the islands of Efate and Tanna to milling stations on Tanna, Erromango, Aneityum and Santo (Shineberg 2014). By the 1860s, the demand for ni-Vanuatu workers increased as Europeans sought cheap labour for offshore plantation work, and between 1863 and 1906, some forty thousand ni-Vanuatu worked in Queensland’s sugar plantations, while a further ten thousand travelled to Fiji (copra and sugar plantations), Samoa (copra estates) and New Caledonia (nickel mining) (Bedford 1973; Bonnemaison 1985). To begin with, labour recruiters concentrated on the southern islands of Vanuatu, where local populations were more familiar with European employment. As the demand for labour increased however, recruitment expanded to include the northern islands (Bedford 1973). These migration streams were male dominated, and in some areas, entire village populations of working-age men were recruited, with resultant social upheaval (Shineberg 1999). A small number of women also participated, and while they were initially employed in domestic roles, with the expansion of the industry in 1884, they were soon working alongside men in the fields in Queensland (Jolly 1987). Paamese were amongst those who participated in plantation work (Table 1.1), and while it is not possible to assess the magnitude of their mobility, it is clear that Paamese have a long history of wage labour migration both internationally and internally. Varying degrees of coercion were employed to recruit workers for the Pacific labour trade. In Europe, the practice was criticised as ‘disguised slavery’ (Shineberg 1999: 4), and in 1872, the British Parliament passed the Pacific Islanders Protection Bill, banning ‘blackbirding’, or forcible recruitment practices. While there is no doubt that kidnappings did occur, Dorothy Shineberg (1999) argues accusations of slavery are oversimplified, and Melanesians often actively sought to participate in the trade. However, clearly, recruitment was often unwelcome. In 1875, William Wawn (1973: 56) wrote of seeking to recruit labour from Paama: ‘At Paama we met with hostilities again. Our boats were greeted with a volley, which fortunately hurt no one.’ Amongst those who did want to work overseas, motivations varied, but the desire for material goods that had become essential to daily life was significant, as was the excitement (and sometimes the danger) of visiting new places. Many Paamese men signed three-year labour contracts with the specific aim of earning money for purchasing pigs, the ownership

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Table 1.1  Paamese participation in plantation labour migration, 1868–1939. Period 1868–1872 1873–1877 1878–1882 1883–1887 1888–1892 1893–1897 1898–1904 1912–1915 1916–1919 1920–1923 1924–1927 1928–1931 1932–1935 1936–1939

Number of Paamese recruited Queensland labour migration 14 145 190 187 98 76 93 Internal plantation labour 107 226 121 73 40 338 67

Source: Haberkorn (1987: 122).

of which was a sign of status. Recruitment also provided a means of escape from areas of unrest, and for those facing punishment for village crimes. Mobility to overseas plantations was usually circular, although some workers chose to return overseas several times, an easy solution to the potential challenges  – including re-establishing food gardens  – that resulted from lengthy absences (Bedford 1973). Others remained in Queensland, where their descendants still live. By 1880, Vanuatu’s domestic plantations were flourishing, and many men migrated from outer islands towards the larger, more central islands of Efate, Epi, Santo and Malakula (Bonnemaison 1985). While the French were keen to include women in plantation work, the British, along with ni-­Vanuatu men, tried to limit women’s participation, citing concerns for women’s safety and ni-Vanuatu fears over possible loss of female reproductive and labour capacities to men from other islands (Haberkorn 1987; Jolly 1987). ‘Mixed’ marriages were not considered desirable. As a precaution, Paamese women were banned from the island’s beaches when labour recruiting ships were nearby. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the overseas labour trade dwindled and, influenced by Australia’s Immigration Restriction Act of 1901, this form of labour migration had largely ended by the first decade of

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the twentieth century. In Vanuatu, the establishment of the condominium government in 1906, as well as the expansion of European settlement and plantations, increased the possible options for in-country employment. By 1911, the domestic plantation economy was booming and provided a more appealing option than travelling to distant overseas plantations for up to three years. Contracts for domestic plantation work generally lasted for a period of only six to twelve months, and an estimated thirty-two thousand such contracts were signed between 1912 and 1939. Most of those who participated in this labour hailed from the northern and northern-­ central islands, with movement primarily directed towards Efate and Santo. Recruitment was most successful in areas where warfare and unrest were greatest, as it provided a means to access weapons – primarily guns – that were used to maintain the balance of power. As Wawn (1973) had discovered, these were already evident by the 1870s. Recruitment was also greater when copra prices were the lowest, and options for other income generating opportunities were limited (Bedford 1973). Amongst Paamese, a system of job rotation was adopted; men would work off-island before handing their job over to a male relative and returning home for a while. This system ensured equal access to off-island wage labour opportunities, and within the villages, a relatively egalitarian economic status and stable male rural population were maintained; no single man was away from Paama for too long, and no man had the chance to earn substantially more than his brothers. By 1940, restricted spatial movement had virtually disappeared as traditional trade routes and mobility norms adapted to new economic opportunities, and ‘modern’ employment in the small administrative centre became available to a few (Bonnemaison 1985). A new era of mobility had begun.

Contemporary Mobility: The Second World War and Beyond During the Second World War, the strategic positioning of Pacific Islands brought their populations into large-scale contact with foreign military forces and acted as a catalyst for independence movements, which gradually gained momentum into the 1970s. In Vanuatu, the establishment of US military bases on Efate and Santo in 1942, and the employment opportunities they brought, saw thousands of ni-Vanuatu moving to semi-urban environments to participate. Labour demands were so high that compulsory conscription on three-month contracts was introduced, and nearly every adult ni-Vanuatu man was involved at some stage. This was certainly true of Paamese men, most of whom had their first urban experiences during this time; as town became a familiar place, Paamese became more comfortable and more curious about the possibilities of urban living. Paamese employed by the US troops used their savings to establish more or less

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permanent areas of settlement in the urban and peri-urban surrounds of Vila and Santo. During this era, Seaside, an area still synonymous with Paamese in Vila, and ironically nowhere near the sea, was established, as US troops cleared the land to provide temporary housing and other facilities for their growing workforce. These properties were used on a ‘timeshare’ basis, enabling Paamese to reap the benefits of urban wages and lifestyles while maintaining their involvement in rural society. After the Second World War, changed global economic conditions altered existing mobility systems. In Vanuatu, high copra prices in the years immediately following the war led to increased copra production by ni-Vanuatu (Bedford 1973; Haberkorn 1987). Inter-island shipping routes expanded and became more frequent as European and Chinese traders travelled to outer islands to purchase copra. On Paama, copra was shipped to Santo via Ambrym, and the increased ship traffic and related job opportunities saw Paamese men working on almost every copra ship that operated within Vanuatu. Others used these ships to travel to locations of their choosing where they could seek employment or visit kin at will. Paamese were no longer reliant on labour recruiters for determining the timing and location of inter-island transport and employment, and freedom of movement greatly increased. During the 1950s and 1960s, colonial powers began to invest in their distant island colonies, and education and employment opportunities became more numerous and more accessible within the Pacific. Nonetheless, services remained concentrated in urban areas, so moves for education, healthcare and employment were generally directed towards town. Urban kin networks grew and played a vital role in assisting newly arrived migrants, disseminating information about employment and other opportunities, and in turn prompting more rural kin to journey to town. Within Vanuatu, the frozen fish industry on Santo, and manganese mining at Forari on Efate, generated demands for ni-Vanuatu labour in the 1960s. At around the same time, two English language secondary schools were opened on Efate, providing new opportunities for domestic education. School fees proved expensive, and parents expected their educated children to obtain ‘appropriate’ employment commensurate with their investment. On Paama, as on other small outer islands, employment opportunities were limited, and effectively using one’s education usually required long-term urban residence. Such lengthy absences from rural ‘homes’ were socially sanctioned only for the educated, and others were expected to return home regularly. While access to secondary education remained limited, there was a growing belief that primary education qualified one for a ‘good’ urban job, which in turn fuelled further movement away from Paama. Working with Shepherd Islanders in the 1960s, Richard Bedford (1973) found young men

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were the most mobile demographic group and were remaining in town for longer than previous generations had. Women, on the other hand, tended to migrate ‘passively’, simply following their husbands to town or travelling to attend hospital. While there was some evidence of increasing urban permanence, circular migration remained the dominant form of mobility. Contemporary international migration in the Pacific began in the 1960s in response to demands for labour in metropolitan states, increasingly accessible air travel to international destinations and rising expectations and demands for services and employment. However, opportunities for international mobility were strongly influenced by political and economic forces, and for Melanesian states, including Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and PNG, mobility has remained largely internal. In Vanuatu, opportunities for international migration were mostly linked to temporary worker schemes, and between 1968 and 1972, the growth of the nickel industry in New Caledonia, and the relatively high wages this work commanded, proved a great attraction: roughly ten thousand ni-Vanuatu were employed in New Caledonia during the nickel boom (Connell 1983). This movement was for the most part circular, facilitated by three- to six-month employment contracts (Bedford 1973). Many workers bound for the nickel mines spent time in Port Vila and Santo en route to and from New Caledonia, further contributing to at least temporary urban population increases. Paamese were amongst those who travelled to New Caledonia for employment, and many invested their savings in rural housing, much of which still stands today. While Pacific Islands are often invoked in discussions of contemporary climate change, the natural environment has long influenced mobility and livelihood opportunities in the region. In 1951, extensive cyclone damage to Paamese gardens, and limited government aid, prompted some villagers to permanently relocate. Widespread garden destruction meant many women, who would normally have remained on the island, accompanied their husbands on permanent or temporary moves to a variety of destinations. Younger, unmarried women were sent to work in Vila and Santo, where they could join and be cared for by resident kin. Almost two decades later, in the 1970s, a series of cyclones caused major damage to several islands elsewhere in the archipelago, and copra prices began to fall. In response, many subsistence agriculturalists felt rural life had become economically ‘impossible’, and mobility to town increased. At that time, Vila’s economy was booming, and urban employment opportunities abounded. The expansion and diversification of the bureaucratic and service sectors contributed to an increasing female urban presence as women capitalised on new employment opportunities. Similarly, as women’s educational levels increased, they, like their brothers, were expected to find ‘good’ (generally urban) jobs. Amongst Paamese, greater familiarity with town life, and

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the presence of large kin groups able to chaperone young women, further fuelled and enabled women’s migration. Joël Bonnemaison (1976) has described this era of mobility as ‘uncontrolled’, as many of the mobility restrictions of the past were lifted. ‘Uncontrolled’ migrants participated less in rural based social life and had fewer ties to their home island than did circular migrants of previous eras. While circular migration continued, its importance had decreased dramatically by the mid-1970s. Yet, connections to land persisted, and physical distance was not considered sufficient reason to sever ties with one’s birthplace. Much as Bedford had done a decade earlier, Bonnemaison (1985) predicted circular mobility would prevail for as long as the ­relationship between people and their land endured. During the early 1980s, changes in both rural and urban areas contributed to rural outmigration and a trend towards urban permanence throughout Melanesia. On Paama, increased braedpraes2 (bride price) payments and the demands of kampani (community) work, which left little time for individual projects, drove individuals to leave the island. As rural population decreased, more demands were made of those who remained, which in turn drove further outmigration. However, despite the importance of Vila as a migration destination, Paamese often travelled temporarily to other rural locations. Mobility restrictions applied primarily to young Paamese women, as parents feared unplanned pregnancies could jeopardise braedpraes payments. In contrast, time spent in town was considered a rite of passage for young Paamese men. In Vila, few urban residents had definite plans to return to Paama, and long-term migrants outnumbered temporary absentees four to one; a second generation, born and raised in town, was emerging. There appeared little chance that these second-generation migrants would ‘return’ to island ‘homes’ they had never known. While urban employment stagnated in the 1980s, Haberkorn argued that unless it was accompanied by social and political changes, economic change alone would not result in an urban exodus. Nonetheless, this apparent permanence was not uniform, and some migrant populations who hailed from larger islands with relatively greater access to on-island resources, such as Tanna, continued to favour circular mobility (Bastin 1985). Even so, Bedford and Bonnemaison’s predictions of continued circular mobility were beginning to seem a little less valid. Little has been written about Melanesian rural-urban mobility in the twenty-first century, but trends from the 1980s appear to have continued. In Vanuatu, a generation of second-generation migrants has reached adulthood, and despite enduring discourses of return, many now identify with urban places as ‘home’ (Kraemer 2013). Working with North Ambrymese, Eriksen (2008) found that whereas women’s mobility beyond their home island was once discouraged, by the beginning of the twenty-first century,

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it was both accepted and appreciated. Women travelled to town for wage labour, to marry men from different islands or to assist migrant kin, for example through haosgel (‘house girl’, domestic helper) work. Indeed, many Ambrymese women were long-term urban residents. Similarly, Lamont Lindstrom (2011) noted migrants from Tanna were moving to Vila with greater permanence than in the 1970s, and the migration of women and families had increased. Tannese frequently migrated to earn money for school fees, but the excitement of town life was also a drawcard. Families left one or two relatives on the island to caretake rural assets, but the onus was on maintaining rural-urban kinship bonds rather than enticing migrants to return ‘home’. Just as on Paama, the constant flow of visitors between town and the island assisted in maintaining these bonds and ensured a cultural divide did not develop between the two spheres. From a rural perspective, Craig Lind (2010) has described the burdensome kinship obligations that led many young men to depart villages on the north-east coast of Paama between 2002 and 2004. Lind noted few young people lived on Paama, and those who did were expected to shoulder the burden of kinship obligations such as caring for and supporting elderly villagers whose own children had migrated. While Lind does not discuss the mobility of women in any great detail, he argues kin obligations were especially onerous for young men, including illegitimate children, who were not guaranteed to inherit land of their own. By behaving ‘correctly’ and caring for village elders, these men activated kinship ties, which could potentially lead to the inheritance of land. Such inheritance, however, could be tenuous and relied upon the continued absence of blood relatives. As more youth left the island because of laborious kin work, the burden on those who remained increased further, in turn fuelling more migration. This movement to urban areas was facilitated by kin, and although new migrants generally joined the same kin group in town, the large urban youth population meant the burden of kin obligations was greatly reduced. Lind argued rural kampani work described by Haberkorn was substantially different to that associated with kinship obligations. Regardless, the outcome of a heavy burden of work that left little time for other pursuits provided an incentive for outmigration. In recent years, opportunities for temporary migration to overseas destinations have again expanded with the establishment of New Zealand’s Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme and Australia’s Seasonal Worker Program (SWP) and Pacific Labour Scheme (PLS). Under these schemes, Pacific Islanders are employed for less than twelve months in unskilled horticultural positions (RSE and SWP) or for up to three years in low- and semi-skilled positions across a range of industries including hospitality, aged care and aquaculture (PLS). All three schemes aim to fill gaps in domestic labour markets. It is too early to know much about the recently

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established PLS, but Vanuatu and Tonga have been some of the largest labour suppliers to both the SWP and RSE, and as in the past, men have dominated this mobility. Motivation for participating in the horticultural schemes has been largely financial, and common goals include paying school fees, house construction and starting a small business. Most workers have returned with savings (WB 2017, 2018), but there has been some concern over workers’ rights and workplace conditions, particularly in Australia (Petrou and Connell 2018), and parallels have inevitably been drawn with experiences during the blackbirding era (Connell 2010; Stead, 2019). Despite some limited opportunities for seasonal labour migration, throughout much of Melanesia, and just as in Vanuatu, migration is largely directed towards local towns where the concentration of employment and services combined with a desire for commodities means urban areas represent an important and increasingly prominent destination for internal migrants. Such patterns of rural-urban migration have been further reinforced, as urban bias and inadequate service delivery have exacerbated the isolation of outer islands such as Aneityum, Futuna and the Torres and Banks Islands in Vanuatu. For these and other islands, internal migration has played an important role in maintaining the sustainability of island populations and livelihoods. Through remittances, multilocal kin networks have extended livelihood activities far beyond their geographical limits while simultaneously reinforcing these kinship ties. In many ways, these multilocal kin networks are self-perpetuating; kin provide advice and support for newly arrived migrants and supply information and access to goods and services, so migrants will often move to places where kin networks offer large and well-established ‘beach-heads’. The flows of resources and knowledge associated with internal migration cannot be examined without considering kin networks, the role of which is often obscured by a focus on economic or other factors. Ultimately, mobility has performed many roles, perhaps dominated by developing and extending livelihoods but influenced by multiple social, cultural, political and psychological factors, as is evident on Paama.

Researching Migration and Urbanisation Just as ni-Vanuatu mobility is often influenced by kin connections, so too was my own journey to Paama shaped by my association with Gerald Haberkorn. Upon hearing of my plans to ‘follow’ him to Paama, Haberkorn kindly put me in contact with his Paamese friend Arnaud, a long-term urban resident who took on the role of my adopted father. It had been a long time since Arnaud himself had visited Paama, yet despite no longer knowing which ships travelled to the island, or when flights to Paama were scheduled, Arnaud got me on a plane to the island, organised a host family

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for me (I was adopted by one of Arnaud’s classificatory brothers) and found a place for me to live: a mostly completed brick house constructed by a successful urban migrant. I arrived on Paama on a Sunday morning and was taken from the airport to Liro’s weekly Presbyterian Church service. This timing was fortuitous, as I was given the opportunity to introduce myself to the congregation and explain why I had come to Paama; fortunately, I was already fluent in Bislama from a previous research project. As a result of this introduction, a large majority of the community was made immediately aware of my presence. I was able to reinforce this information the next day, when it was decided I should speak about my research at the weekly nakamal meeting (a community meeting held in the traditional meeting house). I encouraged villagers to ask questions and comment on my research until they were satisfied as to my intentions. Again, my association with Haberkorn proved beneficial, as I could explain I had followed the same ‘road’ as he. This allowed villagers who remembered Haberkorn and his wife, Susan, to ‘place’ me and make sense of why I too had come to the island. This ‘placing’ was particularly important, as, unlike the many Peace Corps who had visited Paama, my own project did not have an immediate, tangible outcome such as building a bridge or organising a soccer tournament. At the same time, Haberkorn’s visit was far enough in the past that memories had blurred, and I was not plagued with villagers’ preconceptions about how research ‘should’ be done or expected to step into Haberkorn’s role in previously established relationships, two issues that are sometimes associated with restudies. My time on Paama spanned March until June 2011. During this period, my adopted family incorporated me into the web of daily life. For my part, I tried to act as a daughter was expected to, assisting (when allowed) with chores, visiting food gardens and addressing kin by the appropriate singaot (kinship term). By participating in the community, I was able to observe and experience the flows of people, information and goods that characterised Paamese life. This participant observation was complemented by semi-structured interviews. Using a census-style approach, I interviewed at least one adult from every household (forty-three men and sixty-five women) in the ‘Liro area’ villages of Liro, Liro Nesa, Asuas and Voravor, the same villages where Haberkorn had worked. The few non-Paamese households, for example teachers from other islands working on Paama, were excluded. A further five households belonging to elderly villagers were not interviewed because of their loss of mental clarity, but general data on their family members and their whereabouts was collected from others. I attempted to interview an equal number of men and women, but this was difficult for several reasons. First, when only one spouse had migrated away from Paama, it was generally the wife (and children) who were left

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Urbanisation and Migration  31

behind so that there were more female-only-headed households than maleonly-headed households. Second, women tended to outlive males, and there were thus more widows than widowers. Third, life in Vanuatu is organised very much along gender lines, so it was naturally assumed I was more interested in speaking to women than to men. Lastly, as Haberkorn observed, and as is common throughout Vanuatu, women performed the majority of daily work on Paama; they looked after the children, visited the food gardens, completed the household chores, prepared the meals, attended committees and church groups, organised fundraisers and performed various other tasks to earn smol vatu (‘small vatu’, a little money). Many of these were time-consuming activities requiring an input of manual labour, and when another ‘domestic chore’ arrived in the form of an interview with a waet misus (white woman), it naturally fell to the women to participate. I corrected this gender bias to some extent by requesting interviews with specific men. Nonetheless, there remained an excess of female over male participants in the rural sample, but this did at least reflect the demographic make-up of the villages. As a longitudinal study, my 2011 fieldwork drew upon Haberkorn’s published work and various surviving field notes he generously shared with me. While the tyranny of technology meant Haberkorn’s interview transcripts (stored on reels) were impossible to access, I was able to make copies of other documents, including coding sheets, the original questionnaire and various notes and observations from the field. One of the most useful documents was Haberkorn’s census of Liro area Paamese showing villagers’ residential locations in 1982–1983. Referring to this census throughout my own fieldwork made tracking mobility much easier, as I could enquire after individuals who had ‘disappeared’ from the island. Not surprisingly, migrants were not always traceable, and I could not account for individuals or families who may have spent time on Paama after 1983 but had departed by 2011. Nonetheless, comparing Haberkorn’s baseline data with my own observations provided a much richer and more nuanced data set than I could have collected using a ‘snapshot in time’ approach. Similarly, employing baseline data reduced problems relating to the accuracy of recall of long ago events. Unless otherwise indicated, references to Paamese in 1982–1983 are all taken from Haberkorn’s written work, field notes and remembrances.

The Urban Field After leaving Paama, I spent approximately five months in Port Vila (July to November 2011) interviewing urban Paamese. I lived in an apartment in Tebakor but spent most of my evenings and weekends with two families, one that lived in Manples informal settlement and the other in Freshwota,

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a formally established residential suburb. As a result, I gained valuable insights into daily life in two very different urban environments. Unlike previous studies into urbanisation in Vanuatu that have concentrated on a single urban area (e.g. Mecartney 2001; Mitchell 2002), I worked in several different locations throughout Vila. This was in large part determined by the fact that urban Paamese live all over Vila and are not restricted to a single residential area. The urban ‘field’ was therefore anywhere that Paamese from my study villages lived or frequented, enabling me to appreciate the diversity of urban experiences. In Vila, I used snowballing to locate and recruit Paamese who identified as belonging to the four Liro area villages. By 2011, the Paamese urban community had become large enough that no single person knew exactly where every individual from the villages in question lived. I therefore used three main gatekeepers, one man and two women, from different villages, and of differing social status, to assist in locating their family members and requesting interviews. These gatekeepers were all long-term urban residents who had varying levels of knowledge when it came to the whereabouts of their kin. In addition, I used my own rural census, along with Haberkorn’s 1982–1983 census, to identify potential participants who were ‘missing’ from Paama. While Haberkorn had some record of families who had no immediate kin remaining on Paama, my own census did not include many urban residents who had been away from the island long enough for little to be known of their circumstances. Gatekeepers were thus particularly useful, as they could identify long-term and second- or third-generation urban residents, of whose existence I would have otherwise been unaware. Overall, I interviewed 106 urban Paamese, 52 men and 54 women, with 60 being first-generation migrants and 46 from the second generation. Deciding who ‘belonged’ to Paama was not always straightforward. Traditionally, when a Paamese woman married, she took up residence in, and was considered a member of, her husband’s village. Therefore, a Liro area woman who married a man from elsewhere no longer ‘belonged’ to her natal village. In 2011, this was not necessarily true, and many urban Paamese couples were in marriage-like relationships, living together with the woman’s family. Furthermore, the prevalence of inter-island marriages, marriage breakdowns and single parents meant children who traditionally would have belonged to their father’s village and island did not necessarily identify in this manner (chap. 6). For the purposes of this research, therefore, a person was considered Paamese and belonged to the Liro area villages if they identified as such and maintained some contact with other Liro area Paamese. Women from other islands or villages who had married Liro area men were included in the sample if they had spent time living on Paama (other than brief visits) and were identified as Liro area women by

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Urbanisation and Migration  33

themselves and others. Similarly, women who had married partners from elsewhere were included if they still identified as belonging to their village of origin and continued to participate as members of the Liro area community. This was consistent with the classification criteria used by Haberkorn. In 1982–1983, the urban Paamese community was much smaller than in 2011, and consequently, Haberkorn interviewed almost every urban Paamese from the Liro area. By 2011, the Paamese population was significantly larger, and I could not have done the same within a reasonable timeframe. Consequently, I made a careful decision to complete my interviews when conclusions had been consolidated and nothing significantly ‘new’ or ‘different’ was being learned.

Interviewing Throughout the interview process, I employed a narrative or autobiographical approach. This ‘ethnographic style holistic approach’ (Skeldon 1995: 92) has commonly been adopted in the study of migration to glean more information than would be possible from a strictly structured questionnaire. Using this approach and listening to how Paamese talked about migration and migrants allowed me to contextualise mobility and understand what it meant from the local perspective. Migration decisions are not made in isolation or immediately before migrating. Rather, they form part of the everyday life of a community and are influenced by other events in an individual’s life course. Listening to stories about migration therefore provided insight into how family members and friends influence decisions to migrate and helped in understanding the complexity and diversity of intentions and motivations for migrating. Importantly, inviting Paamese to tell their stories gave agency and voice to those who are often voiceless (Miles and Crush 1993) and was congruent with the oral culture of Vanuatu (Lindstrom 1990). Listening to the narratives of those who live on the margins provided important insights into ambivalent experiences of migration and modernity. Despite its utility, the autobiographical approach is not without disadvantages. Problems of recall occurred, and participants presented a selectively edited history. Focusing on specific events in detail, rather than collecting broad overviews of an entire life story, reduced errors in memory and provided more valuable data by focusing on what Paamese felt was important. For this reason, Haberkorn restricted his own research to employmentand education-related moves. However, economic explanations have commonly been overemphasised in the study of migration and may detract from important social factors. Furthermore, an economic rationale usually assumes all individuals, regardless of culture, are affected by the same basic motivations. As Haberkorn pointed out, migration is both influenced by

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and influences the setting in which it occurs. As social, political and economic changes have occurred over the past thirty years on Paama and in Vila, it is reasonable to assume they have both been influenced by and influenced Paamese mobility. Rather than restrict research to employment and education related mobility, I enquired about all significant moves. It would of course be foolish to assume Paamese could accurately recall every single move they had ever made, particularly in the case of highly mobile individuals. Nonetheless, I was able to build a more complete picture of contemporary Paamese mobility and capture phenomena that may otherwise have been missed. This was particularly true amongst the older generation and others who no longer worked or were not involved in education yet were still mobile. In examining past migration experiences, it is important to recognise issues relating to genuine lapses in memory, post facto rationalisation, colouring of past events and editing of information presented to the interviewer. The use of longitudinal data to some extent reduces these problems, as it allows for examination of what participants were saying both ‘then’ and ‘now’. Particularly relevant to this research was the inability of Paamese to recall information in chronological order. Ni-Vanuatu have different understandings of time from the Western world, and problems of recall, particularly in relation to dates and time frames of moves, were numerous. Information that would be taken for granted in a Western context, such as dates of birth or the number of children and grandchildren in a family, often required a concerted effort to recall, and sometimes the information was simply not available. Inability to recall dates and time frames was particularly noticeable on Paama, where villagers had little need of such information. After initially struggling to pin down timeframes of moves, I decided to work with local concepts of time, and moves were classified as significant based not on duration but on how people talked about them. Similarly, Paamese were classified as either usually rural or usually urban residents based on their own classifications and those of family members. My gender influenced not only whom I interviewed but also my general social interactions with Paamese. While this resulted in a greater familiarity with women’s mobility than men’s, this did not necessarily represent a problem. Migration research, both within Vanuatu and further afield, has been dominated by males, and the few detailed studies into migration in Vanuatu have all been written largely about men by men (e.g. Bastin 1985; Bedford 1973; Bonnemaison 1977; Connell 1983; Haberkorn 1987). This focus on male mobility is reinforced by an emphasis on work-related migration, where work has been defined as labour in exchange for wages. Despite the ni-Vanuatu classification of kinship obligations as ‘work’, as well as the important role of domestic and other unpaid tasks, this work (often

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Urbanisation and Migration  35

performed by women) has been excluded from analyses of labour-related mobility. Similarly, as women have historically participated in the wage labour market less than men, their mobility has usually been ignored (Jolly 1987). One aim of this book is to increase the visibility of women’s mobility in Melanesia.

Conclusion Historically, mobility in Vanuatu and other Pacific Island nations was subject to strict social and spatial control; people rarely moved, and when they did, few travelled far from home. Over time, mobility restrictions have lessened in response to wider social and structural changes, and freedom of movement has increased; people are now moving much farther and staying away for far longer than was once possible. However, while it is clear that mobility in the Pacific differs from that of the past, little is known about contemporary patterns of rural-urban migration; broad generalisations about increased urban permanence abound (e.g. Lindstrom 2011, 2018), but the specifics remain hazy. Closely linked to migration, urbanisation in the Pacific is remarkable for its speed and recency. Yet, even as towns have become an undeniable home to significant and increasing populations, it is only quite recently that any recognition has been given to this fact. Drawing upon longitudinal data, this book systematically documents continuity and change in Paamese mobility and urban life since the early 1980s to build a historically informed picture of these processes. It seeks to explain how and why urban life has become more permanent and what, if anything, has contributed to the steady growth of the capital city, Port Vila. Finally, it examines how links to rural ‘homes’ have (or have not) been maintained over time and considers what this might mean for urban futures in Melanesia and further afield.

Notes 1. Kastom is roughly equivalent to the English idea of ‘tradition’ (Jolly 1996) and has been alternately identified as representing an entire way of life and as being restricted to the set of traditional practices retained from precolonial times. The ability of kastom to mean different things to different people is responsible for its wide-reaching appeal and lies at the base of the term’s power. As many kastom practices considered morally problematic were prohibited by missionaries, the knowledge that currently forms the basis of kastom has been in part rediscovered and in part re-created from surviving oral histories (Bonnemaison 1994). However, the extent to which any version of kastom exists and is significant in social lives is quite varied within Vanuatu.

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2. Braedpraes refers to the payment in cash or kind received by the woman’s family from the man’s family upon marriage. This payment is intended to compensate the woman’s family for their investment in raising her, and their loss of her labour power, as traditionally a woman stopped supporting and contributing to her natal family upon marriage.

2

Subsistence Realities, Material Dreams Rural Lives and Livelihoods ♦l♦

T

he lush, green islands of the Pacific, suggesting an abundance of food, are often portrayed as places of subsistence affluence. Such descriptions conjure images of quaint, rural places peopled by happy villagers who want for nothing  – a romanticised, wholly imaginary ‘Merrie Melanesia’ (Filer 1990). To suggest Pacific Islanders can meet all their material needs through subsistence agriculture, however, is simply incorrect. Rising aspirations linked to globalisation, independence movements and penetration of the free market mean that, increasingly, subsistence lives are no longer perceived as adequate. Cash is required to fund goals such as education, ownership of mobile phones and other ‘necessary’ consumer goods. Yet, earning an income in small, remote places is not easy; livelihood opportunities are constrained by isolation, limited land area and vulnerability to natural disasters. Consequently, it is often assumed living standards will not improve and that populations are entirely dependent on migration and remittances for survival. Recently, however, these assumptions have been challenged by research suggesting migration is just one feature of hybrid livelihood strategies that rely on a combination of on- and off-island livelihood activities (Christensen and Mertz 2010; Mertz et al. 2010; Wilson 2013): lives and livelihoods in small island places may not be doomed to a downward spiral. To understand Paamese mobility and livelihoods, it is thus necessary to start from Paama, the ancestral home. Paama, a tiny outer island, is in many ways typical of small rural places both in Vanuatu and elsewhere in the Global South, with its ongoing reliance on subsistence agriculture. At the same time, much about Paama is unique; the rate of outmigration is above average, and the mountainous

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terrain adds an extra degree of difficulty to subsistence agriculture. Rural Paamese agreed island life was characterised by hadwok (hard work), a source of pride for villagers who identified themselves as a strong people. Nonetheless, Paamese spoke of their home island as a ‘lucky’ place; fruits grew prolifically, and Paama was free of hornets and snakes, but despite this perceived good fortune, outmigration continued apace. The current chapter builds a picture of this ‘lucky’ island that still necessitated hadwok, highlighting changes and continuities in livelihoods over the past generation, and makes predictions about future trends.

The Physical Setting Paama is one of the smallest and one of the loveliest islands of the New Hebrides group . . . Set in opal-tinted waters, and clothed with the luxuriant vegetation of the Tropics . . . Every advantage of soil and climate had been bestowed upon it . . . Nature in her most bounteous mood had profusely endowed the lovely island with all the elements of material welfare.

So wrote the missionary Reverend Maurice Frater (1922: 169), describing his first glimpses of Paama in 1900. More than a century later, Paama remains both small and beautiful, but as villagers’ goals and desires have changed, so too have perceptions of the island’s ability to provide for their material welfare. Measuring barely four kilometres by nine kilometres and dissected by a ridge of steep, verdant green hills, Paama is situated north of Efate and sandwiched between the much larger islands of Malakula, Epi, Ambrym and Lopevi, each of which is visible from various points around Paama. Paama itself is an extinct volcanic island and perhaps fortunate to still exist in a part of the country where several islands have disappeared in dramatic circumstances (Nunn 2009). On occasion, it is possible to make out the faint glow of volcanoes on Ambrym and Lopevi, which are amongst the most active in Vanuatu, and thanks to their proximity, Paamese are well accustomed to the vagaries of volcanic ash, which not infrequently rains down upon their gardens, destroying crops and hastening the decay of natangura (traditional plant material) houses. Some twenty-odd villages are located on Paama, almost all on the west coast, where seas are calmest and ships can more easily approach the island’s black sand beaches (Figure 2.1). According to census figures, in 2009 Paama was home to 1,544 Paamese, but this represented only a small fraction of Vanuatu’s total Paamese population (classified as those who identify as Paamese) of 6,521; almost half (3,127) of all Paamese resided on Efate, effectively in the capital, Port Vila, while the rest lived on other islands, most notably Santo and Malakula (Table 2.1) (Lind 2010). Indeed, Paamese

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Subsistence Realities, Material Dreams  39

Figure 2.1  Paama. Drawing by David Tran, used with permission.

often claimed that wherever they travelled in Vanuatu, it was possible to find another Paamese. This may have been true, but those still living on Paama generally knew little about the smaller, more distant Paamese populations; many of these migrants had been away for years, and most no longer

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Table 2.1  Location of Paamese population in Vanuatu. Island Name

Paamese Population

Ambae Ambrym Aore Atchin Efate Emau Epi Ifira Lamen Makira Malakula Malo Moso Nguna Norsup Paama Pele Pentecost Santo Tanna Tongariki Tongoa Tutuba Uripiv Valualava Total

1 22 34 2 3,127 1 64 5 4 1 293 37 1 1 3 1,544 1 5 1,348 10 1 2 7 1 6 6,521

Source: VNSO (pers. comm.) in Lind (2010: 91)

had much contact with Paama. They were vaguely remembered, but these migrants had effectively ‘disappeared’ from community life. Paamese have long been a highly mobile population, and in 1979 they were the second largest migrant group in Port Vila, a situation that still exists, and one that sometimes leads to tensions with other island groups, who feel they are being overrun by Paamese. Over time, the proportion of Paamese living away from the island has increased steeply; while the Paamese population numbered 3,560 in 1979, almost half this number (1,677) lived on Paama (Haberkorn 1987). Outmigration remains high, but much of the considerable growth in the Paamese population over the last generation has occurred off-island and can be explained by natural increase rather than

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population movement. Indeed, migrants from Tanna have even suggested Paamese are in need of contraception to stem their ever-­increasing numbers in Vila (Lind 2014). Paamese may still be leaving the island, but there are just as many who have never even set foot on Paama. This book focuses on the four villages of Liro, Liro Nesa, Asuas and Voravor, which together comprise the greater Liro area. These villages are so close together that to the untrained eye they appear more like one continuous village than four. Liro area villages have a long history of working together, and intermarriage between them is common. They form a relatively coherent group, and while villagers were well versed in the names, relationships and business of others within the Liro area, knowledge of those from other, more distant villages was far less detailed and depended upon kin connections. The village of Liro is Paama’s economic centre, and most of the island’s services and facilities are located within the Liro Council Area (Figure 2.2). The council building itself dates from the early 1900s and once acted as a house for Reverend Frater and his wife, Janie. Today it overlooks a large, well-kept soccer field, which is flanked on one side by the beach, while the other is ringed by the island’s police station, market building, bank, health centre, a guesthouse and an English language high school. Adjacent to this area, along a small path, sits the village of Liro itself. Proximity to the council area meant villagers from Liro were often the first to access new

Figure 2.2  The Liro Council Area, 1999. Image courtesy of Anton Zuiker, used with permission.

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opportunities; workshops and other events were generally hosted in Liro, visiting government and other workers tended to stay in the guesthouse, and Liro women were often asked to prepare visitors’ meals in exchange for smol vatu. Attempts were made to share opportunities between villages, but this was not always possible or easy, a fact that sometimes led to inter-village tensions and bickering.

Getting There In 2011, Paama was connected to Vila and Santo by a twice-weekly flight, which operated from Tavie Airport, a cinderblock office alongside a large grassy field that boasts the dubious distinction of being one of the shortest runways in Vanuatu. Single adult airfares to both towns cost 8,550 vatu (A$100) per person, a significant expense for rural Paamese. Air travel was thus favoured by those who were travelling for work (and hence not paying their own fares) or those with access to a steady income, either their own or that of urban kin. Ships were the most popular form of inter-island transport, and Paama was visited at irregular but frequent intervals by several ships carrying cargo for the island’s small stores. Villagers who wanted to travel could do so on these ships, and there was always a flow of people and goods between ship and shore whenever one appeared. Most villagers preferred the more predictable timetable, and newer facilities of the largest ship, Big Sista, which docked at Liro twice a week as it travelled between Vila and Santo, stopping at various other islands along the way. A one-way ticket to Vila or Santo on Big Sista cost 5,500 vatu (A$65). Importantly, while Air Vanuatu charged 118 vatu (A$1.40) per kilogram for freight, ships charged by the carton (roughly 600 vatu (A$7) per carton). This was significant for villagers who generally travelled with heavy food gifts for kin, such as yams, coconuts or kumala (sweet potato), so most Paamese chose to travel by sea. After all, the journey to town only took about twenty-four hours by ship. To travel around the island, Paamese generally walked, and many expressed some pride in the strength required to traverse the island’s steep hills: this ability was considered a mark of being Paamese. Villagers occasionally chartered boats, but the associated costs (1,000–3,000 vatu (A$12– 15)) meant this was beyond the means of most. In 2011, a single vehicle, a ute, was present on the island; this trak (car, truck) had been donated by an MP but had been impounded by the police because of outstanding loan repayments. If the loan could not be repaid, the trak would be returned to Vila. Bicycles and other forms of transport were virtually non-existent (and rather unsuited to the hilly terrain), so transport around the island was largely limited to foot.

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Rural Population It is both inescapable and visibly obvious that many Paamese have left Paama: abandoned and decaying houses scattered throughout the Liro area villages provide a constant visual reminder of this movement. Yet to suggest that Paama is empty, as many villagers rhetorically claimed in 2011, is not correct; or if it is, the island has been empty for at least a generation. Indeed, the number of Paamese households had barely altered between 1982 (ninety-one households) and 2011 (ninety households), and the total population, including a few temporary absentees, was also relatively stable: between 1982 and 2011, the male population had increased from 153 to 166, while the female population had increased from 163 to 171. But, this stability could also be read as a sign of stagnation. Just as population levels had remained relatively constant between 1982 and 2011, population structures had similarities with those of a generation ago (Figures 2.3 and 2.4). Many Paamese were unable to provide their exact age, so these figures represent a ‘best guess’ estimate. Where ages differed from those collected by Gerald Haberkorn, an average was calculated. There was no pattern to these variations, but discrepancies generally did not affect the five-year age bracket to which villagers were assigned. Most notably, the population remained concentrated in the younger age groups with a spike around the ten- to fourteen-year-old age bracket, reflecting the practice of sending urban-born children to the island to assist and be cared for by their grandparents. The rise in non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and heart disease and limited on-island health facilities meant life expectancy had not increased. Quite probably, similarities in life expectancy also related to the many continuities evident in rural livelihoods. The sharp decrease in

Figure 2.3  Liro area population, 1982. Data provided by Gerald Haberkorn. Figure created by Kirstie Petrou.

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Figure 2.4  Liro area population, 2011. Figure created by Kirstie Petrou.

young adults was linked to patterns of outmigration. By 2011, this outmigration was more pronounced than a generation earlier, and young women were participating in mobility away from the island much more than before, a reflection of changes to gendered mobility norms (chaps 3–4). In both cases, the significant ‘waist’ between twenty to forty years is typical of ­situations where migration is highly important. While outmigration had steadily continued, few Paamese abandoned their rural assets upon leaving the island. Many families wished to actively maintain a rural presence and ensured at least one member of their immediate family remained on Paama to caretake family assets, a situation typical throughout Vanuatu (Lindstrom 2011). This practice was long-standing and goes some way to explaining the relatively stable rural population size. As the inheritors of land in a patrilineal society, the men of the family  – brothers, uncles or sons  – were often the ones to act as rural caretakers. Nonetheless, in a minority of cases, women remained at ‘home’, as the responsibility was assigned to the family member with the fewest other commitments, particularly one without ‘good’ employment in town. These women, whose livelihoods were invariably linked to the land in their care, were in a precarious position, and if their male relatives returned to the island, then the women and their families could even be asked to cede use of the land, and in some cases the houses, for which they had been caring. Sometimes parents remained on the island in this caretaker role, but as they aged and needed assistance to complete daily tasks such as planting and maintaining food gardens, one of their children was expected to return to provide this support. Some children happily moved back to Paama, but those who were well established in town were often reluctant to return to the island, preferring instead that elderly parents move to Vila. While

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such a move risked the loss of access to rural resources, it was generally encouraged by those who, in all likelihood, would not return to Paama to live. Some families compromised, and elderly parents would spend a year or two ‘visiting’ town before returning to Paama. Other urban Paamese sent their own children to live on the island with their grandparents, a common strategy throughout Vanuatu (Lindstrom 2011; Wilson 2013) and amongst other diasporic Pacific populations (Lee 2003). This had several positive outcomes. Not only were grandchildren able to assist their grandparent(s) with physically demanding tasks, but also their mere presence absolved migrants of the need to return themselves, as the child was a physical reminder of their parents’ commitment and link to island life. Even better, sending a child to Paama reduced financial strain on stretched urban household budgets (chap. 7). While it was always expected, not all elderly Paamese received assistance from their (grand)children, and some did live alone on the island. Villagers were generally happy to assist these elders in whatever way they could, but it was openly, and frequently, acknowledged that this was a task their children should have been performing and that these children were not looking after their parents as they should. The case of Mary, aged about eighty years, who lived alone on Paama, provides an apt example of the strategies families employed to support elderly parents from afar: Mary was a wizened yet sprightly widow whose adult daughter and two sons had all lived in Vila for a lengthy period. The eldest son, Noel, held a prestigious job in town, and had built a large, mostly complete, Western-style brick house on Paama. He had never lived in this house but had used it once or twice when he came to visit his mother. Rather than live in her son’s house, Mary preferred to stay in her own home, a rusty, dilapidated corrugated iron dwelling without a well or access to electricity. In 2011, Mary had just returned from two years spent in Vila with her children. While they wanted her to remain permanently in town, Mary chose to return home to Paama. Although she loved spending time with her family, she had decided her most recent visit to Vila would be her final urban stay, as she was old now and wanted to remain on her island. Mary was still able to make a small garden close to her house and was relatively agile. Her children sent her anything she needed and could contact her via other family members’ mobile phones. Nonetheless, there were many forms of support – for example, assistance in the garden – that could not be provided through remittances, and thus, as she grew older, greater responsibility for Mary’s care gradually fell on her fellow villagers.

Decisions about care for elderly parents were often made as a family group, and Sarah and Mark provide a contrasting example to that of Mary and her family:

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In consultation with Mark’s brothers, Sarah and Mark decided they should return to Paama from Vila, to care for Mark’s parents. This was a move they were happy to make, and in 2011, Sarah and Mark were living on Paama with their two young children. Mark, the second-born son in his family, grew up on Paama. Sarah had been raised by relatives on Malakula, while her parents lived and worked in Vila. She had spent six years living in Vila herself and met Mark, her stret (‘straight’, correct or true) husband according to kastom, when he was working in Vila. In 2008, Mark’s older brother, Kim, the firstborn son in the family, decided Sarah and Mark should return to Paama to care for Kim and Mark’s elderly, yet still mobile parents. Traditionally this care role would have fallen to Kim and his wife. However, Kim held a steady, well-paid job in Vila and owned a piece of urban land upon which he was building a large permanent house. Mark, on the other hand, had been working only sporadically in construction and lived in an informal settlement. It therefore made more ‘sense’ for Kim to remain in Vila, where he could provide for his parents through remittances: the sizeable brick house he had constructed for them on Paama, and the extensive solar lighting systems he had installed provided a practical example of this. It was decided Mark could best contribute to his parents’ wellbeing through his physical presence on the island. Kim made arrangements accordingly, and Sarah and Mark returned to Paama with their children. For his part, Kim upheld his own end of the bargain by sending generous remittances and was known in the community for the commendable manner in which he looked after his rural kin.

Paamese employed a variety of strategies to manage individual and family needs through both physical mobility and translocal kin networks. However, even as Sarah and Mark were happy to return ‘home’, these decisions were not always made so willingly; some urban Paamese were pressured or coerced into returning to the island by their family, so the move involved a degree of rancour. It was impossible to please everyone all the time. Although population structures remained similar between 2011 and 1982, the style of rural residence had altered. In 1982, rural-rural based circulation was significant, with islanders travelling back and forth to various destinations, and sixty villagers (forty-one men and nineteen women) were recorded as circular migrants. By 2011, less than half this number (seventeen men and eleven women) were temporarily absent from Paama. In the thirty-year period, migration was both becoming more focused on Paama and Vila and more likely to be permanent, rather than a part of a recurrent pattern of circular mobility (chaps 3–4).

Housing Stock: From Bush to Brick Paamese outmigration was evident not only in the vacant houses dotted throughout the villages but also in the many permanent houses in the Liro

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Figure 2.5  Liro area housing, 2011: traditional kitchen house (left), clapboard house (centre) and ‘modern’ brick house and water tank (right). Photograph by Kirstie Petrou.

area (Figure 2.5). Such permanent houses, which easily outnumbered traditional natangura dwellings, were associated with the ‘good life’ and considered a real sign of development. When I commented on the prevalence of ‘good houses’, Paamese argued that on bigger islands such as Tanna and Malakula, where villagers had easier access to incomes through, for example, large copra holdings, they were not careful with their money and did not plan for the future as Paamese did. On those islands, I was told, people lived olbaot (‘any which way’, generally used to imply a degree of carelessness), unlike Paamese for whom building a permanent house represented a priority. The Paamese housing stock may have reflected a desire to plan ahead, but it also provided a physical marker of the history of Paamese migration. The earliest surviving permanent houses were constructed from clapboard and dated from the 1960s and 1970s, when young single men commonly spent a period – often several years – working in Noumea. Upon return to Paama, their success as migrant workers was measured by their financial ability to construct permanent houses. These houses represented a socially sanctioned way of displaying, but more importantly neutralising, wealth and ensured a relatively equal socio-economic status was maintained (Haberkorn 1987). Half a century later, it was therefore easy to determine which households

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contained family members who had worked in Noumea, as they all owned clapboard houses in varying states of disrepair. The next generation of permanent houses were constructed from kapa (corrugated iron) and paid for with earnings from urban employment. These houses were mostly built around the end of the twentieth century, but in most villages these were less common than the third generation, the most modern symbol of success, the brick house, which had come into vogue over the last five or ten years. Whether the scarcity of kapa houses was from rust, as a result of constant exposure to sea air, a shorter period of popularity or replacement of housing stock was unclear. In 2011, those who had access to some form of cash income, whether their own or via remittances, aspired to build brick houses. These often took years to construct as the owners amassed the necessary funds, and piles of building materials were a common sight around the villages. At the same time traditional ‘bush’ houses had not altogether disappeared and were most common amongst younger, newly established households and the elderly who were without the resources to construct more permanent dwellings. Kitchen houses, which needed to accommodate the hot, smoky business of cooking over open fires, also tended to be natangura, as they were more open than modern houses and allowed air to flow freely. Importantly, while a family’s dwelling type gave some indication of involvement in the cash economy over the life course, housing styles did not necessarily reflect current socio-economic status.

Other Rural Amenities In 2011, electricity was provided to Liro and the surrounding villages through a generator owned by Malampa Province. The generator was housed in a small shed on the outskirts of the Liro Council Area and sputtered away for several hours each evening from roughly six until nine o’clock. Any household could connect to the generator providing they supplied their own extension cord and paid the fee for use. As a result, generator use was most common amongst households located nearby, who required only a relatively short extension cord. Generator connections cost 300 vatu (A$3.50) a week per household, a sum intended to cover the cost of fuel. Many villagers found it challenging to make these weekly payments, and concessions were made for those, such as the elderly, who had a connection but were unable to pay. A few households had their own private generators, which were used infrequently for light, watching DVDs and charging mobile phones. The handful of villagers who could afford to had invested in solar panels to provide a reliable source of electricity without the ongoing expense of fuel. No rivers or creeks exist on Paama, and while villagers had access to a ­diesel-powered reticulated water supply in the early 1980s, it had disappeared

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by 2011. Rather, households relied upon a combination of privately owned wells and tanks, as well as communally owned water tanks and pumps, for their freshwater needs. The tropical climate and frequent rainfall ensured wells did not often run dry. Even so, some villagers expressed concern over low water levels in their wells, but in 2011, at least, access to freshwater did not pose a problem. Even in a small area like Liro, inequalities were evident, as some households could access facilities such as the generator or private water tanks that others could not. The reasons for these inequalities were not always purely economic, however, and other factors such as housing location and desires (some villagers simply were not interested in accessing the generator) also influenced behaviour and opportunities.

Marine Resources Paama’s marine resources are seemingly plentiful. The waters surrounding the island are home to many varieties of fish; long mouth, tuna, poulet and flying fish were all enjoyed by villagers. The fringing reef that encircled the island also provided a source of fresh fish, but after several cases of fish-related food poisoning, some villagers had become reluctant to consume certain species of reef fish. The reef itself was divided into regions of customary ownership, which determined who was allowed to fish where; Paamese were expected to fish only in the areas allocated to their home village. In addition, certain regions or species were sometimes declared tabu (taboo, forbidden) when stocks needed to replenish or when inter-village disagreements arose. In 2010, Liro Nesa villagers were barred from the Liro beach after tempers flared over a land dispute. During this ban, villagers from Liro Nesa who simply wanted to access the beach to travel or send remittances had to first ask permission from the Liro jif (chief). This tabu lasted for several months and was lifted only after an official apology was given at the nakamal, the traditional meeting ground. More often, however, ignoring prohibitions or taking fish from the wrong area merely resulted in monetary fines. Fishing was the domain of men, who either fished from the shore using a hook and line, from traditional canoes or, in a minority of cases, from motorboats. Some also dived with spears, although more traditional spear fishing methods had disappeared. Women were in charge of collecting limpets from the shore, as well as crabs, which were found both on the beach and in the bush. While roughly half of all households fished, and a fifth sold fish within the village, this was an irregular activity for most. Catching large fish involved a two-to-five-hour return journey into deep waters and could only be done when the time was available. Trips had to be timed with the weather and could not be made when winds were too

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strong. Access to fishing equipment also posed a problem: roughly half of all households did not own a canoe, and villagers were often short of the time, skills or equipment needed to mend broken canoes and boats. As a result, households tended to fish on a ‘needs only’ basis, selling their catch to generate small amounts of cash for immediate needs. In the 1980s, too, fishing was infrequent, for almost identical reasons; villagers explained they did not fish because they had neither the time nor the equipment to do so. A series of shark attacks, which were widely blamed on sorcery, had also posed a barrier, although this fear had mostly subsided by 2011. Some villagers suggested fish stocks were lower than in the past, but it is difficult to determine the accuracy of this familiar claim. In a very small way, fishing had become commercialised. A small fisherman’s association existed, run by a respected community member who employed four fishermen to work from his two motorboats. The fishermen paid for the petrol they used and then sold their catch to the association for 250 vatu (A$3) per kilogram. The fish were placed in a freezer belonging to the association and sold to villagers at a slight profit for 350 vatu (A$4) per kilogram. Others could also sell fish to the association, and profits were used to buy petrol for the generator that powered the freezer. While fish could be caught year-round, the supply was not constant, and the freezer was only turned on sometimes. Some attempts had been made to sell fish to restaurants in Vila, but the unreliable transport connections, along with small financial returns, meant this project quickly petered out. Despite their limited engagement in fishing, villagers were eager to eat fresh fish. As Joe, one of the men employed by the fisherman’s association, explained: ‘There are a lot of people who want fish, but they don’t want to go fishing. When they have work they want to come and take it [from the freezer]. So they tell us to go fishing, and then when they work and have money they can buy fish’ (D’Arcy 2011: 85). Fish were considered a desirable food source, yet several barriers, which had remained virtually unchanged for a generation, meant villagers did not fish regularly or rely upon fishing as a significant source of income. This limited engagement in fishing, along with the use of taboos to ensure stocks were maintained, meant marine resource use was sustainable almost by default. In the absence of external forces such as the appearance of and access to new markets, it is unlikely this will change in the immediate future.

Agriculture Subsistence agriculture was central to rural livelihoods, and an essential part of being Paamese. Paamese legend has it that ancestors grew from the same land on which gardens were planted. Engaging with this land via

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subsistence agriculture both reinforced identity and connections to place. Gardening, however, was no easy task, and villagers agreed planting and tending to crops required hadwok. Unlike other islands, where gardens were simply planted on land cleared from bush, on Paama, it was first necessary to sun-dry cleared land before setting fire to tree stumps and any other remaining debris. Finally, the area was scraped clean. These practices were intended to make the soil more fertile, and only afterwards could crops be planted. For the most part, gardens were planted on Paama’s steep hills, where crops (and those who tended them) clung to the slopes in mind-boggling defiance of gravity. Land ownership itself was something of a patchwork quilt; most families owned several small parcels of land, the distribution of which dated back to the 1880s and 1890s and the taem blong winim graon (time of original land acquisitions), when returned labour migrants quickly cleared, and then laid claim to large areas of land using the new tools such as axes and saws they had procured on their journeys. The size and number of land holdings varied between families, reflecting past opportunities for and engagement in labour migration; some men who had been sick, lazy or uninterested, as well as those who were away working at the time, had only limited opportunity to claim land for themselves (Haberkorn 1987). As land was normally passed from father to son, few opportunities existed for families to increase their landholdings. Reflecting land ownership patterns, most households made several food gardens in various locations. On average, gardens were located an hour’s walk from home villages, and while it may seem counter-intuitive, many villagers preferred to garden on their more distant land holdings, as gardens closer to the village were in danger from pigs. More distant land was also more fertile than that closer to the villages, which had been farmed more intensively. For some villagers, travelling to the garden was a social outing that allowed them to gossip and work alongside kin. Gardening was something these villagers did several times a week, and some even visited their gardens with no intention of working. Carol explained: ‘Every day I go to the garden, I don’t go to take food, I just go to look. I go with friends, walk around, talk, take some coconuts and come back’ (D’Arcy 2011: 60). For some villagers, however, particularly those who were busy with other economic activities, gardens were visited once a week or less. Economic activities were often prioritised over gardening. Forty-nine-year-old Toby, a small business owner, explained: ‘I don’t make a lot of gardens, because I have a store to run. That’s it, that’s why I don’t have more time to make gardens.’ The twice-weekly market in Liro, non-existent in 1982, meant that should villagers run short on time (or the desire) to visit their gardens, they could purchase grin kakae (‘green food’, fresh garden produce) from

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the market. Many villagers received rice and other store-bought goods as remittances, and anecdotal evidence suggests these were consumed with greater regularity than a generation ago, a trend common to much of island Melanesia. Nonetheless, for most households, local subsistence products continued to provide the bulk of their daily food needs. On average, Liro area households had 3.1 gardens under cultivation in 2011, a decrease from the average five gardens per household in 1982. As gardens were not of uniform size, this does not provide an indication of the area of land under cultivation per se, since measuring and mapping land is a notoriously controversial activity, and it was not feasible to survey land areas. During his 1982 fieldwork, Haberkorn was warned to avoid land issues, and after drawing rough sketches of the four Liro area villages, was asked to explain his behaviour in a meeting at the nakamal. This degree of sensitivity was indicative of pressure on the land and competitive claims to particular tracts of land that were better left uncertain rather than formally committed to paper. The most commonly planted food crops were kumala, aelan kabis (island cabbage), taro, coconuts, bananas, manioc and plantains. Other foods, including wild yams and greens such as kabis blong krik (‘cabbage from the creek’, an edible fern) and nambor (an edible leaf), grew freely and were often harvested for food. Madeleine D’Arcy (2011) recorded several varieties and cultivars of these crops, which villagers selected for various reasons, including their suitability to particular conditions, the time taken to fruit or just copying what their neighbours had planted. Some changes in crop preferences had occurred over time; whereas yams were once Paama’s primary crop, they had been replaced by the less labour-intensive yet similar-yielding staples of sweet potato and banana. Whether these changes had occurred because of changing preferences (the appearance of alternative varieties) or changing needs (reduced soil fertility) was unclear. Fallow periods had decreased from between five to ten years to an average three years, although this was not significantly shorter than some other areas of Vanuatu. It was not evident why Paama’s fallow periods had decreased, although it hinted at land shortages, and villagers believed that along with shorter fallow periods, the quality and quantity of food produced had declined. Many households owned livestock (chickens, pigs or cows) and sometimes sold them if approached to do so. Most animal owners, however, did not actively seek sales. Some 22 per cent of households owned cows, and more than half (58 per cent) owned pigs. Keeping cows or pigs represented a way of ‘saving’ money during community celebrations, particularly weddings, when these animals were used in traditional exchange; animal ownership meant pigs or cows did not need to be purchased specifically for the event. However, raising pigs was labour intensive; they needed to be not

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only fed but also kept securely caged to ensure they did not destroy others’ gardens. If they did, the garden owner was allowed to kill the pig in retribution. Those who could afford to do so preferred to buy pigs rather than keep them. Chickens were by far the easiest animal to care for, as they roamed the villages and lived off food scraps, so almost all households (97 per cent) kept chickens. Furthermore, unlike cows or pigs, chickens could be more easily slaughtered to provide a meal, without incurring financial loss. Some households earned irregular incomes from cash cropping. An abundance of coconut trees meant copra (dried coconut flesh) was in some respects the most accessible cash crop. Producing copra, however, was a labour-intensive task with small financial returns; the coconuts needed to be collected and dried, and prices were low and unstable. Consequently, copra production was a generally unpopular livelihood strategy, and in 1982, most Paamese had chosen not to participate in cash cropping. In contrast, in 2011 copra prices were unusually high, prompting more than half (58 per cent) of all households to engage in copra production to varying extents. This was the first time in two decades that Paamese had produced copra, and most did not plan to continue once prices had fallen, as they anticipated they would. But it remained a fallback option that was always there. Mirroring trends throughout Vanuatu, kava (Piper methysticum) had become Paama’s preferred cash crop. The roots of the kava plant can be ground to produce an intoxicating and soporific beverage, a well-liked recreational drink that was much cheaper and more accessible than alcohol. Unlike copra, kava could be planted and essentially left alone for five years, at which point it was ready to harvest. Indeed, some households planted kava as a medium-term savings plan, timing the harvest to cover projected expenses such as children’s school fees. Women on Paama did not consume kava, but it was popular amongst many men, and a couple of small kava bars operated within the villages, where a handful of men gathered nightly to drink kava, relax and storian (tell stories, chat) together. Kava was mostly sold either privately or to these kava bars, but several villagers remitted kava to kin in Vila, where it was sold on their behalf. Investment in other cash crops was negligible, although a few families had planted sandalwood when seeds, which were not available on the island, were given to them by friends or family. Changes in cash cropping opportunities reflected changing global markets; the fall in copra prices occurred roughly when Vanuatu lost key French copra markets in 1981–1982, while its rise in popularity in 2011 responded to rising global prices. Two or three decades ago, cocoa was a popular cash crop, but the loss of key buyers led to the end of cocoa production.

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I remember the time where we all got independence . . . We had all stopped making copra . . . Every man, everyone here started to plant cocoa. Cocoa was planted inside everyone’s plantations. If you had some ground, you would cut it and plant cocoa . . . [Now] we have cut it out, every one, and burnt it . . . Now you look, everyone has started to cut copra and coconuts again. (Jenni in D’Arcy 2011: 69)

Despite the island’s seeming remoteness, Paamese involvement in cash cropping was heavily influenced by global markets, and opportunities will continue to evolve as crop prices rise and fall, markets and buyers come and go, and new crops present themselves.

Borrowing, Lending, Subsisting: Gardens and Land Access There is no escaping the fact that Paama is a small, mountainous island, and access to garden land is more limited than on other, larger islands (Siméoni and Lebot 2012). High levels of outmigration therefore helped ensure the rural population did not outgrow terrestrial (and marine) resources, a fact that was widely recognised by villagers. While Paamese believed it would be ‘better’ if all Paamese lived on the island (which was considered their ‘proper’ home) villagers also acknowledged large-scale return migration would likely result in land shortages. Many joked that, should all Paamese return to Paama, the island would sink: A lot of people have left. There are only a few of us who are still on Paama, but the land belonging to everyone who has left is still here. They don’t use it [so we can]. But I think if everyone came back one day . . . there wouldn’t be enough land for everyone. (Isaiah, seventy-six)

In 2011, every household reported sufficient land access for their own food requirements. At the same time, however, villagers were concerned about what might happen in the future, should population increase: ‘Right now we still have enough [land] because a lot of Paamese live in Vila. So it means that we are still able to make gardens. One day, maybe around 2020, things will start to become tight’ (Tim, forty-three). While land ownership varied between families, sharing ensured villagers could access enough land for their own needs. In 1982, roughly half (51 per cent) of Liro area households planted all their gardens on their own land, while a third planted more than half their gardens on others’ land. Similarly, in 2011, a third of households gardened on borrowed land or sometimes used others’ land if invited. Of these, 14 per cent were exclusively using others’ land, while most (85 per cent) were using others’ land in combination with their own. More than half (55 per cent) of all households either

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had land in use by others or, if they were asked, let others use their land for planting gardens. Use of others’ land, however, was not necessarily a reflection of a given household’s own land holdings. Rather, villagers were often invited to use land belonging to others or used land they were minding for absent relatives – and almost everyone had absent relatives. In general, villagers were willing to share their land with others, as doing so was considered a part of Paamese culture and reinforced relationships of reciprocity and exchange: They have [their own land], but our culture is different. If you are a part of my family, and you want to work on my land, you come and ask. It doesn’t matter if you have your own gardens, your own land, but if you want to work [on my land], you come and ask, and you can. You use the land while the food is growing, but the land belongs to me. (Dean, fifty-four)

Although land-sharing arrangements were flexible, some restrictions applied to how borrowed land could be used. Only crops that could be harvested and removed were allowed, and those borrowing the land were expected to share some of the harvest with the landowner (although this varied in practice). While it was tabu to sell food crops planted on borrowed land in the 1980s, by 2011 this was no longer so, and both food and kava for sale were commonly grown. Nonetheless, income from sales was small, and uses that implied greater permanence, such as erecting dwellings or planting trees, were rare. This was an important restriction, as it avoided possible future conflicts over land ownership; planting coconut trees was a way of marking land ownership during the taem blong winim graon, and tree planting was still associated with land rights. With these taboos in place, landowners could loan land freely, without fear of losing it forever. In 1982, some Liro area families were functionally landless, but no one identified as such in 2011, suggesting this was not a significant problem. Many villagers were caretaking land belonging to migrants, and while this land would theoretically need to be ceded should migrant kin return to Paama, most deemed this a distant, sometimes laughable, possibility. Importantly, while land was linked to livelihood opportunities, ownership was not considered by most villagers to present a barrier to planting cash crops. Indeed, as in the past, poor returns on labour inputs were the most significant barrier to cash cropping. In addition to their kastom land on Paama, nearly a quarter of households (23 per cent) also owned land on other islands in 2011: a small increase from the 20 per cent of households that held off-island land in 1982. This land had been purchased, inherited from husbands or fathers or granted

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through kastom agreements. Just under half (46 per cent) of this land was on other outer islands, notably Epi and Ambrym, while the rest was in Vila or Santo. Land purchases reflected Vanuatu’s colonial history; rural land was purchased before 1980 and independence, from either kastom owners or French plantation owners preparing to depart the soon to be ex-colony. Until the 1980s, this land was used primarily for planting trees and other crops that could not be planted on borrowed land, but by 2011 such land was most often used to plant kava. In the lead-up to independence in 1980, land disputes on Epi and elsewhere made the purchase of outer island land less feasible and therefore less attractive, and purchases shifted to urban areas, where land had more immediate and valuable use. Most households with urban land owned or planned to build rental properties, which, in tight urban housing markets, would ensure a steady flow of income. While purchasing land was not uncommon, quite a few villagers believed this was something only migrants did, and they therefore had no interest in doing so themselves; kastom land was enough for them. Related to land access, disputes over land were not considered a significant problem in 2011, and while disagreements sometimes occurred, these were generally solved through community meetings. As is the case elsewhere in Vanuatu, only when money became involved, primarily in the form of land rents, did major problems arise (Hess 2009; Taylor 2008). Thus, there was an ongoing disagreement over ownership of the Liro Council Area, which had been in and out of court for several years, a common process for such claims (de Burlo 1989). As of November 2011, the decision was still under appeal: If you go and make a house and don’t pay [the landowner], if it is just free, it will be all right. But if you want to pay a small amount of rent to [the landowner], someone else will come and say that the land is theirs. They’ll argue because of this. (Richard, sixty-one)

As land disputes were considered disagreeable, and often were, several villagers had made a conscious decision not to toktok from graon (talk or argue because of land). Several women explained land disputes should be avoided because ‘God brings you into the world without land, and you leave without it; you cannot take land with you when you are buried.’ As women did not stand to inherit land, their status influenced these statements, and they cannot be taken as a wider indicator of changing attitudes; connection to land remained an important part of Paamese identity. However, for some at least, land had started to take on some of the more Western characteristics of alienable property.

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Making a Living on Paama In the absence of severe, but not improbable, environmental shocks such as cyclones, mudslides and volcanic eruptions, Liro area villagers met most of their daily food needs through subsistence agriculture. However, as aspirations have risen, and with them the perceived necessity of education and consumer goods ranging from store-bought foods to mobile phones and DVD players, villagers increasingly participated in other livelihood activities. On Paama, livelihood activities were many and varied: in 2011, villagers engaged in thirty-six different activities to earn smol vatu (Figure 2.6). These activities fell into four broad and overlapping categories: subsistence agriculture and fishing; commercial agriculture and fishing (primarily the sale of cash crops); regular wage employment in both the government and private sectors; and more irregular private sales of goods and services. On average, households undertook five livelihood activities. Engaging in various activities protected against unpredictable occurrences such as volcanic ash, bad weather or other climatic events, as well as the late shipment of goods required for small business activities. For many villagers, however, five activities were fewer than they would have liked; mirroring trends from the 1980s, community work commitments (chap. 3) often meant villagers did not have the time to invest in individual projects such as weaving mats, repairing broken canoes or running their own small businesses: I might [make another canoe], but I don’t know. I don’t know because there is a lot of work . . . Every day, every day [there are activities]. That’s what it’s like. So you can’t do anything. (Aaron, thirty-seven) Yes, there are a lot [of activities], so we can’t do anything. You sit down, and they say, ‘Oh, everyone is going to do some work over there, come on, let’s go.’ There are too many activities . . . Every day there is something on for one of the organisations, or the chiefs, or the mothers, or the youth . . . Because it’s like this, you don’t have the opportunity to do anything for yourself. We’re always just doing community work. (Julia, forty-one)

Not only was time a factor in determining livelihood opportunities, but a household’s human capital, relating to the age and gender of household members available for work, was also important. One of the most disadvantaged households was headed by Margaret, a young widow with a schoolaged daughter who had no close kin remaining on the island: Margaret and her daughter, Jane, lived alone on Paama in a small natangura house. Margaret’s husband had died while working as a resort manager in Vila, a death she

Figure 2.6  Livelihood strategies employed by Liro area households, 2011. Figure created by Kirstie Petrou.

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Subsistence Realities, Material Dreams  59 blamed on nakaemas (sorcery, black magic); others had been jealous of his success so had ‘spoiled’ him. Margaret had often visited her husband in Vila when he was alive but always returned to Paama, where she was caring for her mother-in-law, also since deceased. Her two brothers-in-law lived and worked in Vila, and it was only Margaret and Jane who remained on the island. Margaret’s brothers-in-law infrequently sent money to help her, but it never went far, and Margaret felt she could not ask them for more. She also felt uncomfortable approaching her own family for assistance, since she was married and, as her husband had paid a braedpraes, she now ‘belonged’ to his family. Margaret did not know what would happen when Jane commenced high school next year and she would need to pay school fees, but it was likely that Jane would have to end her education. To earn money, Margaret weaved mats, sold food and had planted some kava, which was not yet ready to harvest. She was unable to make copra since it was too much work for one person, and without adequate off-­ island support, it was difficult to raise the capital to invest in other small business activities. Margaret had worked in Vila when she was younger, and while she would have been happy to do so again, without the money to travel, urban employment was not a possibility. Instead, all her energy was devoted to simply making ends meet, and while others offered small amounts of support, without additional household members to rely upon, life was hard and options were limited.

It is clear that households required both social and financial capital to invest in non-subsistence activities, as well as human capital to meet the labour requirements of cash cropping. Gender too played a role; as a woman and a widower, Margaret was unable to demand assistance from her family in the same way a man would have been. Margaret may have been an extreme example, but small households such as hers, with limited access to kin support networks, were at a distinct disadvantage and relied heavily upon the charity of others. For the most part, livelihood activities were undertaken sporadically on a ‘needs only’ basis. While more than a quarter (28 per cent) of all households weaved mats for example, most only sold one or two every few months. In addition to the infrequent sale of mats, fish or garden produce, 39 per cent of all households relied upon some form of semi-regular wage employment. For 18 per cent of households, this involved formal wage employment, which ranged from full- to part-time hours and included kindergarten or schoolteachers, administrative work for the island council, church pastors, healthcare staff and maintenance workers. Others were self-employed, such as small store owners, or informally employed by other villagers. The latter received token payments for their work, whereas wages for formal employment ranged from 5,000 to 25,000 vatu (A$59–294) per month. However, wages had not increased significantly since 1982, and payments were often delayed or less than the official amount. One woman, a nurse aide, had

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waited three years for her first pay cheque, while the island’s pastors, whose incomes were determined by tithes, received a pittance, sometimes as low as 1,000 to 2,000 vatu (A$12–24) per month. As in the past, employment was valued more for the associated social status than the income it brought in, but the fact that incomes had barely increased for three decades, and the number and range of employment options were so limited, indicated why urban wage employment was increasingly attractive. While the rate of formal wage employment remained exactly the same as in 1982, taking into account informal activities, villagers had much greater access to cash flow by 2011. This was in part because of the establishment of Vaum Secondary School at Liro, and while only one villager was employed as a teacher, others had secured handyman, construction and other work. New technology had allowed some villagers to corner various niche markets; one family was sent a small lawnmower by their son and charged other villagers to trim the grass around their houses. Overall, however, businesses remained similar in style to those of 1982, offering goods or services for payment, and as is common in the Pacific, many identical (or, as Paamese called them, ‘monkey’) businesses existed, a reflection of the few livelihood opportunities on small islands: several women baked bread rolls, and some made gato (fried bread), while store owners stocked a virtually identical array of goods. Although Paama’s gardens may have been bountiful, the uniformity of on-island resources meant diversity largely relied upon a household’s social capital, primarily connections to migrant kin willing to provide financial support. Small stores are an apt example of the social and financial capital required to establish a business or other enterprise on the island. All business owners had either worked in town themselves or received ongoing financial support from migrant kin. In many ways, running a business was akin to other more traditional forms of kin collaboration such as braedpraes contributions; organising and coordinating these investments was not a simple task and required leadership skills (Curry 1999). All store owners were community leaders of some description, and each held a position of status, whether through the church or chiefly titles. In their role as community leaders, business owners were expected to assist the elderly and less well off and to contribute items such as large bags of rice to community events. Doing so ensured they were not targeted by nakaemas and further enhanced their social standing. Successful businesses were therefore measured in both economic and social terms, and while Paamese store owners were reluctant to reveal their earnings, anecdotal evidence suggests they operated at minimal profit. Most stores displayed signs demanding villagers settle their accounts, but non-payment was rarely pursued. One store owner explained:

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Subsistence Realities, Material Dreams  61 Yes, it’s just family [who don’t pay their accounts], so I had to make a notice like this . . . I feel a little bit bad . . . So when family makes an account, you just note it down. When they think of it, they’ll come and pay. But you can’t stay angry with your family, they’re more important than money. (Antoine, forty-one)

Stores were therefore linked more widely into the community, although the fear and threat of nakaemas suggests villagers did not want store owners to acquire too much status and preferred a greater degree of equality. For women in particular, selling food was a common way to earn smol vatu. Almost half (46 per cent) of all households intermittently sold grin kakae, while 18 per cent sold cooked food such as laplap (a traditional dish made from grated root vegetables and coconut milk, slow-cooked on hot stones) when they needed to raise funds for school fees or other expenses. Most sold food either from their house or to the school, where it was accepted in lieu of school fees. Significantly, while Liro area women frequently purchased items from the weekly market, they rarely sold produce there, a fact attributed to ‘shame’ and a reluctance to be seen selling goods in public. Private food sales, which occurred from their own houses, and hence were less visible, were not considered shameful. A few households sold Western style foods, including bread and gato, but the need to purchase ingredients represented a barrier to entry for many: even the lack of a tiny amount of financial capital could reduce opportunities for ‘small business’: ‘But because I don’t have enough money to pay for flour, yeast, oil, all of these things, I don’t make them [bread or gato]. I just make mats because I plant pandanus, so it’s easier for me’ (Teresa, twenty-one). Selling food may have been an easy way to earn smol vatu, but villagers lamented the monetisation of exchanges once based on reciprocity: in the past, food was used to maintain relationships, and only cash crops were sold for profit: Yes, we sell things like food. If someone wants to buy something, we sell it to them. Now we sell food, but before we didn’t sell it, we would just give it away. If someone came, you would give them some food to eat. This is what life was like on the island before. You wouldn’t pay for food. But now, I’ve noticed that if you ask for food, you have to pay for it. (Scott, seventy-six)

Even so, sharing persisted. Food was shared with kin and those, such as the elderly, who could not produce enough of their own: monetisation of food transactions notwithstanding, no one on Paama went hungry. Various irregular income-earning opportunities were also available to villagers. Groups of women often prepared gardens for planting or completed similar work for token sums of money. Payments, however, were generally channelled back into women’s communal savings and used towards future

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activities (generally church related), rather than put towards household needs. Young, able-bodied men carried store supplies from the Liro beach to their destination or assisted with other physically demanding tasks such as clearing bush for planting gardens. For their efforts, they either received a token amount of money, around 20 to 50 vatu (A$0.25–0.60) each, or were fed a meal of, in most cases, store-bought goods, by their employer. There were almost always some local opportunities for villagers to earn smol vatu if they needed it for any particular reason, but larger sums were hard to come by.

Living beyond Their Means While engagement in livelihood activities may have been infrequent, Paamese employed several strategies to earn cash incomes. One young couple sewed clothes and sold fresh fish, grin kakae, gato and other cooked foods. Another, older couple with three teenage children sold fuel remitted from Vila by a migrant brother, made copra and mats, sold grin kakae to the school and fished. The husband had also participated in the RSE program in 2010. Yet another household with four children aged between seven and twenty years old, planted kava, made copra, sold fuel remitted by kin, sold pigs and relied upon the husband’s wage as a nurse aide. Each of these households also planted subsistence gardens and received remittances (cash and goods of various types and value) from absent kin. The range of livelihood activities a household could participate in were determined by human (composition of household members), social (migrant kin) and natural (resources available) capital. Yet, while livelihood activities were numerous, for most households, incomes generated from on-island activities were small and sporadic (Figure 2.7), just as they had been in 1982. A generation ago, rural household incomes were more or less uniform, but by 2011, stratification was evident, a growing trend in rural Vanuatu (Hess 2009; Wilson 2013). Store owners provide one example. Whereas smaller stores sold a few items such as rice, sugar and tinned fish from the owner’s house, larger stores were run out of dedicated, permanent structures and stocked a variety of goods including matches, batteries, soap, phone credit, toilet paper and non-perishable food items (crackers, canned foods, peanut butter, rice, noodles, milk powder, tea, sugar, etc.). Although it was not possible to accurately estimate store profits, in 2011 the owners of Paama’s largest stores each participated in many other activities that generated significant incomes; one store owner was also employed as a handyman, another had several small businesses related to the store that employed other villagers, and the remaining three were earning income from rental properties. While the ability to participate in numerous high-yielding

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Figure 2.7  Average weekly income earned from different activities across twenty-six typical rural households, 2011. Figure created by Kirstie Petrou.

livelihood activities was partly a reflection of the capital required to establish a small business rather than the actual business earnings, these store owners had much greater access to income-earning opportunities than the average villager; the more financial capital one accrued, the more one could generate. Still, running a small business required the support and assistance of family members, so they could not be considered as simply individual ventures. Walter’s store provides a perfect example: Walter was the only one of his three brothers who remained on Paama. He had never lived away from the island for any significant period, and since leaving school had worked a steady stream of on-island jobs before finally opening his own business. A prominent church member, he was one of Liro’s most successful businesspeople. He not only owned a store but also ran several offshoot businesses, including second-hand clothing sales, a bread-baking oven and two boats used for fishing and transport. Until the government disconnected landlines, Walter owned one of the island’s only private telephones, which villagers could use by purchasing phone credit and paying a nominal fee for the privilege. As she had regular access to the ingredients, Walter’s wife often made large batches of gato, which she sold at the store to raise money for school fees. Walter was kept busy with the store itself, so he employed his son and classificatory brothers to work in his various businesses. When a shipment of cargo arrived, Walter paid the village boys (in either cash or kind) to carry it from the beach. Importantly, whenever there was community work to be done, Walter contributed generously. He was understanding of the plight of the elderly, particularly those who had no close relatives remaining on Paama and regularly gave them store goods. While not the most economically profitable approach, by sharing work

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amongst his brothers, and supporting community work and events, Walter (mostly) insured himself against the jealousies of others: it was important that businessmen did not appear too ‘different’. While Walter was the ‘face’ of his businesses, he relied heavily upon family help not only to establish his store but also to keep it running. The store itself was co-owned and partly funded by a classificatory brother who lived and worked in Vila, and his urban dwelling son often sent remittances. Walter’s other son stayed on Paama to provide assistance that required a physical presence on the island. In 2011, one daughter was in New Zealand participating in the RSE scheme, for the second time. Walter and his wife had decided she should participate in the scheme to assist the business, which had been in trouble before her trip. When they were in Liro, Walter’s adult daughters, who lived elsewhere, worked as cashiers in the store. Unlike some store owners, Walter made his own orders for cargo and did not rely on urban relatives. However, without the urban contacts provided by his son and business partner, and support from other family members, Walter would have been hard pressed to run the store himself.

Generating an income on Paama thus involved a wide network of kin. This is particularly evident when considering household expenditure. In 1982, it was not possible to survive on income earned only from on-island activities, and household expenditure regularly exceeded such incomes. This remained true in 2011 (Table 2.2), and off-island resources were vital in meeting weekly, monthly and yearly expenses such as generator payments, community donations and school fees. Despite the reliance on subsistence agriculture, food accounted for a significant proportion of weekly spending, a pattern consistent throughout Vanuatu (VNSO 2012). Villagers purchased food for various reasons. Some liked the convenience of store-bought foods; rice was much quicker and easier to prepare than traditional root crops, and biscuits were a handy breakfast for school children. Others bought food for health reasons; older villagers who had lost many teeth explained they could eat only rice, as it was soft and easy to chew. For others, eating store-bought products connected them to the outside world, and being able to frequently spend on such items as rice, noodles and instant coffee was a symbol of economic success. Finally, there was not much else to purchase on Paama, and what little disposable incomes villagers had almost necessarily went to food. Necessities such as candles, matches to light cooking fires, fuel for generators or batteries for torches were purchased as needed, but villagers could not estimate how often or how much they spent on them. Larger items such as tools and even clothing were generally remitted by kin in Vila, as these goods were far cheaper and more readily available in town. Other expenditures such as school fees were increasingly necessary to ensure sustainable rural futures, but ironically tied to migration. As urban employment had become increasingly reliant on education, school

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Table 2.2  Typical weekly, monthly and yearly expenditures, 2011. Expense

Weekly (vatu)

Monthly (vatu) Yearly (vatu)

Yearly (A$)

Biscuits Bread Church donations Fish (fresh) Flour Generator connection Market produce Oil Rice Salt Soap Sugar Tinned fish School fees

180 180 20 – – 300 – – 400 – – – 100 –

– – – 200 200 – 100 400 – 200 200 200 – –

23 23 11 25 25 164 13 51 219 25 25 25 55 495–526

2,160 2,160 1,040 2,400 2,400 15,600 1,200 4,800 20,800 2,400 2,400 2,400 5,200 47,000–50,000

Note: The Income an Expenditure survey was jointly administered with D’Arcy (2011) and refers to a subset of twenty-six households.

attendance ensured the next generation of migrants would be able to obtain ‘good’ jobs and continue to support their rural kin. In sum, island life was not ‘free’, as many claimed, and translocal kin networks remained vital in meeting rural expenditure needs.

Paama: A Unique yet Typical Rural Place Paama was both typical and atypical of outer islands. Distinctive for its high rate of outmigration and its mountainous terrain, Paama’s physical infrastructure and links to elsewhere were limited, like other outer islands, and its economy was centred on subsistence agriculture and intermittent cash cropping of copra and kava. Rural population size had remained relatively constant since the 1980s, largely thanks to the long-standing practice of leaving one family member on the island to look after rural assets. However, while population structures were similar, more young women were now leaving the island than at any time in the past. Furthermore, circular migration had decreased significantly, and the style of mobility away from the island had clearly altered, a process and pattern explored in more detail in chapter 4. In 2011, Paamese successfully combined migration and on-island livelihood strategies to meet their needs, much as they had done for at least a

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generation. In part because of the establishment of Vaum Secondary School, opportunities to earn cash incomes locally had increased relative to the past, but the types of activities Paamese engaged in remained similar to those of the 1980s; goods and services were bought and sold, and wages remained small. While there has been a widespread shift away from subsistence in the Global South, Paamese continued to rely upon subsistence agriculture to provide the bulk of their daily food needs. All households had access to adequate land and were able to meet their food requirements, but some changes in agricultural practices were evident, as fallow periods were shorter, and new crop varieties were planted; agro-diversity had decreased, but it was unclear whether this was out of necessity (decreased soil fertility) or desire (the ability to plant ‘new’ crops with lower work input). Just as in the past, marine resources were underused, and it is likely this will continue. Variations in livelihood activities and the extent of engagement in subsistence agriculture existed between households and reflected a given household’s opportunities, preferences and aspirations, as well as their access to physical, financial, human and social capital. Consistent with trends elsewhere in Melanesia (Birch-Thomsen et al. 2010; Mertz et al. 2010), livelihoods and natural resource use had undergone little change since the 1980s, indicating that livelihoods in such small, remote places are more adaptable and sustainable than often portrayed, but also that there are few opportunities to make real, productive changes. The next chapter builds upon this discussion to examine Paamese social organisation and how it influenced livelihood opportunities.

Note Parts of this chapter are taken from Petrou (2017).

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It’s Like We Live in Town Already Island Social Organisation ♦l♦

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espite limited livelihood opportunities, life on Paama was busy. Community work commitments are not uncommon in villages throughout Vanuatu, but in most cases, these account for only one or two days of the week. In contrast, the Liro area villages followed a demanding weekly schedule of community and church work that ran six days a week. This schedule, a product of Paamese social and political organisation, had implications for villagers’ livelihood activities and access to social capital. This chapter builds upon the discussion of island geography and natural resources in chapter 2 to consider the evolution of island social and political organisation and how these changes and continuities have both enabled and constrained opportunities for engagement in the cash economy through on- and off-island activities.

Island Social Organisation Paama is a patrilineal society, so for Paamese, their most ‘important’ relatives were traditionally fathers, brothers and paternal grandfathers, both biological and classificatory. Historically, marriages were arranged via the exchange of consanguineal and classificatory sisters, and, upon marriage, women moved to their husband’s village. Sister exchange continued in the 1980s, and while ‘love’ marriages were increasingly common by 2011, the principle of exchange persisted with the families of non-traditional marriage partners often incorporated into subsequent marriage exchanges. Thus, the idea of ‘replacing’ one’s ancestors through returning to the ‘correct’ marriage place remained important, as it did throughout Paama (Lind 2010,

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2014), and several women had married Liro area men in order to ‘replace’ their mothers. Marriage-related mobility was also unchanged in 2011, and married women continued to move to their husband’s village. Traditionally, adoption was employed to ensure families had enough children to participate in marriage exchange, and both sons and daughters played an important role in perpetuating family lineages; girls ensured future husbands for a family’s sons, while boys maintained control of land and titles. Adoption remained common in 2011, and as elsewhere in Vanuatu, adopted children often circulated between the households of their biological and adopted families. At significant life events such as marriage, adoption became important, and kinship obligations were mobilised. By the 1980s, Gerald Haberkorn had identified two main ways in which Paamese social organisation differed from that of the past. The first of these changes related to marriage: the geographical area from which spouses were chosen had expanded markedly, and braedpraes payments had become monetised. The greater area from which spouses were chosen reflected increased intra-island communication and inter-island mobility; as Paamese came into contact with a wider variety of individuals, they began to marry spouses they would never have encountered under the more restrictive mobility patterns of the past. In 2011, while it was considered preferable to marry a ‘traditional’ partner, in practice this was becoming increasingly rare, reflecting wider trends throughout Vanuatu (Hess 2009). Instead, ‘non-traditional’ spouses were often chosen from surrounding villages, neighbouring islands or, for those who had travelled, other migrant populations in town. Even so, the rural population remained relatively homogenous, and most spouses originated from Paama (70 per cent) or from the neighbouring islands of Epi, Malakula, Ambrym or Lopevi (20 per cent). The monetisation of braedpraes had its roots in the work of early missionaries and the Presbyterian Church. Maurice Frater, one of the first Presbyterian missionaries to visit Paama, believed the need to acquire pigs for marriage exchanges was fuelling labour mobility, as Paamese sought to finance these transactions. Frater considered this undesirable, and the Presbyterian Church thus banned pigs in marriage exchanges, a move that had little real impact until the 1920s, when pigs became harder to obtain. At this time, five Australian pounds and one pig became the generally accepted marriage payment. Braedpraes inflation during the 1940s, caused the church to cap payments at ten Australian pounds. Despite the church’s attempts to set an official price, however, payments of up to seventy Australian pounds were not uncommon. In 1983, the Malvatumauri (Vanuatu Council of Chiefs) had set an official braedpraes of 60,000 vatu (A$700), but again this amount was commonly exceeded; between 1978 and 1982, Paamese wedding feasts alone cost A$500 to A$1,100. This was roughly equivalent

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to the price of a car, and as a result, Paamese women in Vila had earned the nickname Toyota. In 2011, the official braedpraes payment remained 60,000 vatu for a Paamese woman, or 80,000 vatu (A$940) for women from other islands: the higher price was intended to compensate the bride’s family for her leaving her home island. Any offspring born out of wedlock incurred a further payment of 10,000 vatu (A$120) per child. Kin often assisted in meeting these costs, and while the groom traditionally would have relied upon his own fathers and brothers, by the 1980s, support networks had extended to include agnatic kin, which remained true in 2011. Increased braedpraes and associated wedding costs were linked to migration processes. First, as there were few opportunities for young men to earn an income on Paama, braedpraes payments motivated outmigration. However, as more men participated in labour mobility, and hence accrued potentially larger cash resources, increasing braedpraes payments neutralised migrant earnings such that they did not threaten the existing social order. Second, in the past, village chiefs had played an important role in directing and coordinating migration. As young men began to migrate at will, increasing braedpraes payments reinforced chiefs’ control over migrants. This social control had decreased because of young men’s mobility but paradoxically was reinforced by increasing braedpraes payments that in turn caused further mobility. Mobility was thus influenced by, and ­influenced, the setting in which it occurred. During the 1980s, weddings were judged so expensive that they were rarely performed. By 2011, however, this had changed, and most Paamese were either ‘church married’ or living in a marriage-like relationship. Group weddings, where several couples were married in the same ceremony, had become common both on Paama and elsewhere in Vanuatu (Hess 2009). Through such weddings, families could pool resources to organise the feasts and other celebrations that took place around the wedding. Furthermore, while braedpraes payments (which, it was claimed, uniformly conformed to official rates set by the Malvatumauri Council of Chiefs) still represented a huge expense relative to rural incomes, social norms around paying braedpraes had changed, and men expressed little concern over meeting these costs. In fact, just over one-fifth of men had paid braedpraes in instalments, and 18 per cent of ever-married households had not yet completed braedpraes payments. The longest of these outstanding debts had lingered for twenty-six years. Attitudes to braedpraes were changing in other ways, and in contrast to traditional arrangements, 16 per cent of ever-married men wanted to shoulder responsibility for these payments alone, explaining a wife belonged to her husband and not the wider family, a sentiment that has been recorded elsewhere in Melanesia (Macintyre 2011). As thirty-­sevenyear-old Angus put it: ‘So far, only I have paid [my wife’s braedpraes].

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I thought about it and decided that I wanted to pay by myself because my wife belongs only to me.’ Many parents supported these delayed or incomplete braedpraes payments, preferring instead to receive long-term support from daughters and their husbands. This was especially true when daughters were well educated, as was becoming increasingly common, or held a steady job. For families with fewer children, continued support from a married daughter could make a significant difference to rural livelihoods. This was a departure from the 1980s, when only one married daughter, a nurse, continued to provide financial support to her family. Instead, school fees had come to represent the most pressing economic concern for villagers. This focus on school fees, which were paid by both men and women, reflected both changing mobility norms and increased female migration (chap. 4). One couple explained their decision to refuse their daughter’s braedpraes payment as follows: We have been telling our daughter that if she has a boyfriend, we don’t want him to pay a braedpraes for her. We think this because we’ve seen that when people pay braedpraes for a woman, they lose too much money. Afterwards, the woman has been paid for, but who will look after the man’s family, who will look after the woman’s family? What’s the point of paying all this money? (Thelma, fifty-one)

By refusing to accept a braedpraes payment, parents ensured their ongoing security, and reduced the economic pressure faced by individual (male) children. Settlement patterns represented the second major change to Paamese social organisation. In the past, Paamese lived in approximately sixty small hamlets, most of which were located inland, on defensive sites, and comprised a single patrilineal descent group. These patrilineages were connected to the land through myths of origin, and people were believed to embody the land on which they lived (see also Bonnemaison 1985; Hess 2009; Sherkin 1999). The move to the larger, coastal villages of present-day Paama occurred in the late 1800s as the result of Presbyterian missionary influence. Missionaries were welcomed onto Paama by many local chiefs, and as Christianity ended the inter-village feuding that had been an ongoing feature of island life, it was generally viewed positively. Indeed, according to Reverend Frater (1922: 171): ‘Prior to the advent of the [missionary] teachers with their message of peace and goodwill, war, anarchy and bloodshed were universal. One tribe dared not visit another for fear of being killed.’ While Frater probably exaggerated, there is no doubt that life was more peaceful under Christianity. The church undermined taboos previously associated with certain pieces of land, and as friendlier inter-village relations decreased the likelihood of attack, intra-island mobility increased considerably. In

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addition, the new coastal location of settlements meant Paamese had greater access to European trading ships and more opportunities for outmigration. Despite this, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, larger settlements and the system of job rotation, where men took turns to work for the same employer, meant increased male outmigration had little impact on community function. In due course, nucleated coastal villages also made administration much easier for the condominium government. Before European contact, the five villages that today make up the Liro area existed as ten hamlets. In the 1980s, while co-resident patrilineal relatives were ideally the most important kin relations, there was evidence of a gradual breakdown of kin-based behaviour through the inclusion and assistance of other family members in tasks such as gardening and house construction. Furthermore, women, who traditionally would not have relied on their birth family for help after marriage, were often able to do so. Both these new trends were evident in 2011. Groups such as the Presbyterian Women and Mother’s Union (PWMU) were frequently hired to clear garden land, and whole villages assisted in tasks such as house construction. The accepted ‘payment’ for such work, particularly when it was performed by young men, was a (rice based) meal or smol vatu. Similarly, and as will be discussed later, women continued to support their birth families upon marriage. However, patrilineal affiliation was not entirely without importance, and those who could offer small amounts of work, generally employed their patrilineal relatives first. Thus, one small business owner employed his patrilineal brothers to bake bread for his store and to fish and ferry passengers on his boat. Work relating to wedding exchanges was also largely confined to the patrilineages to which the bride and groom belonged. Religious affiliation, too, influenced community relations. By 2011, there were three religions within the Liro area, Presbyterianism being the largest and ‘first’ church to enter Paama (there was some contention and competition over whose ancestors welcomed the first missionaries), followed by the Seventh Day Adventists (SDA) and the Assemblies of God (AOG). With their similar worship timetables, the Presbyterian and AOG congregations often worked and socialised together and attended each other’s events, an arrangement rather more beneficial for the much smaller AOG church whose membership numbered around ten. The SDA church was often in conflict with the other two religions because of their observance of the Sabbath from Friday dusk until Saturday dusk. The main function of these different religions often seemed to be to provide opportunities for disagreements, and religious divides usually followed existing social conflicts rather than having anything to do with theology. Indeed, that is how the ‘newer’ religions had usually begun; several Liro area villagers had changed church affiliation after quarrelling with others from their previous church, and

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elsewhere on Paama, a chief in Tavie refused to allow any new churches into his village, as he was weary of inter-church bickering. Presbyterians patronised one another’s small businesses, and some claimed SDA store owners overpriced their stock, but a survey of store goods and prices provided no evidence to support this accusation. SDA church members similarly tended to socialise together. Church membership therefore provided a useful marker of social ties, and kin-like relations often sprung from or were reinforced by religious affiliation.

A Week in the Life of Paama With new village settlement patterns, patrilineages that had previously inhabited separate hamlets found themselves living as one; Liro brought together four patrilineages, Liro Nesa combined three, while Asuas and Voravor were each made up of two. Not surprisingly, this brought consequences for social organisation. In pre-contact hamlets, chiefly titles (asuv in the Paamese language) were passed from fathers to sons. Successors were carefully chosen, and if the eldest son was too old or too young, not physically strong, a weak negotiator or otherwise unsuitable to act as a leader, then adult male agnates selected a different man. This alternate leader could be either another son or a brother of the current asuv. Asuvs were responsible for the organisation of communal activities, including gardening and house construction, and consequently controlled many of the hamlet’s daily activities. After resettlement, each patrilineage retained their own asuv, but the asuvs’ power steadily decreased with the individualisation of land that had once been communally owned, and the increasing political influence of both missionaries and the colonial government. Instead, a chief’s main activities became the settlement of small, local disputes and the organisation of kampani (community) work rosters, two functions that persisted into the 1980s and 2011. While organised community work in one form or another has long been a part of Liro area life, kampani work rosters in their current form began some time during the 1950s, under the guidance of Liro’s then chief Benjamin and the resident missionary, Reverend Pun. Their intention was for the community to assist the sick and the elderly with tasks they were unable to perform themselves. These work commitments did not take up more than a couple of days a week, and it was not until the 1970s that the weekly work schedule expanded to four days. It is not clear why this happened or whether it was ever challenged. By 1982, the Liro area work roster had expanded to five days per week, as chiefs continued to exercise their relatively limited powers. Two days per week were assigned to kampani work, which involved tasks such as gardening, house maintenance

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and other manual chores in exchange for cash payments. At least one adult from every household was expected to attend (fines were issued for non-­ attendance), and money earned was paid into the village fund to be used for community matters and events. In addition, two days per week were reserved for labour for the pastor and for village cleaning. A further day was given to the PWMU and Youth Fellowship fundraising activities. Saturdays were then generally used for gardening, and Sundays were set aside for church. While these activities did not necessarily take the whole day, by the time villagers had also attended to necessary domestic tasks such as cooking, cleaning and sometimes gardening, they were left with limited free time. The outcome of this constant activity was twofold. First, it reinforced chiefly authority, as chiefs were responsible for assigning work groups and chores, and fulfilled these duties almost daily. Second, as villagers had little spare time to regularly invest in individual income generating projects, the schedule ensured they retained a relatively equal socio-economic status. Indeed, Haberkorn identified this weekly schedule as a significant structural influence on Paamese outmigration; as more villagers left to escape the commitments of kampani and other work, the demands on those remaining increased, in turn leading to further outmigration. In a cultural context where open disagreement and conflict is discouraged, villagers expressed their dissatisfaction by simply leaving the island. While this form of scheduling was not a feature of village life everywhere on Paama (Lind 2010), Liro area villages continued to follow a weekly schedule in 2011, albeit one that varied slightly from that of the 1980s (Table 3.1). This timetable was sometimes altered in the case of special events or other pressing work needs but was adhered to where possible. Villagers often complained they were too busy and bemoaned the fact that village life was so hectic that it had come to resemble that of town. However, just as many expressed concern when the schedule was disrupted. One woman, for example, became frustrated when a different task was scheduled on the day normally reserved for PWMU activities and worried the women would not be able to complete all their ‘work’, which largely comprised holding meetings and organising fundraisers and trips to visit other church groups. Some villagers claimed they had too many commitments and ‘life never used to be like this’, but Haberkorn’s descriptions of a very similar schedule put this in doubt. While the weekly schedule may have become fuller in recent years, villagers have been kept busy with community work commitments for several decades. On Mondays, the weekly community meeting held at Liro’s nakamal, which regularly ran from early morning until early afternoon, was used to discuss upcoming events and developments that affected the community. Liro’s nakamal meeting was often attended by Paamese from other villages

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Table 3.1  Weekly activity schedule for the Liro area, 2011. Day

Activity

Monday Tuesday

Weekly meeting at nakamal (traditional meeting area) PWMU meeting, handicrafts Small market at Liro market house VANWODS (women’s fundraising market) Kampani (community) work PWMU meeting Fundraising Big market at Liro market house Intra-island football matches at Liro Council Area field Garden day / free time (Presbyterians and Assemblies of God) Church (Seventh Day Adventists) Church (Presbyterians and Assemblies of God) Garden day / free time (Seventh Day Adventists)

Wednesday Thursday Friday

Saturday Sunday

if special events were being discussed, land was being disputed or visitors were present. One week, for example, police officers visited from Vila to discuss the evils of marijuana and other drugs. Most Paamese had no experience of marijuana, but it was considered a lurking threat, especially as Epi, the main supplier of marijuana in the country, was so close. Limited experience of the drug merely reinforced fears about the violence and debauchery it caused; one local villager was said to have attacked his father with a knife while high. Paamese were eager to stomp out its use, and the police visit was therefore much appreciated. As rural Paamese had limited access to the national media beyond patchy radio reception and the odd outdated newspaper, travelling information sessions such as the police visit were an important way to access news and information and provided an escape from the monotony of daily life. Tuesdays and Fridays were used by the women to organise church-­related activities such as planned outreach visits to other churches. These visits were a highlight in women’s social calendars and much effort and planning went into them. When work was available, women completed small tasks such as clearing another villager’s garden for a few hundred vatu, and their earnings were put towards financing these PWMU-related activities. There was always much talk and laughter during PWMU get-togethers, and the women found real enjoyment in working together to meet their goals. Wednesday was the day for VANWODS, a market named for, but not connected to, the VANWODS microfinance scheme that operates throughout Vanuatu. Women would take foodstuffs, either cooked items such as

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bread and laplap or grin kakae such as coconuts and root vegetables, to the nakamal to sell. Food was sold cheaply (generally 20 vatu (A$0.24) for a piece of laplap or a bread roll), and money earned was then ‘saved’ in a shared account. The general objective was to use these savings for Christmas celebrations or to pay school fees. VANWODS had variable success in Liro area villages and provided a means for redistributing small amounts of cash, rather than generating real profits. Women, who themselves earned next to nothing, would often give their children a few coins to buy items from others, ensuring everyone managed to sell most of their wares. In this manner, VANWODS replicated previous sociality associated with non-monetary exchange. However, while there was an obvious social aspect to VANWODS, as women would often spend most of the morning sitting together in the nakamal gossiping, most women had specific financial aims. Indeed, there was some concern when women tried to withdraw ‘too much’ of their VANWODS savings at the ‘wrong’ time, that is, to pay for smaller expenses rather than working towards larger economic goals such as school fees. Thursdays were dedicated to community work. While the term kampani work had largely fallen out of use by 2011, community work commitments continued to resemble those of the 1980s; villagers worked together to build or maintain houses, help with gardening and complete similar tasks for the elderly or infirm (Figures 3.1 and 3.2). Cash payments were expected

Figure 3.1  House wall construction, Paama, 2011. Photograph by Kirstie Petrou.

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Figure 3.2  Roof weaving, Paama, 2011. Photograph by Kirstie Petrou.

for this work; the labour to build a complete natangura house cost around 10,000 vatu (A$118), with finance generally provided by relatives living in town. However, while community work was generally well attended, villagers were no longer fined for non-attendance. Fridays were always the busiest day for villagers, as the main weekly market day (Tuesday market days were generally small and poorly attended) and football matches drew crowds from around the island. The bank was also open on Fridays, and the Council Area remained a hive of activity until the last football match of the day. Because of the large number of visitors, Fridays were popular for church, school and other community group fundraising. This generally entailed selling cooked food such as rice with a sup (‘soup’, a cooked topping such as greens, tinned fish, etc.) for roughly 70 vatu (A$0.80) a plate. On one occasion, four separate fundraisers were run on the same Friday. The popularity of fundraisers was a new phenomenon, not evident during the 1980s, and partly linked to the increased ‘need’ for consumer items, particularly store-bought foods. In addition, and much like VANWODS, fundraisers were also a way for Paamese to redistribute and share smol vatu within the villages. On top of these weekly commitments, there were church activities to be seen to. Those who worshipped on Sundays generally worked in their food gardens on Saturdays and vice versa. On Saturdays in Liro, a predominantly Presbyterian community, the village had the eerie feel of a ghost town, as

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most villagers were involved in gardening. Weekdays too had their share of church-related commitments, with at least one activity such as worship, prayer meetings or church cleaning scheduled daily. Consequently, while the jif remained in charge of organising work groups and related activities, in many ways the various pastors, most of them local men, exerted just as much control over weekly organisation.

Circular Migration Mobility away from the island offered an escape from time-consuming community commitments and provided opportunities to earn and save money faster than on Paama. Migration came in two forms: temporary mobility, which was centred on Paama and would end there quite quickly, which is discussed here, and long-term migration, usually to the capital city, which often became permanent. Circular migration had its advantages; through temporary absences and regular returns, migrants could actively maintain their claims to land and other rural assets. In the past, structural factors (accommodation, wages, employment types) also reinforced these circular patterns. By the 1980s, temporary male circular mobility, most often to other rural places, had become and remained an important livelihood strategy. In 2011, men continued to dominate circular moves, but the popularity of such moves had decreased significantly. For those who chose to circulate, gender norms were apparent: women tended to circulate either for employment (particularly New Zealand’s much welcomed RSE scheme, which did not exist in 1982) or, quite differently, to visit family (especially widows visiting their children). Men’s circulation, on the other hand, was primarily linked to employment (mainly RSE or construction work). Significantly, while employment was an important reason for circulation, especially for men, its character had changed in thirty years. Plantation and ship work, which had accounted for the bulk of employment related circular migration in the past, were both less available, and less desired, as most Paamese instead aspired to ‘good’ urban jobs. However, durations of temporary absence too had increased, and in 2011, commonly lasted for up to two years or, in the case of employment related mobility, as long as it took to complete a job. This was roughly four times the average six months recorded for similar moves in the past (Bedford 1973; Haberkorn 1987). The timing of circular moves was no longer linked to agricultural seasons and calendars, a trend already evident by the 1980s. Longer absences in 2011 were facilitated by the large extended urban kin networks that provided support and accommodation in town, even for those who stayed up to two years. By 2011, many villagers who were identified as circular migrants in Haberkorn’s 1982–1983 rural census had either died or permanently

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relocated away from the island. Only four of these men, Morris amongst them, continued to participate in circular migration as a long-term livelihood strategy: Aged forty-nine years, Morris had been supporting his family through circular migration for more than three decades. After failing his secondary school entrance exam, he was taught carpentry by his father, a skill he used over the years to build houses and secure other construction work both on the island and in town. In 2010, Morris had returned to Paama for Christmas after two years working in construction in Vila. As his construction job had ended, Morris decided to remain on the island. While he had no firm plans to do so, he intended to return to Vila in the future to work. If another construction job became available, his urban contacts would send word that there was work waiting for him. When he stayed in town, Morris relied upon his extended kin network to provide accommodation. Vila was the only location Morris travelled to for work, as this was the only place construction employment was readily available. Morris’s earnings were the family’s primary source of income, and in 2011, they lived mainly off his savings. Other economic activities were limited to fishing and selling garden produce, mats and some cigarettes Morris had purchased in Vila. Morris’s goal was to earn money to pay his daughters’ school fees, and when employed, he sent regular cash remittances back to Paama. Morris felt he needed to travel to Vila to find work, as it was difficult to earn much money on the island. He did not visit Paama when he was working in town, as doing so would eat into his savings. While he was away, Morris’ wife remained on Paama to care for their children and look after the family’s garden. Carpentry was a sought-after skill on the island, and although wages were lower than in town, in 2011, Morris earned a small income through his work on the new youth centre under construction by the Liro Council.

While the preference for circular mobility may have decreased, maintaining a rural base guaranteed a degree of security for men like Morris, and when urban life became too precarious, they could easily return home: the urban construction industry, like many other low- or unskilled occupations, was overcrowded, and employment was insecure, making permanent relocation to town a risky proposition. Temporary circulation had its benefits, but as rural income earning opportunities stagnated, a few men, like Morris, had become ‘locked in’ to patterns of circulation and felt they had no other option but to continue.

The Great Desire for Education The rationale behind migration was also changing. While young men no longer faced the economic pressure to pay braedpraes, by 2011 this financial burden had merely shifted to education and the need  – of men and

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women alike – to pay school fees. A combination of factors, including the lack of on-island facilities, inability to pay school fees and failing the Year 7 entrance exam, meant most rural adults had completed their education by the age of twelve. In 2009, the Vanuatu government announced fees for public primary school education would be waived. This development, along with the recent establishment of Vaum Secondary School, which taught Years 7–10 in Liro, removed many of the structural barriers older villagers had faced in gaining an education. Easy access, along with the increased need for education to secure ‘good’ employment, preferably something in an office, meant Paamese parents wanted their children to remain in school for as long as possible: education had become their number one priority. One father explained: The first thing that you have to invest in is school fees, because if you don’t pay school fees, you ruin your children’s future . . . Our priority is the children. Everything else is less important. After you’ve paid for school fees, you can work on other projects. They can wait. But children only have one chance to get their education. That’s it. If you miss out, you don’t get a second chance, so education has become the priority. (Elliot, forty-two)

As educational levels had increased amongst both boys and girls, and with them aspirations, many Paamese high school students expected they were on the path to economic security. Most aimed to find employment that would require mobility away from the island; some wanted to be teachers or to work in an office or a store, while others dreamed of being pilots and laboratory technicians. These ‘good’ urban jobs that Paamese hoped would result from education were primarily valued for the social status they conferred and the way they would enable remitting: supporting rural family and contributing to community events via remittances brought prestige for both migrants and their families. Educational success was valued not in and of itself but rather for the access it provided to cash incomes and social outcomes.

More Than Just a Mama One of the most striking changes to migration norms between 1982 and 2011 was the increased mobility of young, single women who in 2011 were absent from the island in a way their brothers were not. Education played a key role in this movement. As the desire for education had increased, boys were no longer preferentially educated before their sisters, and young women were attaining similar, and in some cases higher, levels of education than their brothers. These women were expected to use their qualifications to

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obtain ‘good’ (urban) jobs, just as their brothers were, and to repay the time and money their families had invested in paying school fees. Consequently, women had become economically more important, and educated women were often encouraged by their families to leave the island. While this education-related mobility had also occurred in the early 1980s, by 2011 the outmigration of young women was widespread, and even those without an education were often encouraged to leave when, for example, urban kin required a haosgel or other assistance to enable their own employment. Extensive urban kin networks further facilitated mobility as rural parents were reassured their daughters would be safely looked after by family while away. For young women, remaining on the island meant becoming a mama, an obedient, responsible, conservatively dressed, church-going woman (Cummings 2013). However, as DVD technology, holidays to Vila and frequent contact with volunteers had brought greater access to Western ideals about and representations of femininity, many young women were not content to settle for a future filled with church groups, volleyball and the lion’s share of household chores  – the main recreational activities available to women on Paama. Mobility to town, an ‘open place’ where behaviour was subject to less scrutiny than in culturally homogenous rural areas, provided young women with the freedom to explore ‘modern’ behaviour such as drinking kava, meeting boyfriends and wearing trousers in public. While such behaviour was not necessarily encouraged in town, parents saw it as merely a troublesome phase of urban yang laef (‘young life’, a period of youth in which it is acceptable to act irresponsibly). Such culturally transgressive behaviour was thus tolerated in Vila to an extent that it would not have been on Paama. Once in town, many young women found boyfriends or husbands, often from different islands, and began their own families. As they, unlike their brothers, did not inherit land, there was less expectation that women should return to Paama, so many simply remained in town. By 2011, young women were both choosing and being encouraged to leave Paama. Maggie Cummings (2009) has suggested young ni-Vanuatu women in town were ‘out of place’: migrating independently, they were no longer linked to particular places through processes of kinship and exchange as they once were. However, for young Paamese women, remaining in rural areas was not the solution, and feelings of being ‘out of place’ extended to home villages. With few opportunities available on Paama, mobility provided a means to experiment with and challenge local understandings of modernity and gender. For many young women, Paama had become a place to spel (rest), rather than a place to live; like Leila, many expressed ambivalence at best at the prospect of long-term rural residence:

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Island Social Organisation  81 Aged twenty-one years, Leila was the third-born child in her family. In 2011, she was one of the few young women resident on Paama who was neither attending school nor already married. Leila’s eldest sister was married and employed in one of the few government positions available on Paama, while Maria, the second-born in the family, lived and worked in Vila. Leila’s two younger brothers still lived on Paama, and her father, a circular migrant, had been absent working on construction jobs in Vila for two years, with the goal of earning enough money to build a new house. Leila had a (secret) boyfriend whom she had met at a church convention, but because he did not live on Paama, their contact was restricted to communication via mobile phone. Although Leila had visited Vila, she had never lived there for any significant period. On Paama, she helped run the Presbyterian Sunday school and was a trainee kindergarten teacher. While Leila would have liked to live in Vila, her mother had decided she should stay on Paama and use her skills there. Leila found there was little for young women to do on the island. While the young men had football training and weekly football matches to keep them occupied and were relatively free to drink kava and fool around, young women had no similar outlets. Leila was content to stay on Paama while she was working as a Sunday school teacher, as this was considered an important role. When she finished this work, however, she wasn’t sure what she would do and remained ambivalent about her future on Paama.

Leila’s frustrations with island living, including the limited social life, especially with so many other young women away, explained why she would have liked to leave for Vila and why so many other young women had already done so. When young women migrated, their families sometimes protested; town was a place of teen pregnancies, alcohol and other social problems. But provided their daughters continued to ‘remember’ them via remittances, parents rarely protested for long.

Remittances, an Important Resource Migrant kin and their remittances were the off-island resource that enabled rural Paamese to make ends meet. Remittances not only provided a visible demonstration of enduring kin ties but also conferred social status on villagers who were able to actively and generously contribute to community events such as life-cycle celebrations and fundraisers. Migrants who were identified by villagers as reliable remitters were held in high esteem and feted when (or if) they visited the island. The important economic role of remittances in sustaining rural life was widely acknowledged: There aren’t any resources to make money with [on Paama]. That’s what it’s like . . . People go to town, they work, and they help their family [on Paama]. They send things to help their family. (Owen, fifty-nine)

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It’s hard, I have to tell you, it’s really hard [to earn money on Paama]. A man from Malakula came and asked . . . how we earn money here. I told him that there wasn’t any way to earn money . . . We depend on our family who work in Vila and on Santo. They’re our resource. If they send us a little bit of money, we save it, or we make good use of it. But if you don’t do this, you find life is hard . . . That’s how it works for every family. Paamese live in Vila, but most of the time they also look after their family on the island too. (Jimmy, sixty-six)

Through migration and remittances, Paamese were considered to be helping (rather than abandoning) their rural families, a common view within ­translocal Pacific migrant communities (Small 2011). Very few households did not send remittances to migrant kin (three households) or receive them (two households). The members of these households were either elderly and unable to produce surplus foodstuffs to remit (but still received remittances from kin) or had no migrant kin with whom to exchange remittances. As elsewhere, Paamese remittances were most often exchanged between close kin, with children the most likely relatives to send and receive remittances to and from the island. While there was little expectation that younger children would remit, older children and those who had completed their education were expected to repay their parents’ investment of time and resources via remittances. Children who did not remit were considered a failed investment. Where migrants did not maintain remittance relationships, gossip resulted. One widow, whose children were scattered between Port Vila and Australia, rarely received remittances, and villagers agreed these children were selfish, had forgotten their mother and their roots, and did not look after her properly. Another woman who had adopted many children lamented they had all moved to town and ‘never thought about her’, as evidenced by their failure to remit. In contrast, villagers who received regular and reliable remittances were always eager to discuss how well their children cared for them and what ‘good’ migrants they were. Seventy-year-old Laura explained of her children: ‘They look after me well . . . They just think to remit by themselves, I don’t ask them for anything . . . They just think about me, and so they send me things.’ Remitting was thus positively (social status) and negatively (shame and gossip) reinforced. In the past, married daughters, who ‘belonged’ to their husband’s household, generally did not remit to their own parents. By 2011, however, this had changed, and daughters commonly remitted to their parents, reflecting increased female education and employment levels, and their associated earning capacity. Nonetheless, more brothers, who traditionally relied upon one another for assistance, exchanged remittances with each other than did brothers and sisters, or sisters and sisters. In the past, it was tabu for sisters

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to request assistance from their brothers. This was no longer the case by 2011, but many women still did not feel comfortable doing so. The frequency with which remittances were sent and received varied, and many villagers were vague about when they had sent or received goods or money. It was generally agreed, however, that most remitting occurred in response to specific requests. These requests were not always demands but could help families to coordinate remitting; older villagers, for example, were often instructed by their urban children to send word when their supply of rice ran out. Absent husbands who were engaged in short-term circular wage migration were some of the most frequent and reliable remitters, often remitting as much as once a fortnight or every month. This was particularly the case when they were working towards a goal such as building a house, indicating that those who had the most commitment to future village residence were also the most committed to sending remittances. Migrants who had been away for longer were less reliable. Children sent and received unsolicited remittances with the greatest frequency and received the greatest number of requests. One villager would regularly list the items she wanted from her children, which ranged from a new pair of shoes, to glasses, to a new engine for the family’s boat. She rarely followed through with these requests, but her musings, and the knowledge that her children would comply, demonstrated how well she was looked after and what ‘good’ migrants her children were. Similarly, whenever an elderly villager was perceived as not being adequately supported by their family, the children bore the brunt of the blame. Genealogically distant kin were the least frequent remitters and generally restricted their remitting to important occasions such as Christmas or life-cycle events. The kinds of remittances sent, along with their sources and destinations, reflected both the location of kin and the availability of money and goods. Thus, the presence of extensive kin networks, combined with the concentration of goods and services, and availability of relatively frequent and reliable transport connections meant most remittances were exchanged between Paama and Vila. Urban kin were called upon to provide items that were either unavailable or considered too costly to purchase on Paama. Most goods were sent by ship, as this was cheaper than airfreight, while money was sent directly to villagers’ bank accounts or to trustworthy store owners’ accounts to be passed on to recipients. More often than not, villagers received imported foodstuffs from migrant kin. Rice and sugar were amongst the most popular foods, particularly for elderly villagers who could no longer plant adequate food gardens. For villagers, being able to consume imported foods, which came from the outside world and were tied up with notions of money and modernity, was considered a symbol of success. In return, villagers usually remitted grin kakae, which symbolised connection

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to home places (Alexeyeff 2004; Hess 2009). Grown from the same land as Paamese ancestors, receiving subsistence products from Paama reinforced migrants’ identity and connection to these places, and to those who lived there. There was no evidence at all to suggest urban kin were reliant upon these goods for survival. In contrast, and as described earlier, villagers often relied upon urban remittances as a livelihood strategy, and they were integral to the ongoing viability of rural livelihoods.

Mobile Phones: New Connections, Old Routes The introduction of mobile phones has been one of the most significant technological developments throughout Vanuatu since the 1980s. Paama felt the full extent of this technology when, in April to May 2011, two mobile phone towers were installed on the island; for the first time, villagers had a (relatively) reliable signal and no longer needed to depend upon patchy reception relayed from neighbouring islands. Partly thanks to travelling salespeople, mobile phone ownership was widespread; 80 per cent of households owned a mobile phone, and those that did not could use others’ phones when needed. This was most common amongst the elderly, who either bought prepaid phone credit or gave the owner some money for their use. While mobiles made phone ownership accessible in a way that rare landlines never had, villagers still found phone credit expensive and often relied upon receiving rather than making calls. Conversations were brief and focused on exchanging important information rather than chatting. The brevity of calls aside, mobile phones helped Paamese share information about significant life events such as births, deaths and marriages, so such news was received much faster than in the past. Thus, when a Paamese man died in Vila, a funeral feast was organised on Paama within twenty-four hours of the event. Nonetheless, there was some unease over the potential health and environmental effects of mobile phone towers, and villagers were wary of how mobile phones could kakae vatu (eat money) if not managed properly. Mobile phones are good. They’ve improved communication. It’s better than it was before. But I think that people need to understand and control the use of their mobile phones. If they don’t, they will waste the small amount of money that they have. I think that it could become a problem with people losing a lot of money by paying for credit. But like I’ve said, there is a good and a bad side to everything. People just have to make good use of their phones . . . The benefit is that mobile phones have really improved our ability to communicate compared to what it was like before. It was really hard to talk to people in Vila. It was really hard – you had to write letters . . . So I’m glad

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that mobile phones have improved communication so much. It’s easy now to walk around, or sit in your house and talk to your friends. (Finlay, sixty-six)

By facilitating communication, mobile phones made it much easier to coordinate remittances than in the past. Calls were made to request particular items and to alert recipients that goods were on their way. Villagers sometimes chose not to send remittances when phone reception was down, and they could not notify family members that goods had been sent. In combination with the reliable schedule of the ship Big Sista, mobile phones meant sending and receiving remittances had become much easier than in the past. Small store owners likewise used mobile phones to order and coordinate stock. However, on Paama and throughout Vanuatu, mobile phones were primarily used to reinforce existing business and other relationships and neither replaced face-to-face contact nor significantly altered the manner in which business was conducted (Sijapati-Basnett 2009). Reception on Paama had not yet been reliable enough for it to have had a real impact on rural social life.

Some Change but More Continuity Once largely confined to their small home places, Paamese lives and livelihoods have become increasingly integrated into the wider nation of Vanuatu, a process mirrored by many other small outer islands. The arrival of missionaries at the start of the twentieth century and the relocation of villages to their present-day coastal locations increased mobility within and beyond the island as inter-village relations warmed, and Paamese could access passing ships, and labour recruiters, more easily. This had repercussions for social organisation that continued to be felt in 2011; busy work rosters that allowed chiefs to exercise their limited powers persisted and ensured villagers could not devote too much time to individual projects or livelihood activities that might threaten the social order. Rural livelihood opportunities and the ability to generate cash incomes locally were thus constrained by social organisation, and financial need played a role in driving outmigration. During the 1980s, braedpraes payments were men’s most pressing financial concern, but as women became more mobile and their education levels and earning potential increased, the emphasis shifted from neutralising male wealth through braedpraes payments to financing school fees, a cost borne by men and women alike. At the same time, young women felt frustrated with island social life, which drove their movement to town. Once in Vila, women were expected to continue supporting their natal families through remittances whether they were married or not. Migrant kin were thus spoken of as a ‘resource’ to be tapped, and their ongoing support

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via remittances both reinforced translocal relationships and ensured the viability of rural livelihoods. However, as is evident from chapter 2, livelihoods were not solely reliant on migration, and remittances comprised just one aspect of complex livelihood strategies. Elsewhere in Vanuatu, Kath Wilson (2013) found villagers on Aniwa successfully combined traditional socio-economic practices with new opportunities to create sustainable livelihoods. This, Wilson argued, stemmed from Aniwans’ ability to successfully manage natural resources and population levels, their openness to new opportunities that created diversity and mitigated risk and the strong social networks that allowed migrant kin to support island residents and vice versa. These strategies are not unique to Aniwa, and on Paama, too, villagers employed these methods to successfully combine on- and off-island livelihood strategies. Considering trends from the 1980s, it is clear little had changed in Paamese social organisation or natural resource use in at least a generation, and it was unlikely that change was imminent: rural Paamese lived sustainably, and rural life was not in decline. The example of Paama lends evidence to the argument that the ‘pessimistic view [of small island futures] may well be misplaced’ (Gough et al. 2010: 6). But, ironically, much of that future depended on the success of urban migration.

4

The Everyday Ordinariness of Mobility Persistent Patterns of Rural Outmigration ♦l♦

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i-Vanuatu often claim Vila is being inundated by a constant stream of migrants from outer islands. Yet, much like on other islands, not all villagers had left Paama, and even though migration was significant, the rural Paamese population remained relatively stable between 1982 and 2011. While life on Paama was neither easy nor free – two claims often made by nostalgic migrants – rural places were not ‘empty’, as Paamese themselves sometimes suggested. Many Paamese, both in the Liro area villages and elsewhere, were perfectly content to remain on the island for most of their lives. This chapter seeks to explain why some Paamese migrated while others did not and to develop the mobility themes raised earlier to address questions of why Paamese leave the island, where they are moving to and how long they stay for. In so doing, it builds a picture of the Paamese ‘culture of migration’, that is, the ingrained social and cultural practices and patterns that guide migration decisions (Cohen and Sirkeci 2011). Beyond this, the chapter describes changes and continuities in Paamese mobility and both reinforces claims that ‘everyone’ moves to town – for very few Paamese had not experienced urban life – and refutes assertions that all rural residents will eventually depart their home island, in favour of the excitement but uncertainty of urban life.

Tales of Absent Kin There is no question that outmigration from Paama has been extensive. In 2011, every rural household had at least one, and often several, close family members (parents, siblings or children) living away from the island;

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some 145 males and 135 females were ‘missing’ from Liro area households. Outmigration was such an accepted part of rural life that villagers often had difficulty explaining exactly why their family members had migrated, and, as in 1982, many could not distinguish between reasons for mobility, and what their family members were presently doing in town; for Paamese, migration was normative, accepted and acceptable, an almost mundane feature of everyday life. Direct contact with migrant kin was sometimes limited, and many migrants had been away for years, so while villagers generally knew if absent kin were married, and where their partner originated from, details about children born away from the island were vague at best; in some basic respects, Paama and Vila were separate worlds. However, as on the similarly small northern island of Vanua Lava, mobility was considered ‘appropriate’ only when it occurred ‘at the right time, in the right company, in the right manner and in the right place’ (Hess 2009: 132), and migrant family members were therefore usually described as being engaged in ‘useful’ activities such as work or education. This need to justify mobility through purpose is a strong social norm across the Pacific Islands (Bautista 2010). For ni-Vanuatu, the association between ‘usefulness’ and mobility was informed by pre-contact mobility systems, where mobility was undertaken only for specific social or economic purposes, and aimless wandering was discouraged. These mobility norms were reinforced by colonial mobility restrictions, where movement to urban areas and residence in town were contingent on holding an employment permit. Those who were not being ‘useful’, and so did not have a permit, were promptly sent back to their home villages by the colonial administration. This association between ‘good’ mobility and work persisted in 2011, but while ‘work’ was often used to justify mobility, the term work applied to wage labour as well as kastom duties and family commitments such as chiefly responsibilities, preparing for life-cycle events or, less frequently, attending to land disputes that had made it to court. The need to be ‘useful’ not only justified mobility but could also prevent it, and parents were unwilling to let children migrate if it was believed they could be more ‘useful’ on the island. In their own words, villagers explained: I told my son that if he went to Vila, he had to find a job and work. If he didn’t find work, he should come back to Paama, and make a kava garden. (Leo, fifty-eight) [My son] isn’t allowed to move to Vila . . . If he wants to visit Vila, he’ll go, but just to visit, not to stay. Everyone in our family has left already, so he has to stay on the island to look after our land and work on it. And you know what it’s like in town now,

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The Everyday Ordinariness of Mobility  89 life is hard. It’s better to stay on the island and do some work here first, so that he understands his land and how to use it . . . There is work to be done here. (Rosanna, forty-nine)

Residence away from the island was considered a privilege, so families were reluctant to let kin migrate if they thought they might misbehave. This restriction affected adults as much as youth, and migrants whose behaviour was judged inappropriate were often sent back to the island by kin. Censoring behaviour by preventing or enforcing mobility is common both within Vanuatu (Jolly 1996; Mitchell 2004) and amongst other (transnational) migrant communities in the Pacific (Lee 2003). For Paamese, this censorship applied to both women and men in rural and urban areas alike. Thus, one couple returned from Vila after the wife allegedly had an affair, another man slunk back to the island after being accused of nakaemas and several young men had been banished to Paama from Vila and Epi for smoking marijuana, a drug associated with violence. Prohibiting the mobility of users and sending them home to reconnect with their ples (place) was considered a powerful tonic against this and other social problems such as extramarital affairs, teen pregnancies and the general lack of rispek (respect) for traditional ways that were associated with modern town life. Considering the importance of behaving oneself and being ‘useful’, it is not surprising rural Paamese claimed their migrant kin were mostly employed; some 73 per cent of migrant men and half the migrant women were working at their destination. These migrants did not always seek urban employment themselves, but sometimes migrated when urban kin sent toktok (‘talk’, news) to the island that employment was available. As will be emphasised in the next chapters, the connections and opportunities, including access to employment and accommodation, that were provided through these kin networks were integral to both migration and urban survival. Gender norms persisted, and although they were now remitting, it was more acceptable for women to be unemployed (through choice or not) than it was for men. Therefore, while 13 per cent of migrant women were said to stap nomo (just be there), only 2 per cent of men were in the same situation. Similarly, although most migrants left the island while still single, women migrated for marriage (21 per cent) more than men (2 per cent), whereas more men (9 per cent) than women (4 per cent) were undertaking education or training. Such education-related mobility was probably more common, however, as migrants usually remained in Vila upon completion of courses. As widows commonly travelled to visit urban family members, and women were often called upon to care for sick children or assist pregnant daughters, more women (5 per cent) had migrated for family reasons than had men (1 per cent). Some 18 per cent of men were absent

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for land-related reasons including acting as a custodian for family land, and purchasing or being given land by friends from other islands. While being ‘useful’ was an important means of legitimising absence from the island, the definition of ‘usefulness’ was clearly gendered, with male migration being firmly related to employment and women’s migration being influenced by various social factors. Rural Paamese may have been keen to ascribe a clear purpose to the mobility of their family members, but migration could also result from difficulties associated with rural life. As the total Paamese population had increased, and continued to grow, many villagers were concerned over future land access. Consequently, some chose to purchase land or housing elsewhere, an investment that could lead to household chain migration. Twenty-eight-year-old Alfie explained: If one day everyone came back to Paama, the island would be too small. Everyone would fight over land. So now if someone wants to go and live on Santo, they pay for land on Santo and they stay . . . Then this land is inherited by the owner’s family, the kids get it, and they can use it.

Limited opportunities for earning rural incomes also encouraged mobility to town, and many villagers linked outmigration to the need to ‘find money’, particularly to pay school fees: When people realise that it is hard to stay on the island because they can’t earn money, they leave. The father leaves first, and when he has bought a piece of land in Vila or Santo, he sends word for his wife and children to come. They go and they live on the land he has bought. They build a house, and they stay. (Harriet, forty-five)

Social issues, particularly the fear of nakaemas, were often casually blamed for outmigration, although when asked directly, most Paamese claimed not to believe in nakaemas because it had been destroyed long ago by the power of the church. However, many were quick to blame any misfortune on sorcery, as is common throughout Vanuatu (Hess 2009; Rio 2010), and it was always considered prudent to err on the side of caution where nakaemas was concerned. For Paamese, nakaemas had long been a feature of village life; in 1982, it was manifest in the unusual occurrence of a series of shark attacks targeting villagers from Seneali, one of the family groups within Liro. Those targeted in the attacks had long since fled the island, and by 2011, these shark attacks were a distant memory. Instead, nakaemas was blamed for the small population and many empty houses in the village of Voravor. Talk and accusations of nakaemas were fluid, and fear of sorcery exerted a very real influence on Paamese mobility:

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The Everyday Ordinariness of Mobility  91 Nakaemas is a reason that lots of Paamese leave Paama. For example, if the two of us were disputing a small piece of land, and you felt that your life was in danger, you would just leave, because that way you’re able to ensure that nakaemas can’t get you. But nakaemas is something that you can’t see or know, but still everyone believes in it. (Rusty, fifty-three)

Migration was also attributed to other reasons. Several women, who themselves performed the bulk of daily domestic labour, suggested Paamese migrated to escape the hadwok that characterised island life: On Paama, we work really hard . . . To make a garden we have to clear the area, burn the rubbish, dig, plant the food. It’s not like we can just plant gardens without preparing the land first. [Migrants are] just scared to come back to Paama because of all the hard work. They’re scared [of hard work], but whose island is it? It’s their island. When they’re young, they live on Paama. When they leave, they think they can forget where they came from. (Florence, forty-five)

Physically engaging with the land through subsistence activities reinforced the relationship between individuals and their home place, and rural Paamese felt migrants who refused to join them in these activities were ‘lazy’ and had forgotten their roots. While Paamese did not wish to attribute such negative issues as sorcery or the fear of hadwok to their own family members, dissatisfaction with island life, both in terms of the social environment and the hadwok associated with rural lifestyles, were real and significant reasons for outmigration. However, since mobility was socially condoned only when it served some purpose, migrant family members were described more positively as being ‘useful’ at their destination. Some changes were evident in how villagers spoke about migration. Although economic explanations remained important, by 2011 women were more likely to link outmigration to the desire, rather than the need, to earn an income. This was particularly true of younger women, aged fifteen to twenty-four, who were more educated and more able to access employment than their mothers or grandmothers had been; these women wanted to work. As urban kin networks had expanded, women of all ages were more likely to cite social reasons for mobility (visiting family and so forth) than they had been a generation earlier. At the same time, increased population size meant women were more concerned about land access than in the early 1980s, even if, ironically, this population growth was taking place outside Paama itself. Men’s beliefs about the economic reasons for migration mirrored those of women’s, and most men agreed kin-related reasons were more important than in the past, although they continued to place less emphasis on family reasons than women. Younger men aged twenty-five

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to forty-four, who generally had dependent children still living with them on Paama and so did not need to travel to visit household members, were the least likely to explain migration in terms of family. Men were also less likely to give social problems such as boredom with island life and jealousy as reasons for outmigration. It is possible rural social life was less fraught by 2011, but men quite likely felt uncomfortable discussing emotions, when employment and ‘usefulness’ were supposed to be the rationale for mobility. In 1982, as their labour was often surplus to daily rural requirements, it was accepted that young men would spend some time enjoying yang laef in town. This persisted in 2011, and as the lure of urban life had grown with the proliferation of nightclubs and similar attractions, young men were more likely to explain outmigration in terms of ‘the bright lights of town’ than in the past. Changes to mobility norms were apparent, but this was gradual and reflected wider changes to social organisation, economic needs and opportunities. Importantly, many of the explanations given above blurred into each other; work could be both fun and necessary, childminding might generate an income. Multiple factors influenced mobility decisions, and no one reason was ever believed to be responsible for outmigration.

Leaving Paama, but for Where? As conversations about absent kin focused largely on experiences of rural-­ urban migration, one could be mistaken for thinking mobility occurred only between Paama and town. While this was not strictly correct, the location of extensive kin networks, and the concentration of employment, education and health facilities in urban areas, meant Vila and Santo were by far the most popular destination for migrants: some 79 per cent of absent villagers had left for urban areas (Table 4.1), a pattern consistent with wider mobility trends throughout the archipelago (VNSO 2011). Port Vila was undisputedly the most popular urban destination in 2011 (two-thirds of migrants), but life in Vila was known to be difficult, and villagers were all too aware of the challenges posed by scarce housing, the high cost of living and rising unemployment. In contrast, Paamese spoke fondly of Luganville on Santo, Vanuatu’s second town, as a place of opportunity. Luganville, it was argued, represented the best of town (employment opportunities, ability to purchase land) and island life (slower pace of life and the ability to garden), and it is likely Santo will become a more significant destination in the future if opportunities in Vila continue to stagnate; once very much a ‘second city’ with little appeal, Santo was now viewed much as Vila had been in the early days of independence. Amidst the slowly growing pace of urban migration, the significance of rural-rural moves had decreased greatly since the 1980s when men could

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Table 4.1  Location of Liro area migrants, 1982 and 2011. Location

1982 (%)

1982 (N)

2011 (%)

2011 (N)

Urban – Vanuatu  Male  Female Overseas  Male  Female Rural – Vanuatu  Male  Female Neighbouring islands  Male  Female Ships  Male  Female Intra-island  Male  Female Total Absentees  Male  Female

74 70 79 5 7 3 10 12 8 7 5 9 3 4 0 1 2 1 – 59 41

227 128 99 16 12 4 32 22 10 20 9 11 8 8 0 4 3 1 307 182 125

79 83 76 3 3 3 3 2 3 15 12 18 0 0 0 0 0 0 – 52 48

221 120 101 9 5 4 7 3 4 41 17 24 0 0 0 0 0 0 278 145 133

Source for 1982 data: Haberkorn (1987: 194).

secure rural-based employment either on plantations or ships. By 2011, the availability and desirability of such work had diminished, and as a result, more men had migrated to urban areas than in the past. For women, who had participated less in such rural-based labour mobility, the significance of urban residence remained much the same. There has never been substantial international migration from Paama, or from Vanuatu as a whole. In 1982, Noumea in nearby New Caledonia was the primary international destination for Paamese migrants since it was close, jobs were easy to come by and visas were not a problem. In 2011, changed visa and political conditions meant international mobility was instead structured by New Zealand’s RSE program, but Paamese participation in this short-term work was limited, and overseas destinations still accounted for only a minority of all moves. Neighbouring islands were the destination of rather more migrants in 2011 because of the establishment of families and wider kin networks there. In contrast, mobility within Paama was non-existent in 2011 and represented

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only a minority of moves in 1982. There were no economic gains from such short-distance moves. Over three decades, the destinations of migrants had scarcely changed, but urban centres were gradually attracting a higher proportion of all Paamese.

Travelling Further Afield: Temporary Worker Programs International migration from Paama may have been limited, but it was a hot conversational topic amongst villagers, many of whom speculated about one day participating in New Zealand’s RSE scheme or the (then soon to be launched) Australian SWP. Both schemes employed islanders for an average of seven months, during which time they worked on various agricultural projects and could earn as much as A$7,000, substantially superior to anything possible on Paama. Yet, actual participation in seasonal work was low; from March to June 2011, five villagers (two women and three men), all in their early to mid-twenties, were working in New Zealand. Three of these were repeat workers and had travelled to New Zealand once before. A further three men had participated in the program once yet had not reenlisted. Reasons for this were varied; it was rumoured one man had been sent back to Paama for bad behaviour, and although the details of his misconduct were vague, it seemed unlikely he would be hired again. The second man was working in a village store and was ‘too busy’ to return, while the third thought he might go again one day but was not yet ready. Villagers were often unsure why their family members had chosen RSE work, and they did not know how much money the workers had saved. Nonetheless, consistent with patterns from other islands, including Tanna and nearby Epi, earning money appeared to be the primary motivation, alongside some interest in ‘seeing the world’. Any savings were largely used to meet immediate needs (Connell and Hammond 2009; Craven 2013), followed by investment in family businesses, purchasing construction materials for housing, generators, solar panels and consumer electronic items. Some returned workers used their savings to pay large outstanding debts such as school fees or, in one case, braedpraes from a marriage seven years earlier. Despite widespread interest in seasonal work, there were several barriers to entering the scheme. Many Paamese believed it was simply too expensive to organise documents such as passports and police and medical checks and felt they were too busy with island-based responsibilities to participate. Several men had begun the long process of applying, became frustrated and gave up. Compounding these issues, there was limited knowledge about accessing loans to pay for initial expenses, and no agent recruiting from Paama who could assist in answering questions or otherwise facilitating the

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process. Without direct access to a recruiting agent, it is unlikely villagers’ participation in seasonal work will increase significantly: It’s my understanding that there aren’t many people from the Liro area [who have gone to New Zealand]. For those of us on the island, sometimes it is hard to find the money . . . to pay for passports and other things. Those who live in town, they find it easier because they work and earn money, so they can pay their way to go. (Billy, sixty-six)

Indeed, more generally, a pattern had emerged where early participants in the scheme came from many parts of Vanuatu, but as it became apparent that earnings might be substantial, urban residents gradually commandeered the opportunities (Petrou and Connell 2018; VNSO 2017). As the following example demonstrates, rural residents could be disadvantaged and had to overcome various barriers and frustrations to participate: Aged forty-nine, James had tried and failed to participate in the RSE scheme. James lived on Paama with his wife and two adult sons. Both sons had recently returned from Vila where one had been working, and the other had just gone to wokbaot (‘walk about’, travel or wander around with no particular purpose). James’s daughter was working in Vila with her boyfriend, who was not Paamese. James had also worked away from Paama in the past, spending three years on a copra plantation on Malakula and two years in Vila, working as a carpenter. In 2009, James became interested in the RSE scheme and travelled to Vila in the hope of participating. He organised a passport and other documents but was faced with an unknown delay in being deployed. James waited in Vila for several months and became tired of being told ‘next month, next month’. Eventually, he became so fed up with waiting that he simply returned to Paama. After further delays, other applicants who had remained in Vila were finally deployed, but James had missed out. He thought he might still be interested in RSE work, but it depended on whether the agent came back to Paama. For the time being, James was content to wait and see what happened, explaining, Sipos mi go, mi go (If I go, I go).

In many respects, then, urban residents, who had better access to information and resources about the scheme and could continue to go about their daily lives as they awaited deployment, were better placed to participate. Participation in seasonal work was most common amongst young, unmarried villagers who had few responsibilities, and mirrored trends for employment in Noumea during the 1960s and 1970s. However, as mobility norms had changed by 2011, women now participated in this form of short-term international labour migration. The legacy of houses built from Noumea-era wages, substantial during the ‘nickel boom’ in New Caledonia, lived on, and in 2011, building a house with RSE earnings was seen as something of a moral imperative; it provided both a secure future for family

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members and a visible demonstration of the ‘development’ the scheme enabled (R. Smith 2018). Paamese believed that unless you built a house, you hadn’t really achieved anything by working overseas: Of everyone who works in New Zealand these days, not one of them has built a house here . . . They go, they come back, and I haven’t seen them do anything with their money . . . They’ve just bought things like TVs, generators and solar panels, but they haven’t built a house. It’s no good. (Duncan, sixty-one) This man here went to New Zealand for seven months, but he hasn’t achieved anything, he hasn’t built a good house. (Evan, thirty-two)

In the past, building a house was a fairly simple matter for the men who had worked in Noumea. However, whether returned female RSE workers (who themselves do not inherit land) will do the same is yet to be seen. It is more likely they will invest in family projects; one had already used her earnings to support the family business, and others had helped pay sibling’s school fees, or invested in consumer items. Despite limited engagement in seasonal work, Paamese viewed the RSE scheme as largely positive, and it provided a means to access relatively high wages over a short period. A similar attitude to earning ‘fast money’ from urban wages was recorded by Richard Bedford (1973) in the 1960s and 1970s. As domestic unemployment had increased alongside the rising cost of living, (limited) opportunities for ‘fast money’ shifted offshore, but Paamese had yet to be effectively involved. While there is some concern over the social impacts of the scheme, including workers’ rights, insufficient pastoral care and negative impacts on sending communities (Craven 2013; Maclellan 2008; Petrou and Connell 2018), this was not an issue for Liro area villagers. By contrast, rumours circulated of Paamese who had behaved badly while away, and just as for urban residence, social norms governed how one ‘should’ behave when absent from Paama.

Past Mobility Experiences While few villagers had travelled internationally, migration within Vanuatu was widespread, although not all Paamese chose to leave the island. To better understand the trajectories leading to rural residence, Paamese were asked about their own past mobility. Villagers could not of course recall every trip they had ever made away from the island, and some had made a vast number of trips. The emphasis here was on significant moves: those that Paamese were able to recall and considered important enough to recount. Even so, a combination of factors, including the culture of migration and

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the mostly urban locations of kin networks and employment, education and health facilities, meant only a minority of adults (14 per cent) had never lived or worked away from the island for an extended period. Gender norms were evident in these patterns, and while several non-movers were still in their twenties, and had not ruled out the possibility of future mobility, most were women, aged forty or above, reflecting women’s historically lower engagement in such mobility. In the recent past, women had generally remained on Paama while their husbands circulated for work; between 1953 and 1957, only 14 per cent of men moved to urban areas along with their wives. By the 1980s, however, the need for private housing, as employment-linked accommodation disappeared, increased urban wages and a rise in job opportunities for women meant more than 60 per cent of Paamese men migrated to town with their wives. By 2011, changing social norms linked to increased education and extensive urban kin networks meant young women were no longer waiting until marriage to migrate. Rather, much like young men, many women left Paama while still single and met their husbands in town. Only a very small minority of older, already married women continued to ‘follow’ their husband’s moves. Amongst rural Paamese who had travelled, Port Vila was the most popular destination for past mobility; most women (69 per cent) and men (70 per cent) had lived or worked in Vila. Gender norms were again evident, and whereas women had often ‘followed’ their husbands to Vila, men travelled independently and took the lead. For both men (82 per cent) and women (62 per cent), low-skilled work was the most common activity undertaken in town. Women’s employment was concentrated in haosgel and other caring roles (70 per cent), while men worked in a variety of jobs including construction, retail and security. Tellingly, and just as in the 1980s, adults who remained on Paama in 2011 had not worked in higher-skilled urban jobs. Employment, requiring higher education or training generally demanded a long-term commitment and was not compatible with living or remaining on Paama; the highly educated had left. While in 2011 many villagers had worked in Vila at some point, they did not necessarily travel to Vila in search of employment; many had found work as a by-product of visiting kin and had simply decided to stay for a time. Others had come back to Paama to visit or to attend special events, and failed to leave again. This well demonstrated how, as in the case of Nancy, migration was rarely a carefully considered strategy but was often merely a spur-of-the-moment decision: Aged twenty-five, Nancy lived on Paama with her in-laws and her two young daughters, while her husband worked in Vila. Nancy had grown up on Paama but had lived

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in Vila for a few years. When her brother needed someone to look after his baby, Nancy travelled to town to help out for a while before returning to Paama. She did not remain on the island for long and was soon called upon by her pregnant sister, who needed someone to work in her retail job while she was on maternity leave. So Nancy travelled to Vila again, where she worked for three months and then, when her sister returned to work, stayed on without any real aim. While in town, she met her husband, Geoff, who was also from the Liro area, and at the end of 2010, Nancy and Geoff returned to Paama with their two young children to be married, along with several other young couples, in a group ceremony. Soon after the ceremony, Geoff returned to Vila to work, but Nancy decided to stay on the island for a bit, explaining, ‘I just stayed because I like the island, and we haven’t left yet because my daughter started attending preschool here, so that’s why we haven’t gotten around to leaving yet.’

For Paamese like Nancy, mobility was often an unplanned part of everyday experiences, which in this case was shaped around kin obligations that themselves were spread between town and the island. Almost as often, there was no obvious reason why people chose to stay, migrate or return at ­particular moments. The places visited by men and women varied somewhat. Most of the women who still lived on Paama had only ever travelled to Vila, a pattern unchanged since 1982, although some older women had accompanied their parents to copra plantations on neighbouring islands as children. In contrast, the men who remained on Paama had lived and worked in several locations; some 43 per cent had spent time on Santo, largely for the purposes of employment or education (including teacher training college and Bible college). Other destinations, particularly Malakula and Noumea, had been a temporary home to roughly a third of male villagers, again predominantly because of employment (75 per cent), often in government-related postings. Others had spent time in these locations to attend education or training courses, while some men had travelled simply to visit family. The emphasis on education-related moves was a change from the past, when such mobility was of limited importance. Most villagers could not estimate how long they had stayed away from the island, although some narrowed it down to longtaem (a long time) or longtaem smol (quite a long time). For those who provided a realistic time frame, the average move lasted approximately seven years (women 6.5 years, men 7 years). Excluding the small minority of long-term migrants who had spent more than seven years away from Paama reduces this average to 3.4 years (women 3.5 years, men 3.2 years). More recent moves lasted about two years, particularly where visiting family was involved or for employment-­ related moves in the construction industry. This was a significant increase from the average of only six months for temporary moves in the 1980s and

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The Everyday Ordinariness of Mobility  99

related to the scarcity of employment (hence those moving for employment were more committed to seeing through contracts) and the wider urbanbased kin networks available to accommodate visitors (hence the burden of rural visitors was shared amongst a greater number of households who themselves were better off). For some, unstable employment meant saving for such expenses as school fees simply took much longer than it had in the past, and the length of temporary moves away from the island had increased accordingly. Indeed, it was sometimes hard to conceive of these moves as temporary, and unless migrants remitted frequently or otherwise kept in reliable contact with ‘home’, rural Paamese were often dubious about their intention to return. Almost every villager had at least some experience of mobility, yet most had not spent extended periods away from the island. Many men linked their return home to employment ‘finishing’ (either the job ended or the employee decided it was time to leave because of boredom, disputes or other reasons), while others had simply completed their education. Some women returned for similar employment-related reasons, but many more came back to Paama to marry or to perform gendered care work. Place of residence was thus influenced by both opportunity and duty, and reasons for mobility and return differed along gender lines. This is evident in the examples of Sam and Ada, whose mobility to and from the island was ­structured by both opportunities and duties: Aged forty-two, Sam lived on Paama with his wife and four children. Sam’s brother lived in Vila and only visited the island rarely, while his two sisters each lived with their husbands, one on Tanna and the other elsewhere on Paama. Sam’s parents were deceased, and as the firstborn son, he was responsible for taking care of the family’s rural assets. Sam had lived and been employed in Vila a few times and had attended a Bible training course on Santo. While Sam claimed he was happy to work long eni kaen work nomo (in any kind of work at all), all his urban employment experience was concentrated in low-skilled jobs such as security. None of these jobs had lasted for longer than a couple of years, and Sam was always glad to return home as he preferred life in his ples, free from the demands of a masta (‘master’, a white boss). Sam’s wife and children did not travel with him to Vila, and instead stayed on the island to plant gardens and maintain the family’s rural presence. As Sam was a senior elder in his church, he explained his most recent return from town in terms of these commitments; he needed to help look after the church, an important and respected job. Sam thought he might return to Vila again one day and expressed a mild curiosity about RSE work, but he preferred to remain on the island until he had completed his ‘work’, assisting in running the church.   Ada had also spent a short period in Vila and then returned to Paama, but as a woman, she experienced mobility differently from Sam. Aged thirty-seven in 2011,

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Ada lived on Paama with her husband Steve and their three school-aged children. Ada’s father and brothers lived in Vila, while her sister had married a man from Ambrym. Ada’s mother, Rose, was living in Vila for most of 2011, but Rose often returned to Paama to plant and harvest gardens before travelling again to town. Ada’s father was employed and did not return to the island as her mother did. When she was younger, Ada had ‘followed’ her father to Vila. She stayed in town for five years, working in retail. While she was in town, Ada met Steve, who was from her home village, and they returned to Paama together after their jobs had ‘finished’. In Steve’s case, an illness had prevented him from working, while Ada’s boss had told her to leave so that she could care for Steve. When they returned to Paama, Ada and Steve married, and Steve recovered from his illness. On Paama, Steve was kept busy with important chiefly work, while Ada held a secretarial position with the PWMU. Together, these commitments meant they did not have time to travel to Vila, and they were happy to remain on the island.

The ‘trivial’ nature of many mobility decisions meant mobility was often reactive, occurring in response to other, often gendered, commitments and duties: many Paamese did not plan to travel, it just happened in response to the requirements of living within a geographically dispersed community. Indeed, in some respects, geographical location was a secondary consideration to attending to duties such as community leadership roles and caring for kin or land that reinforced identity and belonging to the translocal Paamese community.

Patterns of Rural-Based Mobility: Recent Mobility for Skul and Work To better understand mobility away from the island, Paamese were asked about education and employment-related moves over the five-year period preceding fieldwork. Between 1973 and 1982, most villagers had migrated for education or employment, and some had done so frequently: ruralbased mobility was a way of life. In contrast, and while most Paamese had been mobile at some point in their lives, only a quarter of villagers had moved for education or employment between 2006 and 2011. This mobility was most common amongst those aged between thirty-five and fifty and, as in 1982, was male dominated (62 per cent of movers), since by 2011 young women’s mobility tended to be unidirectional: they simply left the island and did not return. Short-term moves occurred for a variety of reasons but, as elsewhere in Vanuatu, were most often related to church ‘work’ such as conferences and meetings, and trips normally lasted less than a month. Only two men had completed training courses over this period, as education-related mobility

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often led to more long-term urban residence. Short-term migration for wage labour accounted for only 10 per cent of moves and generally involved travel to Vila for mainly unskilled employment. By 2011, rural-based education and employment-related mobility was limited. Young men (and women) continued to move away from the island, as they had done in the past, but were establishing themselves elsewhere and often did not return ‘home’. This was linked both to the reduced emphasis placed on braedpraes payments (chap. 3) and the increased number of marriageable young women (and men) in town, both from the Paamese community and elsewhere, so it was no longer necessary to return home to marry. Joël Bonnemaison (1985) predicted circulation would continue in Vanuatu for as long as land remained an important part of identity, but by 2011, changing structural factors – lack of short-term work contracts and the unappealing nature of plantation employment – meant circulation had greatly decreased although the importance of land had not. However, while short-term migration for employment and education had lessened by 2011, more ‘casual’ mobility from Paama remained a way of life.

Migrating for Other Reasons: Mobility over the Last Twelve Months Rural Paamese may have been circulating less for employment and education, but rural-based mobility had far from disappeared. In the twelve months preceding fieldwork, less than a third (29 per cent) of villagers (35 per cent of women and 20 per cent of men) had not left the island. Some had not travelled because they had done so the year before, while others planned to travel in the coming months. For men, age and agility played a role in determining mobility, and the elderly were less likely to have travelled. For women, however, age was rarely a factor, and even quite elderly widows delighted in travelling to visit children and grandchildren. Paamese might have enjoyed living on their home island, but they were certainly not averse to venturing away from time to time. In the same twelve-month period, two-thirds of villagers had travelled off the island at least once. Once again, their reasons for short-term mobility were gendered. Both men and women travelled to visit family, but while this was one of the most important reasons for women’s mobility, and often related to their role as carers, men travelled more for business-related matters, including attending training courses, meetings and organising stock for island based small businesses. Women also travelled for ‘work’, but this most often related to (generally church-organised) group projects; in 2010, a large group of Presbyterian women had travelled to Epi as part of the church’s outreach programme, a much-discussed trip that was enjoyed

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by all. When Paamese travelled for church-related business, fares were generally paid by the sponsoring organisation, or substantially subsidised or discounted, so even those with limited financial resources could participate. Conversely, some villagers who were heavily involved with the church were unable to wokbaot, as they were ‘too busy’ with church responsibilities. Church involvement therefore both enabled and constrained short-term mobility. The location of family members, who housed and fed visitors, was significant in directing villagers’ casual mobility. Most villagers had travelled to Vila or Santo (55 per cent of moves) where many kin resided, and they could access goods and services such as education and healthcare. The few who had travelled elsewhere attended church- or business-related meetings or events, a departure from the rural-dominated moves of the past. While rural-based mobility persisted in 2011, the reasons for this movement and the destinations to which villagers travelled had altered since the 1980s when temporary mobility from Paama was largely undertaken to work in other rural destinations.

Left behind or Choosing to Stay? Even as migrants have frequently been described as ‘absentees’, who will inevitably return ‘home’, non-migrants are often depicted as being ‘left behind’, with the implication of conservatism and ‘failure’ (Tan and Yeoh 2011). By contrast, staying ‘home’ on the island was a deliberate choice for many adult Paamese; most villagers planned to remain on Paama in the future, and several older Paamese observed that if they had wanted to move to Vila, they would have already done so. It is not surprising, then, that just as in 1982, only a small minority of women (6 per cent in 2011 and 4 per cent in 1982) thought they might one day visit Vila temporarily to work and earn money for school fees or other expenses. This reflected changed mobility norms, and, as described earlier, women who were likely to migrate to Vila generally did so while still young and single; effectively, they had already gone. Consequently, most of the women living on Paama in 2011 were married with children, and none wished to leave the island for good. This contrasted with 1982, when 15 per cent of rural women hoped to one day permanently relocate. Several elderly widows had children living in town who encouraged them to move to Vila, but they resisted this pressure: I’ve told them that I don’t want to go [to Vila] anymore. I’m old; I just want to stay [on Paama]. But they say, ‘No, grandmother, you’ll still come and visit. We’ll pay for your plane ticket.’ . . . I told them it was up to them. But I’m done with [travelling to Vila]; I just want to stay on Paama. (Mona, sixty-three)

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For Paamese, mobility was not an individual pursuit, and villagers’ status and role within the family and the household influenced how and why they migrated. In both 1982 and 2011, older males were the least likely to want to migrate, as most had adequate land access and few dependants to support, and could count on receiving remittances from adult children. In economic terms therefore, these men were the least likely to ‘need’ access to urban wage opportunities. By contrast, male villagers with young families were often economically insecure and the most likely to want to engage in labour migration. Young, unmarried men commonly planned to remain on the island only if they could not find work in Vila, a long-standing trend, and as in the case of Samson, place of residence was often determined by where a villager had the most commitments: Like most males aged in their late twenties, Samson had already spent a period living and working away from Paama. Most recently, he had worked for a year at one of Vila’s many tourist resorts before he found employment on a ship for a period. In 2011, Samson was living on Paama with his parents and was a church youth leader. His younger brother, Lewis, had lived in Vila since 2008, where he was employed as a cleaner. Lewis supported his parents, John and Sarah, through remittances and had built a brick house on the island where they lived. Youth leadership positions lasted for two years, and John told Samson he should remain on Paama until he had finished his term: work like this for the Big Man (God) was important, and Samson had his whole life to go and work in other places. On top of his church work, Samson was involved in the local football team and completed various odd jobs for the island’s Area Secretary. He was therefore kept busy on Paama, and the consensus was that while he had important work to do on Paama, he should stay there. Nonetheless, as a young, unmarried male with few responsibilities, Samson’s permanence as a rural resident was uncertain, and should work become available in town, he would quite likely leave the island.

Decisions about mobility were complex and involved balancing personal demands and desires with the needs of the household and family unit. Exceptions involved those in government or church employment who had little say in when and where they moved. Consequently, these men (7 per cent of men interviewed) thought they might live on different islands in the future, if they were employed there. Several men had ‘work’, for example, church commitments, that kept them on Paama, but thought they might go to Vila once this had ended. Like Samson, none had concrete plans to do so. For the most part, older villagers had no desire to depart the island for the hustle and bustle of Vila, where life seemed to be ruled by the clock, even as youth were often ambivalent about rural futures. Town life was not

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considered ‘better’ than village life; it was simply different, and living in Vila was not a sign of success, just as rural residence was not associated with failure. Adult villagers were happy, and in most cases had chosen, to remain in their home ples, where they undertook the important work of cultural reproduction, caretaking land, gardening and so forth: rural Paamese had not been ‘left behind’ but rather, in a context where mobility was pervasive, had succeeded in staying put.

Mobility as a Way of Life By 1982, mobility was an established way of life for rural Paamese, already very much a part of a ‘culture of migration’, where mobility was impromptu and unexceptional, a means to an end, and something that everybody did at some point. This remained true in 2011, but wider social, economic and political changes since the 1980s had influenced how mobility was ‘done’; gender norms persisted, although they had evolved somewhat, and even though women had become more mobile, men continued to dominate moves for education and mobility and still travelled to a wider variety of destinations than women. Compared to the past, there was less diversity in where villagers moved to, as urban areas, where kin, jobs, services and social worlds were concentrated, exerted an ever-stronger pull. This was especially true for youth; as we have seen, young women often found island social life dull, and the promise of employment, education or simply the excitement of town life proved a draw for young men and women alike. By contrast, adult Paamese rarely wanted to leave Paama for good. There was social status associated with rural residence; caretaking rural assets and maintaining a family’s connection to ples were important duties. In addition, many adults had taken on respected social roles within the rural community such as jif, small business owner, church elder and the like that could make mobility difficult. Paama was thus considered a suitable home base for adults and young children, but less so for youth. Migration was complex and constantly changing as new opportunities such as the RSE appeared and old ones such as rural plantation work faded. Paamese were keenly interested in these developments and eager to explore and incorporate new prospects into existing migration systems. Yet, in many ways, these changes simply mirrored mobility of the past. Thus, while internal migration to plantations had decreased, villagers were now focused on the possibility of overseas ‘plantation’ labour in New Zealand and Australia, where wages surpassed almost all domestic options. Earning opportunities paralleled those of the past, when Paamese had travelled to New Caledonia in the 1970s and to northern Australia in the late 1800s. Mobility may have changed, but the context had remained much the same,

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and Paamese understandings and negotiations of these ‘new’ opportunities were informed by historical precedents. Writing about the culture of migration in rural Oaxaca, Mexico, Jeffrey Cohen (2004) describes migration as a potential avenue for achieving financial security and the associated social wellbeing that comes from living above the poverty line. For rural Paamese, too, mobility could be a path to employment and incomes, although with rising urban unemployment, such opportunities were often theoretical rather than actual. After all, Paamese were competing with many other ni-Vanuatu for scarce jobs. Paamese migration was about more than just money, however, and facilitated social outcomes through meeting kin and cultural obligations such as caring for children or participating in life-cycle events. Therefore, while migration decisions often appeared to be haphazard, made on a whim with little forethought, mobility was in fact more complicated, and these ‘random’ decisions balanced individual needs and desires with cultural and familial responsibilities and duties. Deciding to move or stay involved personal preferences, the wishes of others, a sense of duty (or the lack of one) and the demographic structure of households while also being influenced by factors, such as changes in commodity prices and national employment, far beyond the island. Particular events proved catalysts for decision-making. It is not surprising, then, that many of the processes evident on Paama were occurring elsewhere in Vanuatu and the Pacific, with a strong urban bias to migration, decreased circular migration, women moving with increased freedom and kin playing an important role in enabling and structuring mobility. Of course, there are many local variations in mobility systems and behaviour. For Liro area Paamese, onerous community work schedules, which limited villagers’ ability to generate incomes locally, were quite unlike other villages in Vanuatu. However, as village life has become increasingly incorporated into the cash economy and hence more influenced by global economic forces, so too had Paamese mobility come to resemble that of other small rural places. Paama may appear a mere pinprick on the world map, and little more than that on the map of Vanuatu, but it is far from isolated.

Note Parts of this chapter are taken from Petrou (2017).

5

I Just Came to Visit My Kin The Evolution of Urban Permanence ♦l♦

I

n Melanesia, as elsewhere in the Pacific, long-term urban residence has quietly and gradually evolved alongside enduring public discourses of circular migration, loyalty to island homes and eventual return. Whereas mobility to town was once predominantly short-term, from around the 1960s, as Pacific Island nations began to agitate and prepare for independence, employment opportunities expanded, women began to migrate alongside men, households were formed in town and migrant populations both increased and stabilised, as migrants ‘failed’ to return to rural areas. As early as the 1970s, young Hagen men travelled to Port Moresby, the capital of PNG, for the ‘freedom’ of earning money in town. Yet, as they became increasingly involved in urban social life and quickly frittered away their earnings, these men soon felt trapped in town, caught up in new urban social relations and responsibilities and unable to return home without savings (Strathern 1975). This has become a recurring pattern in Melanesia as migrants who cannot afford to remit and maintain social relationships with home places feel they cannot return ‘home’ without resources (Koczberski et al. 2001). Frequently, and without any real intent, these migrants become long-term urban residents as the decision to return ‘home’ is forever put off. As urban populations increased, and women joined men in town, more and more children were born and raised in cities. Men no longer needed to return home to see their families, and a turning point had been reached as circular migration all but disappeared. Urban life remains precarious and uncertain as migrants grapple with the possibilities (such as employment and education) and problems (such as poverty and precarity) of urban living, much as Hageners did in the 1970s. It is these contradictions and complexities, the

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pathways and rationales for mobility and stasis, the desire and impossibility of returning home, and the trend towards long-term urban residence that this chapter addresses. By the early 1980s, it was already evident that Paamese migrants were in town to stay. Many were long-term urban residents, and while nostalgia for the supposedly simple life of the island was never far away, few had concrete plans to return ‘home’. Even as many migrants felt ambivalent about town life, for some there was no other option than to remain in Vila. Perhaps most significantly, a new generation – Vanuatu’s first, most obviously urban generation – was emerging, as migrants raised their children away from the island. Whether and how such ‘migrants’ would identify with their distant homeland was unknown, although it seemed likely ties to Paama would weaken down the generations. This chapter investigates how predictions of urban continuity and change had evolved and played out a generation later, and compares the experiences of first-generation migrants with the second generation, those born or raised in town.

Urban Demography Considering the more or less permanent nature of urban residence in the 1980s, several fairly predictable continuities and changes were evident in urban populations. By 2011, many Paamese had lived in town for decades, and the urban Liro area population now included a substantial proportion of adults aged forty-five or above (Figures 5.1 and 5.2). Adults often could not pinpoint children’s ages, so Figure 5.2, which only shows those of known age, is probably an underestimate of the proportion of children under fourteen. The adult migrant sex ratio was relatively well balanced, indicating patterns of long-term urban residence rather than temporary, male-dominated,

Figure 5.1  Urban Liro area population, Port Vila, 1983. Source: Haberkorn (1987: 250). Figure created by Kirstie Petrou.

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Figure 5.2  Urban Liro area population, Port Vila, 2011. Figure created by Kirstie Petrou.

circular migration: that era is over. Overall, however, urban Paamese population structures were remarkably similar to those of the 1980s. In Vanuatu, popular discourse positions migration as the main driver of urban population growth. However, in 2011, less than a third (30 per cent) of urban Paamese were first-generation migrants: more than half (57 per cent) belonged to the second-generation (with migrant generation unclear for the remaining 13 per cent). Not surprisingly, second-generation Paamese (Figure 5.3), who, for the most part, had only been born in town since roughly the 1970s, were more youthful than the first generation (Figure 5.4). Some Paamese had travelled to town with their parents as young children and subsequently grown up in Vila. This ‘1.5 generation’ have been grouped together with the second generation, as there was little difference in their urban experiences or their knowledge of Paama. Rural Paamese tended to leave Paama independently in their twenties, so very few first-generation migrants were younger than this. At the same time, and although some elderly parents were brought to town (often against their will) to be cared for by urban children, rural Paamese tended not to migrate permanently after their late thirties. Older members of the first generation were generally not new migrants but had spent decades living in Vila. For these elderly Paamese, the island was but a distant memory, and after so long, and often with few relatives left on Paama, many, like Alfred, would have struggled to readjust back to island life: Alfred did not know how old he was, but he was probably a little older than Lilian, his sixty-three-year-old wife. Although he now lived in Vila, Alfred had experienced life in a few different places. In his youth, he worked on ships with his father and brothers, and then, as he was the eldest, he worked on Santo to pay his brothers’ school fees. Later, he spent seven years at a plantation on Malakula, saving money for his son

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Figure 5.3  Population of second-generation Liro area Paamese in Port Vila, 2011. Figure created by Kirstie Petrou.

Figure 5.4  Population of first-generation Liro area Paamese in Port Vila, 2011. Figure created by Kirstie Petrou. Joseph’s school fees, an investment that had paid off: Joseph was now a successful office worker, and he, along with his wife, helped support Alfred, Lilian and his sisters, who all lived together in town. Alfred had not intended to move to Vila, but when his daughter was sick, he and then Lilian came to visit and never quite made it back to the island. Their other children were already living in town, so there was no one to return ‘home’ to in the village. Alfred did not know how long they had been living in Vila, but it was probably close to thirty years. He no longer worked, but he planted a garden on some land his son had bought. With his children and wife in town, Alfred had no plans to return to Paama, where his house was already rotting. While he thought that town life could be difficult, when asked if he liked living in Vila, he responded, ‘I think I must like it, I’m living here, aren’t I?’

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For the elderly like Alfred, re-establishing themselves on the island, without children to assist, was simply too difficult. While most second-generation Paamese in Vila had been born and raised in the town, a few (four men and two women) represented a new phenomenon, being not urban born but instead Paamese migrants who originated from other islands. Without a doubt, Paamese migrant populations were becoming more established both in Vila and elsewhere throughout the archipelago.

The Growth of Urban Households As urban populations have grown, so too has household size. In 1983, urban Paamese households contained an average 3.8 members. By 2011, and in line with other migrant populations in Vila (Chung and Hill 2002), this had increased significantly to 5.4 members per household. For Paamese, this increase was linked to the emergence of multigenerational households; more than half (53 per cent) of urban Paamese had at least one parent living with them in town. Not only was the migrant population ageing in place, but also more and more older people were joining their children in town. However, the static urban housing supply meant establishing a new household had become increasingly difficult; many children were unable to find accommodation after starting their own families and consequently remained members of their parents’ household. Thus, expansion at both ‘ends’ of the household was occurring. Accommodating expanding households within existing structures could be challenging, and in 2011, overcrowding was such that rumours circulated about shift sleeping in Seaside, one of Vila’s oldest established and most densely populated residential areas. According to Noah, who had lived in Vila for fifteen years: ‘Some people at Seaside . . . there are some who don’t work. At night, they drink kava until daybreak. Then, when those with jobs go to work, the unemployed go inside and sleep in their beds’ (Noah, thirty-seven). Not surprisingly, large households increased urban densities considerably. In 1983, most urban Paamese children (as many as 80 per cent of ninety-three children) had been born and lived all of their life in town. Little had changed by 2011, and only fifteen households (20 per cent) had a dependant child (eight boys and three girls) living with kin on Paama. These children had been sent ‘home’ to the island for various reasons, from bad behaviour in town to attending school on Paama (where life was ‘cheaper’). But these were exceptions. For most urban households, close family members lived together in one place, implying a high level of long-term urban commitment. Not all urban households were conventional in structure, and by 2011, there were several female-only-headed households; some 6 per cent of unmarried women lived alone with their children. This was slightly higher

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than the 4.3 per cent reported for a broader population in the late 1990s (Chung and Hill 2002) and reflects both the increased frequency of divorce and separation, and the relative acceptability of such household structures. While Alexandra Widmer (2013) has claimed it would be ‘unthinkable’ economically and socially for a young unmarried woman to establish her own household, this was not true of older Paamese women, in their forties or above. For these women, living without a man was tolerated as one of the many troublesome social structures that existed in urban areas. Its significance is underlined by the virtual absence of such households on Paama. Nonetheless, and in contrast to similar households in urban PNG (Macintyre 2011), Paamese women who did not marry were generally at an economic disadvantage as they relied on a single income, and that income was often small. Bad experiences with men led some women to choose the single life and to rely on their sisters, rather than husbands, for support, as was the case for Nina and Estelle: Nina, aged forty-nine, and her sister Estelle, aged forty-five, had been living in Vila for approximately thirteen and nineteen years, respectively. Nina came to Vila to work as a haosgel for her mother’s cousin. She had two urban born daughters to different fathers. The eldest had finished school in Year 10 (Nina could not afford more school fees), while the other was enrolled in Year 6. The girls’ fathers were not forthcoming with financial assistance, and Nina had used all her savings to pay school fees. Nina returned to Paama after her first daughter was born but after nine months decided to come back to her life in Vila, a more ‘open’ place where she was subjected to less scrutiny than on the island. She had not visited Paama since.   Estelle followed the father of her four children to town. They never married, and after living together in Vila for a period, Estelle’s partner ‘ran away’ with another woman. Two of Estelle’s children had attended primary school on Paama, but Estelle had stayed in town to work and pay school fees. It was important to Estelle that her children received an education, an investment in their future. In 2011, Estelle’s eldest daughter was married, her son had recently returned to Paama to stay with his grandfather, another daughter was working as a haosgel for relatives and her youngest daughter was enrolled in Year 10. After their bad experiences with men, Nina and Estelle were uninterested in further relationships and had been living together for many years. In 2007, they left a previous rental property after a fire lit by a candle destroyed the house and most of their possessions. Because of the expense, they had not replaced important documents lost in the fire. Nina’s eldest daughter was unable to find work, as she could not produce the certificate proving she had completed Year 10.   Together, Nina and Estelle paid 16,000 vatu (A$188) per month in rent, roughly a quarter of their combined monthly income; Nina worked two haosgel jobs, while Estelle cared for an expatriate’s child. To save money, they and their children walked to and from work and school. For Estelle, this meant a one-hour walk in each direction.

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In 2010, Estelle had participated in the RSE scheme, but at 65,000 vatu (A$765) a year, her daughter’s school fees quickly consumed her savings. Nina and Estelle had no access to garden land and struggled to meet their monthly expenses. They had briefly tried selling cooked food to earn extra income but gave up, as they could not sell all they had prepared. Estelle dreamed of establishing a small business selling chickens. She had done the research but could not foresee a time when she would have the necessary start-up capital. Although their father had promised them access to his land on Paama, Nina and Estelle remained ambivalent about a potential return to the island. Among other considerations, such as the expense of relocating a whole household, their unconventional status as single mothers meant they were easy targets for village gossip. In town, Nina and Estelle were afforded a certain degree of anonymity, and their status as independent, single mothers was more acceptable than on the island, where social organisation was more conservative.

For many Paamese such as Nina and Estelle, urban life was a constant struggle to consistently meet even the most basic expenses such as paying rent and bus fares to work. Life was disordered in a way it was not on the island; husbands (and wives) often ran away and shirked their financial responsibilities, yet living in a mixed environment where large populations were governed by different jifs, and people could ‘disappear’ (to an extent), it was sometimes difficult to hold them to account. At the same time, relative anonymity allowed a certain degree of freedom, and those who did not conform to traditional social roles, and so would have been targeted by gossip on the island, were considered less unusual in town, merely part of the patchwork of urban life. Despite the difficulties, many persevered, and more and more children were born and raised in town, migrants aged in place and rural parents were brought and came to stay, so explaining the rise in urban household size and increasing urban densities.

Marrying for Love Even as a small minority of women chose to head their own households, marriage remained a strong social norm and was almost universal amongst those over twenty-five years. While young women may have been increasingly migrating independently, the high incidence of teen pregnancy and associated social pressure to ‘find a man’ meant women aged fifteen to twenty-four were either partnered or married to the same extent as in 1983. Young men were not held accountable for teen pregnancy as women were, so marriage rates were significantly lower amongst fifteen- to twenty-fouryear-old men: just 10 per cent compared with 44 per cent for women. This difference levelled out as Paamese aged and social norms dictated that men too should ‘settle down’ and become responsible.

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During the early colonial era, when structural factors ensured migration was largely circular, men usually lived in Vila without their wives and children. By 1983, most restrictions that discouraged family life in town – namely wages and accommodation catering to single men – had largely disappeared, and 95 per cent of ever-married Paamese lived in Vila with their spouse. In 2011, many Paamese were marrying only after arriving in town, but still virtually everyone lived together with their spouse and children in Vila, although for some, their current relationship was not their first or only marriage, and separation, affairs and illegitimate children were not uncommon. While affairs also happened on the island, they were less common than in Vila and so considered less problematic. In Vila, the involvement of strangers from different islands could also mean ‘straightening’ affairs and relationships between the aggrieved families was more difficult, as multiple jifs and kastoms needed to be accommodated. More significantly, intermarriage with ni-Vanuatu from other islands had increased considerably, and while most (80 per cent) men were married to women from Paama in 1983, almost half (48 per cent) of all partnered Paamese were in a relationship with a non-Paamese by 2011. This trend was similar to that of other ni-Vanuatu in town and was more common amongst second-generation (66 per cent of partnerships) than first-generation (39 per cent) Paamese. Growing up in town, the second generation had much greater exposure to non-Paamese. Spouses and lovers were encountered through daily interactions; Paamese lived, worked, played and attended school and church with those from other islands, and somewhat inevitably, attractions resulted. At the same time, it was sometimes ‘safer’ to conduct affairs with strangers, who were unknown to friends and family, as relationships were less likely to be detected. Every now and then there were disagreements over who ‘should’ be dating whom, as promised kastom partners came into conflict with their betrothed’s love partner. Usually there was shouting, but sometimes these rows dissolved into physical violence and beatings. For the most part, ‘mixed’ relationships were initiated in Vila, where the wider population was itself ‘mixed’, and spoke of a desire for partnerships based on love rather than kastom obligations. For mixed couples, town was a neutral place of residence where both partners had continued access to kin networks; relocation meant one spouse would lose this social support network and would become a minority in a largely homogenous rural environment. Many Paamese in mixed marriages were reluctant to move to unknown rural areas for fear of nakaemas. In addition, issues such as the complicated land claims and restrictions that sometimes arose from inter-island marriage could present practical barriers to relocation. More generally, as in PNG (Goddard 2010a), mixed marriages were often deemed a likely factor in volatile relationships. Paamese believed

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‘true’ kastom partners had greater responsibility to ensure marriages lasted, because of the social relationships that ensued, whereas others, who were not bound by such relations, were more likely to leave or ‘play around’. Marriage failure was thus often blamed on love matches, although there was no obvious pattern to why some marriages failed and others did not. For various reasons, therefore, increased inter-island marriages amongst Liro area migrants reinforced commitment to town. As Silas, an elderly man who had spent forty years in Vila, explained, ‘Sometimes, when men marry a woman from another island, they just base themselves in Vila. When they marry a Paamese woman, they go to Paama.’ As urban populations expanded and became increasingly heterogeneous, Paamese were meeting and marrying ‘mixed’ partners more than a generation earlier, a phenomenon that both arose from and contributed to increasing patterns of urban permanence.

Mobility to Town: Following Kin-Made Roads As we have seen, Paamese had migrated to town for numerous reasons. However, whereas rural residents were keen to attribute ‘usefulness’ to the mobility of their family members, urban Paamese did not always migrate with the intention of remaining in town. Many travelled for a particular reason, became caught up in urban life and never quite got around to returning ‘home’. Mobility and stability were rarely, if ever, carefully planned. Thus, almost a fifth (18 per cent) of women and 7 per cent of men had travelled to Vila for health reasons – to attend hospital or other medical facilities – and simply stayed on in town. Sixty-three-year-old Elsi described how her husband had travelled to care for their sick daughter, a move that had resulted in twenty-seven years of urban residence: I just came because of my daughter. She was sick, she went to the hospital and they removed her appendix. Then she sent word that the two of us should come. My husband and I were living on the island. He came first, and I stayed on the island for a while. Then they said that I should come too, so I came and we have been living here ever since.

Some urban residents had migrated with specific goals in mind, and employment and economic explanations, notably the need to pay school fees, were not uncommon: just under half (43 per cent) of all men explained their move in terms of money or work, a pattern virtually unchanged in thirty years. However, by 2011, urban unemployment was high, and job rotation, where Paamese men took turns to work in a job for a few months at a time, had disappeared. Once a migrant found work, they generally held onto it, and urban life was now increasingly competitive.

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By 2011, more women were working in paid employment than a generation earlier, so more of them now explained their mobility in terms of employment and economic reasons (26 per cent in 2011 versus only 7 per cent in 1983). This mobility was often linked to informal haosgel work for relatives who were employed; more than half (56 per cent) of women who cited ‘employment’ as the reason for their mobility had been sent for by relatives to work as haosgels. Finding employment in town relied heavily upon kin networks, and kin would always do their best to help relatives secure work. Family also played a role in mobility for education and health, which often depended upon the willingness of urban relatives to provide food and housing. Kin were thus vital in facilitating migration to town, and even when the stated reason for mobility was not ‘family’, kin were critical in supporting new migrants. Ida provides an apt example: At thirty-seven years old, Ida had lived in Vila for thirteen years. In 2011, she was living in an informal settlement with her parents and siblings. Her eldest daughter, whose father was not Paamese, stayed with him during the week, while her two-yearold, who had a different father, lived with Ida. Ida’s sister joked Ida had been married fulap taem (lots of times), although this was not uncommon in town. Ida’s brother was the first in the family to move to Vila; her sister and father had come next, followed by Ida. It was not long until Ida’s mother, who had no close kin remaining on the island, joined them in town. Ida had travelled to Vila with the intention of visiting her father and siblings, and explained: ‘I just came to visit my family, but I came and I just stayed. I don’t go back to the island anymore.’ After a while, a family member had found her a job as a haosgel for an expatriate family, so she had started work. By 2011, Ida had worked as a haosgel for a few different employers, cooking, cleaning and caring for their children. The hours were long, and the pay was small; Ida earned enough to feed her family, and no more. In 2011, Ida was working two days a week for a New Zealand family and had just given up her second job, working three days a week for another family, as her partner had become unpredictably jealous and made her quit. Ida enjoyed haosgel work, as she was her own boss and could organise her day as she desired. The family she worked for were kind, and she could have time off when she was sick or when she arranged it with her employers in advance. Some other households had not been so kind and had made her come to work even when she was unwell. Despite her small income therefore, Ida was happy with her job, and although she had not intended to stay in Vila for so long, with her own family in town, she had no plans to return to the island.

For those like Ida, urban residence often evolved seemingly of its own accord, but with kin around to provide support, suggestions and occasionally job opportunities, it meant some urban options were usually possible.

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As the urban Paamese population had expanded, so too had the need to visit town to attend to family and kastom commitments. Such obligations were increasingly likely to occur in town as well as, or rather than, in home villages, and consequently, more men explicitly gave ‘family’ as a reason for their mobility than in the 1980s (34 per cent up from 24 per cent). Some men, and women, simply wanted to live where most of their family were. Forty-six-year-old Robert, who had travelled to Vila as a child, explained: ‘I just came because my mother was living in Vila. So I followed. I came to see her, and I just stayed. I don’t go to the island anymore either.’ In contrast, women, who were no longer so reliant on family members (particularly husbands) to determine their own mobility, were less concerned with such explicit ‘family’ related rationales than in the past; 62 per cent explained their move was for ‘family’ in 1983 compared to 42 per cent in 2011. As the total Paamese population had steadily increased, and competition for scarce land resources had grown, some Paamese were explaining their mobility in terms of land access. Urban residents maintained only tenuous links to land left in the care of others and, through long-term absence, were a step removed from daily rural life but spoke of land shortages more than their rural counterparts: rural Paamese felt they had adequate land access, but urban residents worried about reclaiming land they had not used for a long time. Nonetheless, land shortages were only a secondary concern, rather than a motivation for migration itself. Urban Paamese tended not to discuss their own disenchantment with rural social life, but fear of nakaemas was commonly given as a reason for others’ migration; it was ‘safer’ to distance oneself from potentially controversial opinions or actions. While not exclusively linked to land-related issues, with jealousy leading to nakaemas arising for any number of reasons, there was often a close link. Having too little land to support one’s family and having ‘too much’ land and risking jealousy were both potentially fraught situations. Jackson, a forty-year-old, second-generation Paamese, explained his family’s circumstances: ‘We were born here [in town], and we live here, but all Paamese still know that we have land. The reason that Paamese leave Paama is because those who have land are scared for their lives.’ Some second-generation Paamese were well versed in the dangers of nakaemas, and parents who feared sorcery often counselled their children to avoid the island for fear of attracting misfortune. Nonetheless, when asked about their parents’ mobility to town, few second-generation Paamese (9 per cent) believed nakaemas was at fault. Economic reasons, namely to work or earn money for school fees, were highlighted by a quarter (26 per cent) of the second-generation children, some thought family had played a role, while almost a third simply did not know why their parents had migrated to town. This lack of knowledge about (and perhaps interest in) parents’ reasons for

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migration is common amongst well-established Pacific migrant populations (Lee 2003). Clearly, second-generation Paamese explained migration differently to the first generation, but they were probably justifying their parents’ presence in town through citing straightforward and ‘useful’ (economic) reasons. The small number of second-generation Paamese who had moved to Vila from other islands (particularly Malakula and Santo) had done so for opportunities that were not available there. For men, this primarily related to work, while for women it involved education and assisting family as a haosgel. As migrant populations on outer islands continue to grow, it is likely such ‘second-generation mobility’ will become increasingly common. The case of Samuel and Clara provides a good example of the motivations for this movement: Aged thirty-four, Samuel was born and grew up on Santo, where his family lived. Fearing nakaemas, his father, Lenny, had left Paama before Samuel was born. Lenny had warned his children about the dangers of sorcery on Paama and told them that while they should visit the island, they should not argue over land. Instead, Lenny purchased land on Santo that Samuel and his siblings inherited. While Samuel’s own fear of nakaemas meant he did not want to live on Paama, he had visited the island three times: once as a child when he was sent to stay with relatives during the Santo rebellion, once to help prepare for church celebrations in 1999 and once to wokbaot. None of these trips had exceeded several months. Samuel’s wife, Clara, was also a second-generation Paamese migrant who had grown up on Santo. She too was concerned about nakaemas on Paama. However, whereas Samuel had visited the island, Clara was too scared to do so. Their six-year-old son had never visited Paama. Samuel regretted he had not taught his son Paamese, as, unlike many urban born children who could understand the language, his son only knew a couple of greetings. In 2011, Samuel, Clara and their son had been living in Vila for two years so Samuel could work on a construction project managed by a company he had worked for on Santo. Samuel had learned how to build houses from his father and uncle and worked independently in Vila while he waited for the project to start. As a private contractor, he could earn more money than if he worked for someone else. Clara, along with a sister, earned a small income selling second-hand clothes but had only been doing this for a month. In Vila, Samuel and Clara stayed with one of Samuel’s classificatory fathers in a small informal settlement. As the owner of the house, Samuel’s classificatory father paid the rent, while Samuel helped with bills. He did not plan to construct his own dwelling as he intended to return to Santo once the project work was completed. Samuel estimated this might take about a year.

Despite rising unemployment, Vila remained one of the only places where ni-Vanuatu were presented with a variety of options and opportunities for

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employment, especially if positions were highly skilled or required an education. However, employment was not only about skills, and kin remained vital in facilitating movement to town, through making these opportunities known and assisting migrants upon arrival. Migration was far from an individual pursuit.

Towards Urban Permanence? A concern throughout Melanesia is that urban migrants may remain in town forever, yet unless death proves definitive, urban permanence is difficult to determine. Indeed, and while it provides an indicator, long-term urban residence does not necessarily lead to permanence. Sometimes an extended period spent in urban areas may even mean a greater likelihood of return, as migrants have achieved their urban goals and can return or retire in comfort, especially when pensions are low or non-existent and they can fall back on rural subsistence living. Nonetheless, very few long-term urban migrants had returned to Paama, and returning ‘home’ after a long absence was the exception rather than the norm. It is not at all surprising that by 2011, urban Paamese had lived in Vila for significantly longer than in the past: roughly three-quarters of the Paamese urban population had spent at least fifteen years living in Port Vila, as opposed to just one fifth in 1983. Overall, Paamese migrants had spent an average of twenty-three years in Vila by 2011, compared with 10.5 years in 1983. These increased periods of urban residence were not merely the result of a small group of migrants who had spent many years in Vila (Table 5.1). Rather, the urban Paamese population as a whole was spending longer periods in town and had thus steadily stabilised. Urban Paamese had not only spent longer living in town by 2011 but also spent a greater proportion of their adult life in Vila than they had done in Table 5.1  Average number of years spent in Port Vila by age group, 1983 and 2011. Average years spent in Vila 1983*

Age 15–24 years 25–34 years 35–44 years 45–54 years 55+ years Total (N)

2011

Males

Females

Males

Females

5.8 11.1 12.2 11.7 17.8 67

6.4 10.5 11.4 18 27.5 58

8 18 23 28 35 35

13 25 23 23 27 39

*Source: Haberkorn (1987: 256).

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Table 5.2  Proportion of adult life spent in Port Vila by age group, 1983 and 2011. Proportion of adult life spent in Vila (%) 1983* (N)

Age Males 15–24 years 25–34 years 35–44 years 45–54 years 55+ years

64 (23) 73 (19) 53 (13) 35 (7) 38 (5)

Females 66 (16) 68 (24) 48 (9) 54 (7) 55 (2)

2011 (N) Males 78 (3) 78 (5) 79 (11) 74 (8) 71 (8)

Females 84 (13) 100 (4) 89 (8) 67 (9) 62 (5)

*Source: Haberkorn (1987: 256). Note: Percentages of 1983 data were calculated using the same formula as Haberkorn (1987); (Years lived in Vila since age 15 / (Current age − 15)) × 100.

the 1980s (Table 5.2). Paamese could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be described as ‘temporary’ urban residents. Indeed, there were significantly more Paamese living in Vila than on Paama, providing another justification for remaining in town; kin and social obligations were now more likely to be urban-oriented.

Visiting the Home Ples? While visiting ‘home’ does not cause return migration, such trips reinforce social ties and can facilitate reintegration into the home social environment. More practically, visiting ‘home’ can prepare potential return migrants for the realities of life in distant, poorly remembered home islands. In 2011, Paamese migrants spoke fondly of their home island. I grew up on the island, so no matter where I go, the island is still a part of me. I love it there. You don’t have to pay for anything unless you want something from the store . . . Sometimes the jif calls everyone together, and you do a little bit of community work, but the rest of the time, your time is your own. You are totally independent . . . You can live on your own land, and you don’t spend too much money. So yes, I still prefer the island, life is really good there. (Elijah, forty-two, twenty-five years in Vila)

Fuelled by this nostalgia, Paamese frequently made vague proposals to one day visit Paama again, but many faced barriers to actually carrying through these plans. Some urban residents no longer had close kin on Paama and thus felt distanced from the rural social environment. Others did not own a house on the island and felt uncomfortable relying on others for accommodation. Those who worked were often unable to take time off, and even

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if they could, visiting Paama was expensive, especially if accompanied by family (whose fares also had to be paid) and if carrying gifts (which was expected). Some women were scared to travel on planes and ships or had no other family members to travel with them and did not want to go alone. It is not surprising, then, that half of urban Paamese women and 40 per cent of men either had never visited Paama or had not done so for many years. Simon, a fifty-seven-year-old, second-generation Paamese, explained: When my parents were living on Paama, I used to go and visit them there when I had holidays, then I would come back [to Vila]. But now they are [living in Vila], I don’t go anymore. I just stay here . . . Our house [on the island] has a broken roof, the corrugated iron is rotten, so where would I stay? And all of my kids go to school, so I am working to build my house [in Vila] and pay school fees. Because life is hard now, I have to concentrate on these things first.

Just as the presence of kin facilitated movement to town, it also influenced the likelihood of return visits. Of the urban residents who had visited Paama multiple times, the vast majority (85 per cent) had close kin (parents, grandparents, siblings or children) living on the island at the time. Kin were vital in maintaining translocal ties: ‘[Some people] don’t have any family on the island. Who would they stay with? . . . When you don’t have family on the island you go, and you are just like a stranger’ (Susan, forty-seven, in Vila since 1980s). Gender played a role in determining visits. Some widows felt they no longer had a right to access land or resources on Paama that had belonged to their husband, so they no longer returned: ‘Because my husband is already dead, I wouldn’t want them to say, “Your husband is dead already, what are you doing back here?”’ (Katherine, fifty-two, twenty-two years in Vila). In contrast, men, as the inheritors of land, were expected to retain contact with the island, so more men (31 per cent) than women (21 per cent) had visited Paama more than once. Even so, visiting the island was a rare occurrence even for them. A generation ago, Gerald Haberkorn had predicted the second generation would probably have little knowledge or experience of rural ‘home’ places. His prediction was coming true, at least for roughly half the second generation. However, many second-generation Paamese had moved to Vila as young children, and a few had been sent to attend school or live with family on the island during their childhood where, it was believed, life was cheaper and children were safer. Consequently, just over half (55 per cent) of second-generation Paamese had actually lived on Paama for several years. Again, this experience largely depended on the location of kin; those with no close family members living on Paama were unlikely to have spent time there. Mobility was also facilitated by the school system: when students

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entered high school, they were allocated places throughout Vanuatu based on their results. Whereas students who scored highly on their exam attended well-respected schools in Vila, less successful students were sent to outer islands. As a result of kin networks and the high school system, as many as two-thirds (67 per cent) of second-generation Paamese had lived in locations other than Paama or Vila, mainly in Santo and Malakula, both locations of large Paamese communities. Periods living elsewhere generally lasted less than five years and were insignificant in comparison to time spent in town. For the second generation, visits to Paama often stopped as children matured and education or work commitments became more demanding. Although a quarter of first- and second-generation Paamese had made multiple visits to the island, almost half the second generation had visited Paama just once, and not for many years. Those who had not visited Paama for an extended period admitted they no longer knew what island life was like: ‘I don’t know what it’s like there now. I’ve forgotten, because it’s been a long time since I last went. I was still young and attending primary school at the time’ (Ned, twenty-six, second-generation Paamese). Some Paamese regretted this lack of contact, particularly when family remained on the island, but others were more ambivalent; theoretically, Paama was home, but for many, visiting the island served no real purpose beyond sightseeing. One second-generation man admitted he was too scared to visit ‘home’, when he had never met any of his rural kin. Others had memorised landmarks such as ‘the red house’ or the ‘big mango tree’ that marked their family land, yet had never visited and had no desire to when it might incite nakaemas. For others, visiting ‘home’, fuelled nostalgia for the ‘simple life’: I went [to Paama], and it made me feel again that life [in town] is hard . . . Because when you live in Vila, life is different to the island. For example, going to the garden, gardening is like going to work for them, right? . . . All they have to do is walk around, climb the hills, you go up, you go down, you go up. There is nothing to complain about [on Paama]. (Esther, forty-three, first-generation migrant)

Brief visits, like Esther’s, where visitors did not become too entangled in village social life and work schedules, made Paamese yearn for island homes. Some Paamese could no longer recall when they last visited ‘home’. Of those who could, roughly half had visited Paama within the last five years, while several had travelled to attend the Presbyterian Church’s ‘Golden Jubilee’ (centennial celebration) on Paama in 1999. Informed by past patterns of circular migration, all Paamese felt migrants ‘should’ return home every year at Christmas, as this was when most people had leave from work (although this was not true of service industry workers). An absence of even

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five years was therefore considered a failing on the part of the migrant; rural Paamese claimed those who did not visit were selfish and had forgotten their roots, while migrants felt guilty about their inability (or lack of desire) to return: It’s like I’ve said, 60 to 65 per cent [of migrants] are already man-Port Vila, they don’t go back to the island anymore. But 40 per cent or 35 per cent are still man-Paama because they live here and they still go back to the island. When they have a long holiday in December, they go and stay with their family [on Paama] for the full month. (Wilson, forty-two, second-generation Paamese)

Migrants who returned to Paama carried gifts which, along with their visit, reinforced relationships with rural kin and were considered a sign of urban success. These migrants were behaving as they ‘should’; their visit was exciting and was celebrated with shared meals and much talking and laughter as everyone caught up on news and events. To return, and to return regularly, brought social prestige. Special events such as the Golden Jubilee and the opening of nakamals were important in initiating return visits for all Paamese regardless of gender or migrant generation. Yet, gender norms were evident in explanations for travel; women visited Paama more for social reasons including church events, weddings and Christmas, while men returned more for ‘business’, including land disputes, the opening of nakamals and to ‘invest’ in rural assets, by checking on rural houses or, less frequently, even planting gardens. Just as in the past, few Paamese explained their visits home in terms of long-term return strategies. Rather, visits were primarily motivated by social reasons, and over time, return became rather more like tourism, as migrants checked on what had and had not changed at ‘home’, before returning to their ‘real’ urban lives. The ability and desire to return to Paama was influenced by having the means to do so (time off from work, economic resources) and a reason to go (close family on the island or a house of one’s own). Return visits were largely independent of length of urban residence, and close rural family ties were more important in influencing return, ­particularly for women. In 1983, rural residents frequently visited Vila, so urban Paamese could maintain contact with rural family members without themselves having to travel; almost half (46 per cent) of rural Paamese had visited Port Vila in the previous year. Little had changed by 2011, and 45 per cent of rural Paamese had visited Vila the year before. Widespread access to mobile phones meant it was easier than ever to share and exchange news, information and gossip at a distance. During both periods, large, well-established urban kin networks made it possible to participate in community activities without returning

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to Paama; the same life-cycle events were observed in both locations, and emotional contact did not require mobility as it had during the years of circular migration. When asked about his contact with the island, Alex, an elderly man who had spent more than thirty years in town, replied that Vila was just like Paama – he lived in a quiet area in a community environment and had no need to visit the island: ‘You live here, and it’s just the same as living on your land on Paama. Those of us who live in town, that’s how we think. Our land on Paama, it’s just the same as the land we have on Efate . . . The Paamese community is everywhere here, there are lots of us.’ Many Paamese had more relatives living in town than on Paama, and they did not need to return ‘home’ to feel at home.

Urban Futures Most urban Paamese dreamed of one day permanently returning ‘home’ to Paama, yet, much like other island groups throughout Port Vila, few Paamese had concrete plans to return. Only a single man offered a time frame for when return might actually occur, ‘in about five to ten years’, but that was almost as speculative as the others. In 1983, too, most (80 per cent) urban Paamese expected to remain in Vila for at least the next five years, and the evidence shows they usually stayed much longer. Women, who were reliant on (Paamese) husbands for land access, were invariably more ambivalent about return than men, yet, as the island was considered a superior place to raise children, women of child rearing age were some of the most likely to want to return ‘home’. Older men, too, often claimed they would one day return ‘home’ to Paama, reflecting the oft spoken of but rarely acted upon idyll of rural retirement. Urban dwelling children frequently tried to prevent this, preferring instead that parents ‘retired’ in Vila. Joel, who, along with his brothers, had brought his elderly father to Vila, explained: [My father] wasn’t pleased [to come and live in Vila]. But we had to bring him here . . . when my mother died, there wasn’t anyone on Paama to look after him. So we told him that he didn’t have a choice and he had to come and live with us because he wasn’t strong enough to make a garden by himself. And we thought that he should come and live with us so that we could look after him until he [dies.] All of us brothers live here and we work, so it wouldn’t be right for him to live by himself and us to all live here. We would live well, but he wouldn’t, he would suffer, so that’s why we decided that he had to come. (Joel, forty-one, twenty years in Vila)

For those who died in town, the expense along with unreliable transport connections meant bodies were generally not repatriated to Paama for burial; upon death, then, Vila became inarguably a permanent ‘home’.

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Entirely predictably, more first-generation migrants claimed they would one day return to Paama, largely because of their superior access to housing on the island. Housing aside, all urban men theoretically retained or would inherit access rights to kastom land on Paama. Yet, the longer Paamese stayed away from the island, the harder it became to exercise these rights, and many experienced real limitations in taking back land left in the care of others. At this stage, I’m not sure if I will go and live on the island . . . because there are too many land related issues. If there is someone else working on your land, they claim to know that it is yours, but if you go and ask for it back, they might harm you [with sorcery] because of it. I don’t want to get involved in land issues because I’m not looking to create problems. I think if you talk to them, and ask them to leave, it’s OK, but if they retaliate against one of your children instead of you . . . So we just let them work on our land, and when we go and visit the island, they bring us a basket of food or something similar. They know that they are making gardens and living on land that doesn’t belong to them . . . If I were to go and evict those who are using our land, and then come back to Vila, I would be ruining their livelihoods and those of their family, because where would they plant food for their children to eat? (Ronny, thirty-four, second-generation Paamese) Yes, I have [land on the island]. But, I say I have some, but I’m not sure if . . . The land is there, I know I have it, but our [classificatory] big brother has his house on it. (Albert, thirty-five, second-generation Paamese)

Land was an important signifier of residential intentions, and all Paamese saw purchasing land or building a permanent house in town as signs of urban permanence. Those with a modern house, secure tenure and no family left on Paama had little reason to return to the island. When Paamese spoke of migrants who had bought urban land, they often concluded with the phrase finis nao (‘finished now’, that’s it, it’s over); such migrants would not return ‘home’: Some Paamese don’t go back anymore because they have bought land . . . For example, when there are too many boys in a family and all of them grow up and marry, when they share the land between all of them sometimes there isn’t enough . . . They share the land out so that some stay on Paama and some go to Vila and some go to Santo and they go and buy land. (Philip, forty, twenty-one years in Vila)

Some Port Vila residents had access to land on other outer islands through their spouses or had purchased land in places such as Santo or Malakula, usually after spending extended periods living on those islands. A few had

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even developed kin-like relationships with local villagers who were consequently willing to share or gift them land through kastom exchange: I don’t know where I will live in the future, but I think I will go and live on Malakula or Epi; I don’t know yet. Because if I were to move back to Paama now, there isn’t enough land. So we bought land in town so that we have somewhere to live . . . That’s the reason, just because of land on the island. If all of us returned to the island, there wouldn’t be anywhere to build houses, because there isn’t enough land. So yes, I have decided to live on Malakula. (Paul, fifty-three, in Vila since 1970s)

It is doubtful these plans to live elsewhere had any more substance than those to return ‘home’ to Paama. However, for a few urban Paamese, the preference was for rural life away from Paama; ‘home’ was nice, but anywhere rural would do, especially if land disputes could be avoided. Both in 1983 and 2011, attitudes to return were largely independent of length of urban residence, and explanations for continued town residence did not necessarily align with migration rationales. Reasons for staying in town varied. In 2011, most urban Paamese felt they had various goals to achieve in Vila before a return ‘home’ could be considered. Many emphasised the need for a certain level of economic success to ensure they could survive comfortably on the island. Those who owned urban land generally wanted to construct rental properties that would guarantee a steady income stream, while others wanted to establish their own small store or other business on the island. Families with dependents planned to wait until their children were married and employed so these children could provide urban based support (namely, reliable remittances) if parents returned ‘home’. Urban Paamese were therefore working towards long-term goals that would, in most cases, take considerable time to achieve. However, the longer Paamese stayed away, the harder it became to realistically contemplate a return, a common pattern amongst migrant populations from small islands (Olwig 2007). Just like Samoans in New Zealand, there was a distinction between Paamese public and private discourses of return (Macpherson 1985): ‘officially’, and in public, most Paamese maintained that they would one day return to Paama. Yet privately, they acted otherwise, and those who had spent most or all of their lives in Vila recognised that a return to the island would be difficult at best. Some even felt they had nowhere else to go: The two of us can’t go to the island anymore . . . If we were to go, it would be hard work for us to set up our family there. So we just stay here, and we have bought land here. (James, elderly, in Vila since 1970s)

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I should say that I will go back to the island, but it would be a little bit hard for me now, because I have spent almost my entire life in town. I think it’s the same for those who live on the island when they come to town, because they have spent their whole life on the island. I think they would only be able to stay in town for a day or two before they wanted to go back to Paama. They wouldn’t feel right in town. Because, I think the cost of living in town is too high, and it makes it difficult for those who live on the island to come and live in Vila. Us too, I think we would find it a bit difficult to go and live on Paama because they don’t have all of the things we are used to there. You would have to start saving a lot of money again because you would need to start over and build a house and everything. (David, fifty-nine, second-generation Paamese) Vila is my home now. Whether I like it or not, I stay. I just stay, because where would I go? . . . It is my home now because I don’t have anywhere else I could go. (Celia, fifty-six, second-generation Paamese)

Some migrants felt they were ‘stuck’ in Vila, and for these Paamese, urban permanence had evolved as an inadvertent but perhaps ultimately inevitable outcome of town residence. While Vila was the preferred place of residence for some, others struggled with feelings of where they would like to live versus the structural constraints (limited livelihood opportunities, access to education and services) of island life: Yes, I like Vila, I think because I have been here a long time now, and I have become used to life in Vila, so I like it. Yes, I think it is something like this, because I have made my living and I am based in Vila, so I like it. Because when I go to the island, I stay for a while and then I feel like I want to come back to Vila, I am glad when I know I’m coming back. I think because it is my home. I have made my home here and I am glad of it. (Andrew, fifty-three, second-generation Paamese) I don’t like it here. I just stay because of work. I really want to go to Paama, but when I go, I feel like I don’t know where I want to live. I’ve been living in Vila a long time, but I don’t like it. When I go to Paama, I really like it there, but sometimes I struggle, so I think about Vila again. I feel that I need to go and earn money. (Robert, forty-four, second-generation Paamese)

The most resented aspect of town life was the need to ‘live on money’. Paamese were incensed at the need to pay for things such as rent, food and transport that were free (or non-existent) on the island. This was even if, in reality, many avoided catching buses or had arrangements with urban landowners where they did not pay rent and so did not in fact, pay for ‘everything’ in Vila. Working for a masta and living by the clock were also

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common complaints, and town life was contrasted with island life where everything was said to be ‘easy’: Our dream is that we will come to town, we will work and earn money, and save a little bit of money too. But when you arrive here, you earn money, and you can’t save it at all. There are so many things that you need to pay for that your money just flies away. Because everything is expensive, and also, you know our culture [of sharing everything]? Lots of things like this contribute and mean you can never save money. That’s what it’s like [in Vila]. (Jacob, elderly, long time in Vila) On the island, it is easier. You just do as you please, you’re free and you don’t pay for food. But in town, everything is money. You go for a walk, it costs money; you eat, it costs money; you drink, it costs money. (Aaron, fifty-six, more than twenty years in Vila)

For some urban Paamese, homesickness for rural places was sometimes replaced by ambivalence when they returned to the island, found they had become accustomed to Vila and ‘struggled’ with rural life. Like almost everyone else, Henry grappled with the decision of where he ‘should’ live: Forty-one years old, Henry had lived in Vila since 1988. Because Henry was the youngest of his siblings, his two older brothers took on the responsibility of paying his school fees. Typically, since few opportunities existed to earn money on Paama, his brothers had migrated to Vila, where they found employment. Henry attended primary school on Paama and high school on Pentecost. When he failed the exam at the end of Year 10, he decided to join his brothers in Vila. He found work as a police officer, and more than twenty years later, he was still employed by the police force. He attributed his extended urban residence to his long-term employment. By 2011, Henry had, however, met and married a woman from another island. Henry’s wife worked as a salesperson in a Chinese-owned store, and although her take-home wages were low, her boss paid her children’s school fees. Henry and his wife lived in a modern style brick house on land they had purchased in 2004. They had paid for the land in full over several years but had taken a loan to pay for house materials and construction. The need to pay off this loan provided further incentive for remaining in town. Despite his long-term urban residence, Henry visited Paama every year at Christmas for a month, when his parents still lived there. He often took his children with him, and although they did not have a house on the island, they could stay with one of his classificatory brothers. This was a reciprocal arrangement, as the son of this brother lived with Henry in Port Vila so that he could attend school. Henry had mixed feelings about the island. He enjoyed visiting Paama and hoped one day to return ‘home’ more permanently. However, as he and his brothers all worked, when their mother had died recently, they brought their father to live with them in town.

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Their father was unhappy about this development but had little say in the matter. Henry thought he might have the chance to live on Paama again when his children were grown and had found employment. If the family returned to Paama, Henry planned to rent out their house in Vila to provide a steady income stream. However, Henry acknowledged the problems associated with island life including the difficulties in earning money, and issues of land access: ‘I think if all of us who live in Vila returned to Paama, it would be a problem. It would be problematic in terms of land, where would we plant our food? And if everyone went back, I think there would be some problems with land disputes, and people would start stealing land . . . And there is also the issue of food and money to provide for basic needs. It all comes back to the issue of money, where can you earn money on the island? Fishing, but you need money for fishing gear before you can start fishing. You need money before you can start a small business.’   Henry also believed it was good that so many Paamese had moved away from the island so that those who stayed had adequate access to land and other resources: ‘I think for those of us who come from small islands like Paama, town helps by reducing the population a bit . . . I think it’s good that some people leave Paama and come to town, and some can stay and use the resources that are there. Because otherwise it would be crowded, and there would not be enough fish in the sea [to eat] . . . The resources [on Paama] aren’t enough.’   Like many of his fellow Paamese migrants, Henry yearned for the simplicity of island life while recognising the very real and practical limitations a move back to the island would entail. His wife’s views on this were unknown, although Henry claimed she would be happy to move.

Reasons for staying in town were complicated, and balanced desires for the imagined simplicities of rural life with realistic acknowledgement of the difficulties. For some urban Paamese, the unknown aspects of social life on the island provided a significant barrier to return. This social unease was often expressed as a fear of nakaemas. That’s what it is, they are scared of nakaemas. I’m the same; I want to go but . . . I’m scared of nakaemas too. That’s what it’s like for those of us who live in Vila for a long time, when you go to the island, you can’t stay. I’m scared of this too. (Janet, sixty-seven, in Vila since before 1980) I’m scared to go and stay on the island . . . I’ve said that I think I will go and buy some land somewhere around here instead . . . I’ve lived in town a long time, and I’m scared to go back to the island again. I went in 1998 and only stayed for two weeks; then I came back here. Because I’m scared of nakaemas. (Edna, thirty-five, second-­ generation Paamese)

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While nakaemas was a convenient excuse for some not to return ‘home’, others such as May felt real fear at the prospect, especially if they had already suffered misfortunes attributed to sorcery: Aged sixty-seven, May was born and raised on Paama. As a child, she travelled briefly to neighbouring islands with her parents to work on copra plantations. May married a man from the Liro area and, when she was pregnant with her third child, was told by Paama’s resident nurse she would need to travel to Vila to give birth. May’s husband was working in Noumea at the time, but the nurse called him and told him to return to Vanuatu. When she was eight months’ pregnant, May met her husband in Vila, where they remained after the birth of their son. Together, they had more children in town, but soon after their fourth child was born, May’s husband died. She believed his death was the result of sorcery. May remained in Vila alone to work and look after her children before returning to Paama. After staying on Paama for about a year, May’s brother-in-law asked her to return to town. When she arrived, he was in hospital and could not help her. Through her kin connections, May found employment as a haosgel for an expatriate couple. She soon met and married a Paamese man who helped raise her four children and treated them as his own. Shortly after May’s third child was married, her second husband died. Again, she blamed this death on sorcery. In 2011, May was living in an informal settlement. Her eldest son lived on Paama, while her other children remained in Vila. May had not been formally employed for many years and earned money through informal means such as selling food from her garden to neighbours. One of her daughters paid May a token amount to wash her laundry, while the other paid her to care for her young baby while she herself worked. Except for family events, May rarely left the areas where her daughters lived. She travelled to Paama briefly for the Golden Jubilee celebrations in 1999 but had not been back since. May claimed this was because her children did not look after her properly; if they did, they would pay for her to regularly visit the island and for the gifts that she would need to carry with her. Importantly, however, May was concerned about the possibility of nakaemas on the island and believed that when you had lived in Vila for a long time, returning to the island often resulted in death by sorcery. While sorcery could also occur in town, it was the unknown aspect of island-based nakaemas that was feared. May believed she would most likely remain in Vila until her death, but if her son on Paama paid her fare, she would like to travel to the island for Christmas.

Even in May’s case, there was often ambivalence about return; she was scared but would go back to the island if only someone bought her a ticket. Seemingly, permanent urban residence and fear of nakaemas did not deny the tentative possibility of return, at least temporarily. The location of family members again played a significant role in the ability to migrate. Some urban Paamese explained they could not return to Paama – or did not wish to return – because they no longer had close kin

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living on the island. As the second generation in Vila continues to grow, such barriers to return will only increase in significance: Before, I just stayed on the island, but all of my family travelled and came [to Vila]. But I stayed with my mother [on Paama]. But when she died, I left . . . I came here, and I have stayed. Sometimes I think . . . about going [to Paama], but I think if I do go, who would I be going to visit? If my mother was alive, I would go and visit her. But it’s better if I just stay here . . . I have never been back to visit. (Jack, fifty, twenty-six years in Vila) I want to go, but . . . I don’t have any family that lives there . . . I’m scared to go . . . because I don’t want to go alone. If one day my parents go, I’ll follow them there. (Terry, thirty, second-generation Paamese)

Just as in 1983, employment continued to provide an important reason for staying in town and could prevent mobility that necessitated lengthy absences. But even where work was a factor in deterring mobility, the location of kin exerted a significant influence on migration opportunities. In 1983, Haberkorn recorded several perceived advantages to urban life, centred on a better quality of life in town, free from the demands of community work and jealousy, and with various economic opportunities. In contrast, in 2011, when directly questioned, most urban Paamese said they preferred the island, where life was (in theory at least) free. In town, finding a balance between kinship obligations and a migrant’s own economic survival was difficult (chap. 7). Both first- and second-generation Paamese maintained a strong emotional attachment to their ‘home’ villages and the imagined simplicities of rural life, even if they rarely chose to activate these ties. Nonetheless, migrants recognised Vila provided opportunities unavailable on Paama: ‘Yes, [I like Vila] because it has helped me to make a living and plan for my children’s future. If it wasn’t for Vila, I don’t know if my children would have been able to go to school. Because how would I [pay for school fees]?’ (Jimmy, forty-eight, second-generation Paamese). In 2011, while urban Paamese dreamed of a return to the island, many comfortably identified with Vila as ‘home’. Others were ambivalent and felt trapped in town. Often indecision itself was at the root of long-term urban residence.

Returning ‘Home’ Permanent return migration to Paama did occur, but after living for years or decades in town, relocation proved both costly and difficult, so it was rare: in 2011, only seven households had returned to Paama after living in

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Vila for an extended period. Most had spent ten years or more away from the island, and while there was no obvious pattern as to the type of migrant most likely to return ‘home’, returning households generally comprised couples with young children, since older children often decided to remain in town. Elderly migrants, whose social networks were firmly skewed towards urban areas, generally preferred not to return. Similarly, second-generation migrants tended not to ‘return’ to a home they continued to identify with yet had little real experience of. The small minority (just three women) of second-generation migrants who had ‘returned’ to Paama had all married island-born Paamese men and described the difficulties they faced adjusting to island life: When I first came [back to Paama] I found it a little bit hard to adjust, I complained. I kept complaining, but my parents spoke to me. They said it was up to me to look after myself and learn how to adapt to island life . . . So I tried my best, and I learned how to live on the island. Now I’m glad to be living here. (Paula, twenty-six)

Although migrants aspired to build a rural house while they were in town, few were able to do so: only two returning households had a house waiting for them upon their arrival ‘home’. Constructing a house after relocating not only represented great expense but also added to the difficulties ­associated with settling back in to island life: Oh, when we wanted to come back, it was hard. We came, but we didn’t have a house; we didn’t have a kitchen; we came and we had to just sleep with my mother-in-law; we all ate together. The day after we came back, my husband started building our house. He worked really hard, and we were able to come and sleep in our own house. We didn’t have a kitchen though, which was OK when the weather was good because we could cook outside. But when it rained, we had to go and eat with my mother-in-law. It was like this for a while until my husband could finish making our kitchen. (Lossi, forty-five)

Rural Paamese were very aware of the difficulties other potential return migrants faced in moving back to Paama. Indeed, their explanations for why migrants did not return ‘home’ largely mirrored those given by urban Paamese; urban employment, disliking the hadwok associated with rural residence, fear of nakaemas and investing in urban land were all considered significant barriers to return: There are plenty of reasons [why people don’t come back]. Some of them, you know what it’s like when you’re established in town? You’re enjoying life in town, and then you have to come back to the island and start all over again. That’s what it’s like. If you

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come back to the island, you don’t have a house, so you have to build one. You have to make a garden . . . You have to do all of the things like this in order to start all over again, in order for you to succeed. But if you already have a house on Paama or some family on Paama, you can come and stay with them and do things slowly. But if you don’t have any family here, to come back and start from scratch again, it’s really hard . . . It makes it hard for people to come back. Maybe they live in Vila, and they have a good house already. Or maybe they just rent, but the life they’re living suits them . . . It makes it really hard for people to come back to Paama. (Fletcher, sixty-six)

As elsewhere in the Pacific, trajectories of return were neither simple nor predictable, and while family reasons were important, the decision to relocate ultimately relied upon several interrelated factors. For Paamese, a desire to retire on the island, chiefly responsibilities, caring for elderly kin and unemployment all contributed to decisions to return, although a couple of men were also escaping urban social conflict or disagreements. These explanations aside, return migrant households were universally successful in both social and economic terms; six households had at least one member who held a socially important role in the community (e.g. as a chief, kindergarten teacher, small business owner or church elder), and the two most recent returning households both owned rental properties in Vila. While return is usually not limited to successful migrants, given the important roles played by Paamese returnees in the community and their relative economic success evidenced through access to small businesses, off-island land and similar resources, return migration to Paama was the domain of the successful. Although circular and other short-term migrants had also ‘returned’, most had maintained households on the island while away and so were rarely classified by other villagers as truly absent. The case of Daniel and Elizabeth provides an apt example of successful returnees: An enterprising fifty-four-year-old, Daniel was the firstborn son in his family, and the only one of his siblings living on Paama. Together, Daniel and his wife, Elizabeth, had three children, one of whom had died many years earlier, while the other two lived away from Paama. On Paama, Daniel and Elizabeth looked after the family’s rural land and cared for his elderly mother, who had become somewhat forgetful in her old age. While she nominally lived in her own house, Daniel’s mother relied heavily upon Daniel and Elizabeth’s support and would have been unable to function without it. Daniel and Elizabeth had spent fifteen years living in town. In 1971, Daniel had travelled to Vila on his own, where he successfully applied to work in the police force. He worked with the police for roughly a year before deciding he did not enjoy the work and then became a cashier at a store, where he remained for the next fourteen years. Once he had secured employment, Elizabeth left Paama and joined Daniel in town, where she worked as a haosgel for a masta until giving birth to the first of her

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The Evolution of Urban Permanence  133 own three children. After having children, Elizabeth decided to devote her time to raising them and gave up paid employment. While they lived in Vila, Daniel and Elizabeth visited Paama only once, in 1980, for their marriage. Despite this, Daniel used his earnings to purchase materials to build his own permanent house on the island, which was completed in 1979 and cared for by kin until 1986 when Daniel and Elizabeth returned to the island, a move they had been planning for years. Several factors contributed to this decision. First, Daniel had been made redundant from his job, as the store no longer had enough work available to continue employing him. Second, Daniel and Elizabeth were paying rent for a small house in Vila, whereas on the island they could live in their own much larger, newly constructed house. Third, as the firstborn son in the family, Daniel was expected to take the place of his deceased father and look after the family land. As his mother was growing old, Daniel also felt he should be there to care for her. Finally, without regular employment, Daniel and Elizabeth found life in Vila too expensive, as prices for basic commodities such as food had risen steeply. When they first returned to Paama, Daniel used his savings to establish a small store, which he ran from his house. Daniel closed the store when he needed the money invested in it to pay school fees for his children. Daniel described himself as a ‘businessman’, and after their return to Paama, he had worked for a period as a clerk for the church and as a councillor on the provincial council. In 2011, he had just begun working as a local shipping agent and had been elected as a church elder. Daniel and Elizabeth believed their son, who was working in Vila, would one day return to Paama to take the place of Daniel, as Daniel had done for his own father. Their son’s feelings on this matter, however, were not known.

A combination of factors, notably urban economic hardship and rural kin obligations, led Daniel and Elizabeth to return ‘home’. But this had occurred around thirty years ago. By 2011, few migrants had the resources to invest in rural housing, and for many, the balance of kin networks and obligations had shifted to town. As a result, returns such as Daniel and Elizabeth’s were increasingly unlikely, even when migrants were faced with similar economic difficulties. Return migration was not always permanent, but for most returnees, the costs associated with relocating yet again meant moving back to Vila was not a possibility. Importantly, return migrants did not want to leave the island; returnees held roles of status on Paama, and after a period of adjustment, return migrants were happy to be living in their home ples again, mostly free from the daily grind of wage employment, congested streets and the need to ‘live on money’ that characterised urban life. Yet, while a few households had managed to successfully return ‘home’ to Paama, the capacity of the island to absorb such families was limited. Indeed, in the aftermath of the Santo rebellion in 1980, roughly three hundred Paamese returned to Paama in a single day. Most faced difficulties in re-establishing

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themselves and found they could not reclaim land being used by kin, and old arguments soon flared. By 1981, most of these migrants had moved on. Such challenges, along with the costs of relocation, meant large-scale return appeared both unlikely and unfeasible. For many urban Paamese, there was not really much to return to.

Urban Homes for the Long Term While urban permanence may be impossible to measure, there was nothing short-term or temporary about the urban Paamese population, and contrary to earlier expectations (Bedford 1973; Haberkorn 1987), the location of kin, rather than migrant generation, was the most reliable predictor of contact with home places. Even so, most Paamese remained nostalgic about their home ples and often longed for the imagined simplicities of the island; a step removed from rural life, they looked on with fondness. At the same time, many knew return could be problematic; land tenure was not always certain, employment was scarce or non-existent, services were rudimentary and nakaemas was an ever-present threat, particularly if land ownership became disputed, as many feared it would. After long absences, rural life, too, could be plagued with uncertainties. The migration of Paamese is in many ways illustrative of wider mobility patterns and urban experiences throughout the Pacific. Migration, in the Pacific and elsewhere, rarely follows a simple path from origin to destination, and long-term urban residence has often, and very gradually, evolved as an unintended side effect of urban sociality (Strathern 1975); migrants get caught up in urban social life, rural kin come to visit and forget to return ‘home’, children are born and raised in town and, suddenly, decades have passed. In some cases, structural factors such as employment-linked housing have encouraged eventual return, but these barriers have lessened over time as urban kin networks have expanded. Indeed, as urban populations have grown, rural-urban mobility has become increasingly integral to Pacific social and cultural life, and the location of kin remains instrumental in both facilitating and directing mobility opportunities (Curry and Koczberski 1998, 1999). As for Tongan transnational mobility, rural-urban migration has become in some ways self-perpetuating: as entire families relocate and long-term migrants fail to return ‘home’, ties with rural places are reinforced by sending ever-more migrants. This ongoing movement ensures there is always someone in town, able to provide the off-island economic and social support, which has become necessary for rural existence (Small 2011); and so the pattern continues. However, even as long-term migrants’ direct kin ties to home villages decrease, nostalgia for frequently idealised, ‘true’ rural homes has endured (Carrier and Carrier 1989; Koczberski et

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al. 2001; Lindstrom 2011; Mecartney 200), and it is rarely acceptable to confess that one prefers town or does not plan to return to the island ‘one day’ (Macpherson 1985). As John Taylor (2017: 1) observes, ‘the practice of returning home, or of navigating returns between multiple homes, is a central rather than a peripheral component of contemporary Pacific Islander mobilities’, even when, as for Paamese, such return is unlikely. Ongoing speculation about return does not speak of actual plans but has come to function primarily as a way of reinforcing identity and connection to home places; the importance of ‘home’ is emotional and affective rather than physical (Howard and Rensel 2017). These patterns are not new and have slowly evolved over the last generation or so. Indeed, through comparing the experiences of first- and second-generation Paamese over time, it is evident that, in the absence of external forces, the trend towards urban permanence alongside the affective value of and nostalgia for rural villages will only continue into the future. The social and economic consequences of urban life can now be examined.

Note Parts of this chapter are taken from Petrou (2017, 2018); Petrou and Connell (2017).

6

Friends, Lovers and Stranger Danger Urban Social Worlds ♦l♦

T

he people who inhabit urban areas of the Pacific are often portrayed as belonging to one of two extremes: those who belong in town and others who do not. People who live in formal suburbs, the well-educated and meaningfully employed, the economically successful and those who are local to the area, are portrayed as legitimate urban citizens. These are the people who have rights to the city. By contrast, those who have migrated to town, or are descended from migrants, the unemployed, the poor and those who live in informal settlements are considered illegitimate urban residents. They have no right to be in the city and are blamed for many of the problems that plague urban life such as overcrowding, inadequate services, unemployment and lack of housing; these people would be more productive and better resident in rural areas (Connell 2011). In reality, such pejorative, essentialised categories are not at all clear-cut, and there is a blurring between ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ ways of being in the city; the formally employed may live in informal settlements and engage in informal livelihood activities, while the educated may be unemployed and local landowners dirt poor. The possibilities are almost endless, and there is no single ‘typical’ urban citizen. Indeed, Melanesian urban centres are home to some of the most economically, culturally and linguistically diverse populations in the world. As these urban populations have grown and become more established, so too have new forms of sociality emerged (Gewertz and Errington 1999; Kraemer 2013), further adding to the heterogeneous and eclectic nature of urban life. Like other Melanesian urban centres, Port Vila initially seems to be a place of dichotomies, where modernity is juxtaposed with and incorporated into traditional ways but may also clash with them. Vila is home to

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luxurious resorts, air-conditioned hotel rooms, wireless internet, immaculate waterfront parks and restaurants selling cuisines from around the world. Yet, wandering a few metres from the main tourist drag reveals this is not all there is to Port Vila. Dirt roads thick with mud, environmental pollution, hardship and widespread unemployment are never far away. The city may be divided into ‘formal’ suburbs and informal settlements, but the line between the two is indistinct, and the differences can be hard to pick; informal settlements are more likely to contain impermanent houses, tacked together from building site offcuts, but this form of housing is not absent from formal suburbs. People from all walks of life, and from every island in Vanuatu, live together in these suburbs and settlements, and this novel social environment, which is a stark contrast to homogenous rural areas, brings opportunities, as social networks are expanded to include ‘mixed’ neighbours, workmates and others. These ‘mixed’ environments are not all positive, however, and nakaemas and a fear of the unknown form a constant backdrop to urban life. This chapter focuses on Paamese experiences of urban housing and social life in Port Vila, emphasising the great variety of urban experiences that combine to create a vibrant capital city.

Finding Accommodation in Town Paamese lived almost everywhere in and around Port Vila, and place of residence depended on several factors, including the location of kin willing to support new migrants, availability of land and housing at the time of migration and economic means. Despite their apparent dispersal, the Liro area community was concentrated in particular areas; many Paamese, including those interviewed in 2011, lived in formal housing in Freshwota (seventeen households), Seaside Paama (seven households) and Club Hippique (seven households). The informal settlements of Blacksands (eleven households) and Manples (eight households) also housed significant populations of Liro area Paamese (Figure 6.1). Certain areas, where land had been purchased or agreements with landowners were long-standing, had been associated with Liro area migrants for almost thirty years; Smet remained home to a group of families from Voravor, while many Paamese originating from Liro and Liro Nesa lived at Seaside and Freshwota, along with Paamese from other villages. However, as more and more migrants arrived in town and land availability altered because of population growth, building developments, land sales and evictions, Liro area Paamese (and other migrant populations) had moved into new areas as well. Broadly, Paamese lived under two types of land tenure: formal and informal. Land in formal residential areas had been purchased by household members or, in the case of rental housing, the property owner. These

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Figure 6.1  Residential location and dominant housing type, Liro area Paamese, Port Vila, 2011. Drawing by David Tran, used with permission.

parcels of land were often bought through government schemes. The suburb of Freshwota, for example, was established as a low-cost housing project in 1977, with the intention of providing housing for Vila’s working migrant population. By 2011, the original area had become Freshwota 1,

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as the boundaries had expanded outwards to accommodate Freshwota 2, 3, 4 and 5. Few Paamese could afford to pay for urban land outright, and many took loans, which became a constant economic burden. Some employers had schemes where they helped their employees purchase land and then deducted loan repayments from their wages. Even so, land remained prohibitively expensive for most, and building a permanent house was not cheap, so it was not uncommon for lots to stand empty for years after purchase as their owners saved to finance construction and building materials. Housing in formal suburbs was sometimes permanent, comprising brick or other sturdy materials, but could also be impermanent; some ‘formal’ houses were cobbled together from whatever was at hand (Figures 6.2 and 6.3). Several Paamese had built a permanent house and then added further rooms or impermanent structures as kin came to stay, and often never left. Others constructed rooms, which were rented to relatives or friends and provided a significant source of income (if rent was paid on time). Some formal houses were connected to mains water and electricity, but others, whose owners could not afford connection fees or monthly bills, were not. For the most part, tenure in formal areas was relatively secure, and Paamese could do as they wished on this land. In contrast, informal settlements were located on land belonging to local kastom owners. Residents either paid rent to these landowners or

Figure 6.2  Housing in formal residential areas. Photograph by Kirstie Petrou.

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Figure 6.3  Housing in formal residential areas. Photograph by Kirstie Petrou.

lived under informal agreements. Older Paamese migrants had sometimes forged understandings with Efate locals several decades ago, while the Liro area community at Blacksands had elected the landowner as a member of parliament, and in return, he waived their rent. While some Paamese had been living in these settlements for years, or even decades, they were not allowed to build permanent structures, so houses were generally constructed from corrugated iron or other materials that could be easily disassembled and used again if and when residents were evicted (Figures 6.4 and 6.5). Informal agreements notwithstanding, should a landowner wish to sell or use their land otherwise, they were well within their rights to evict any tenants. Long-drop toilets were shared between many households, and some were even kept locked to ensure others did not use them. Connecting to services like electricity and water that implied a degree of permanence was difficult and, where communities were located at some distance from the municipal boundary, often required negotiation with several different landowners. Generally, this was all too difficult, so nothing was done. Those living within the municipal boundary and close to main roads had the easiest time accessing these services, and others often connected to electricity through their neighbours, for which they were charged a small fee. These connections, which comprised tangled cords bound together by electrical tape and held aloft by trees and poles, sometimes sparked or caught alight causing brief flashes of fear. Some industrious residents organised their own

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Figure 6.4  Housing at Manples settlement. Photograph by Kirstie Petrou.

water connections through UNELCO and charged others to fill drums, and even old bathtubs, with water a few times a week. Where Paamese lived strongly influenced their experiences of town life. In informal peri-urban areas like Blacksands, life was in some respects very similar to the island, as amenities were limited and many residents rarely ventured into central Port Vila; ‘town’ seemed a distant place, and it rarely encroached on daily life. In formal suburbs, houses were generally larger and less crowded, and life was more settled; residents who owned land did not need to fear eviction. In the centrally located suburb of Seaside, population density was high, but housing was generally permanent, and the hospital and most workplaces were close by; life was noticeably more ‘urban’. Living only a few kilometres apart could result in quite distinct experiences of Port Vila. As elsewhere in Melanesia, there was no clear association between housing tenure type and the socio-economic status of urban Paamese. Those who lived in formally established suburbs were often unemployed, and some lived in ramshackle dwellings that looked like they might blow over in the next strong wind. Informal settlement residents were just as likely to work in respected, well-paid jobs as those who lived under formal land tenure, and although Vila’s settlements have been stereotyped as places of crime and violence (Mitchell 2011), they were home to Paamese from all walks of life. Indeed, the owner of the car in Figure 6.6 worked in a highly paid

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Figure 6.5  Housing and water storage at Manples settlement. Photograph by Kirstie Petrou.

bureaucratic job but preferred to live in an informal settlement where the cost of living was low. The car, a new purchase he could not yet drive, was too valuable to be kept in the settlement, where it could not be secured, so it was parked at his driver’s house every night. Owning a brand-new car that was used for personal transport rather than as a taxi was certainly rare, and a real sign of economic success – not something one would normally find in an informal settlement, particularly when some of the owner’s neighbours could barely afford bus fares. While Vila’s informal settlements have been described as places for those ‘without choice’ (Mitchell 2002) this was not at all true for Paamese. In fact, certain aspects of informal settlement life, including low (or no) rent and access to natural water sources and garden land that reduced daily expenditure, were often considered preferable to formal housing options. Adam’s choice of housing is an apt example. Adam, aged in his early forties, was born and raised on Paama but had been living in Port Vila for more than twenty years after he travelled to town to attend school. When he first arrived in Vila, Adam enjoyed the novelty of town life, recalling, Mi just stap krangke olbaot (I acted crazy and just messed around). This carefree attitude came to an abrupt end, however, when an uncle visited him from the island and said that if Adam was wasting his father’s money, then his father would stop paying school fees. Adam immediately became more serious about study and became heavily involved

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Figure 6.6  A new car parked at Manples settlement. Photograph by Kirstie Petrou. in ‘responsible’ church activities. Adam had lived in two different locations in Port Vila. For a while, he lived in an informal settlement with his family (his mother, father and sisters had all joined him in Vila) but had left for several years after he met his wife, Judy, as he disliked the unpaved roads and muddiness of the settlement when it rained, as it frequently did in Vila. Together, Adam and Judy rented a room in Freshwota for five or six years. However, when the owner of the room wanted to renovate, they had to leave. Tired of paying high rent in Freshwota, they returned to the informal settlement to live alongside Adam’s parents, sisters and extended family. Adam and Judy constructed their own house in the settlement in 2010. Although they were not supposed to build permanent structures, their carpenter had laid a cement foundation. Adam and Judy were uneasy about this, as it meant if they were evicted, as many other residents had been, they would be unable to dismantle their house and reuse the materials elsewhere. Tertiary-educated in the Solomon Islands and employed in well-paid, skilled office jobs, Adam and Judy were scarcely the stereotype of informal settlement residents. Their young son attended an exclusive Englishlanguage preschool, and Adam hoped one day to send him to study in Australia. With his father’s encouragement, Adam had bought land in Freshwota, which he had not yet built a house on; land was expensive, and it would take a while to save for a house too. Adam strongly believed too many Paamese relied upon the idea that they owned land on the island and were complacent about urban land access, despite their tenuous position as informal settlement residents.

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Adam and Judy lived in an informal settlement not out of desperation but through making an informed choice based on the benefits and costs of residence in various locations, and the whereabouts of family members. Not all urban residents had the privilege of making such decisions. Evangeline, who had little choice but to live in an informal settlement, provides a contrasting example: Evangeline was thirty-six and had lived in town since the early 1980s. As a child, she had followed her parents when they travelled to Vila to ‘help’ a classificatory brother. Once matters had been dealt with, she had simply stayed in town, along with her parents and siblings. Evangeline had never returned to Paama, in part encouraged by her mother, who was scared of nakaemas on the island. She did not send or receive remittances to or from Paama, as she had neither immediate family there nor the money to do so. By 2011, Evangeline was living in an informal settlement with her long-term partner, a man-Malakula, whose own family also lived in Vila. Together, they had four children, the eldest of whom attended a private school. While school fees would have been waived under the public system, there were no public schools available close to where they lived, so they paid 3,000 vatu (A$35) per term in school fees. Evangeline worked as a haosgel before her children were born but had not worked since. In 2011, her husband was employed in a low-skilled construction job and earned around 5,000 vatu (A$59) per week – although Evangeline estimated he sometimes spent up to 1,000 vatu (A$12) in a single night buying kava for himself and his friends. While she planted a garden to supplement the family’s needs, Evangeline found it difficult to afford food and other necessities. She rarely left the area where she lived and in late 2011 had not visited central Port Vila, just 2.5 kilometres away, in more than a year, as she did not have any money. She was tired of living where she did but could not afford to leave, explaining, Taem yu nidim vatu be yu stap (When you don’t have money, you have to stay). For Evangeline, her place of residence was a product of circumstances rather than choice.

Economic means were vital in determining both where migrants lived and whether they could choose to move elsewhere. Kin connections, too, were crucial in influencing housing options; almost half of all Paamese households lived on urban land purchased by a family member, and there was little difference in urban land ownership between first- and second-generation Paamese. Land ownership was generally individual, but in an unusual exception at Club Hippique, Paamese lived on land owned by the whole community. This community was previously located at Elluk, but when the land was sold and they were evicted, the community took the new expatriate landowner to court, where it was decided he must compensate the community by purchasing a new plot of land for them to live on. When faced with eviction, most communities were not so lucky and

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simply had to beg for accommodation from relatives, either permanently or until something else could be found. A minority (4 per cent) of households had access to land via kastom agreements, and just one household was caretaking land for expatriate employers, the only household living in employment linked accommodation. This was a major decrease from the thirteen households (23 per cent) who had relied on such housing in 1983. Roughly a fifth (21 per cent) of households paid rent, either in formal or informal areas. However, the expense of renting was increasingly considered undesirable, and only those with no other options rented. Many rental properties did not have space for extended families, so adult children tended to leave these dwellings and seek their own accommodation upon marriage. More than half (54 per cent) of urban Paamese owned or had gained access to land other than their kastom land on Paama. Second-generation migrants held more land in the two urban centres, Vila and Santo, where it could be purchased from the government relatively easily. First-generation migrants had greater access to land on outer islands via kastom agreements, as they had more contact with these islands, and their opportunities to forge such agreements were superior. Although Paamese women traditionally did not inherit land and relied on their husbands for land access, four urban women, all of them single mothers who did not wish to marry, had access to land that could be considered theirs. One had inherited her father’s land in Vila when she, and not her brothers, helped him pay the loan. Another’s father was willing to give her some land on Paama where she could build a house. A further two had purchased land in Vila themselves. While these women were unusual, they illustrate women’s ability to exist relatively autonomously in town, something that was impossible on the island. This was a significant departure from 1983, where no similar land purchases had been made by women. The change reflected evolving gender norms, women’s greater access to employment and income streams of their own, and a desire, and in some cases need, to be more independent. Leah was one of these independent women: Thirty-five-year-old Leah had been living in town for roughly twenty years. As a teenager, she travelled to Vila when her uncle needed a haosgel to care for his daughter while he and his wife worked. Eventually, Leah’s biological family, who were involved in a land dispute on Paama, had followed her to town. In 2011, Leah was living in an informal settlement with her parents, sister and brother-in-law and their children. Leah was unmarried but had an eighteen-year-old son, Kim. Kim’s father was from a different island and had little contact with Kim or Leah. Leah had no desire to marry or find another partner, but because women traditionally joined their husband’s household, Leah’s elderly father did not feel he needed to provide for her; upon his

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death, his land and any other assets would go to his son. With no other support, Leah took matters into her own hands. She worked as a housekeeper at a tourist resort, and although she earned only 15,000 vatu (A$175) per fortnight, she had managed to scrape together enough money to put Kim through high school. In 2011, he was about to begin a certificate course in business, and Leah hoped that after this, he would be able to find ‘good’ work; Kim’s income would make a valuable contribution to the household. In 2009, Leah had joined a group of seven other Paamese, who together pooled their savings and took out a loan to buy a piece of land in rural Efate. Leah used her portion of this land to plant a food garden, which she visited every week. She shared the produce she harvested with her siblings and parents. Leah had also planted twenty-six sandalwood seedlings on her land that she hoped to sell, once they had matured in a decade or so. Each month, Leah paid 6,000 vatu (A$70) towards the loan. At this rate, it would take fifteen years to pay it off, but she hoped she might be able to do some seasonal work in New Zealand one day so she could pay it all off in one go.

Leah was by no means rich, but with no one else to rely upon for assistance, she had made several calculated investments that would hopefully ensure her economic survival well into the future. Gardens like Leah’s could provide a valuable source of food, and almost two-thirds of urban Paamese had access to food gardens, either their own or belonging to kin. Gardens were planted on purchased land or unused and vacant areas. For many, however, these gardens were far from their place of residence, and transport costs meant they could afford to visit their gardens only fortnightly or monthly. Those living at Blacksands and Club Hippique had relatively easy access to garden land, which was directly adjacent to the settlements, so could visit and rely on their gardens more frequently than others. But easy land access could also be disadvantageous. Paamese who planted gardens closer to town frequently found food was stolen before they could eat it; as more and more people struggled to make ends meet, some took whatever they could to survive. Moreover, many long-term urban residents observed that vacant land that had once been used to plant gardens was fast disappearing: ‘Yeah, Vila has changed . . . before, I could plant food gardens all around here, but lots of people have come, and the land has been sold, and now you can’t access any bushland like you used to, to make a small garden’ (Maurice, forty-one, thirteen years in Vila). Garden land was becoming scarcer as a result of increased population and infilling of previous agricultural areas so that options for partial disengagement from the cash economy, or simply supplementing inadequate incomes, were lessening. For those who did not own land, security of tenure was a concern. All urban residents were familiar with evictions and could point out the places

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where they had occurred, as well as the costs and difficulties that ensued. As one informal settlement resident explained: ‘We don’t know if we will be here a long time, or only until next year, I don’t know. It’s up to the landowner. Anything he wants to do to us here . . . We’re in his hands’ (Alex, fifty-five, in Vila for thirteen years). Urban residents were highly aware of the precarity of housing access in town and, where possible, sought to invest in urban land to avoid being cast out and gain some degree of security. Nonetheless, housing tenure was varied, and there was no ‘typical’ housing tenure type associated with urban Paamese; people simply made do, lived however and wherever they could but constantly sought to improve.

Urban Social Life On Paama, villagers lived together in a small, clearly demarcated area, never more than a few hundred metres from kin and neighbours. By contrast, Paamese in Vila lived wan wan (on their own, scattered) throughout the urban and peri-urban areas. This made it difficult for the community to physically come together as one: In Vila, we live all over the place. Sometimes when I call everyone together for a meeting they come, and sometimes they don’t, because Vila is a big place. Sometimes people who live far away can’t come, because it’s a long way. Those who live close, come along . . . That’s what life in Vila is like; it isn’t the same as the island. On the island, we all live together in one place, and when people are called together, everyone comes. But here, we’re scattered all over the place. (Solomon, elderly, about forty years in Vila)

Geographical dispersal had implications for community cohesion, and relationships between Paamese who lived in different areas were not as close as they would have been in the smaller-scale village environment, where these same relatives would have been encountered daily. Indeed, on Paama, they would have been impossible to avoid. In Vila, however, interactions with genealogically more distant relatives, whose presence was not integral to daily urban life, were few and far between. Groups of kin belonging to the same lineage or village of origin sometimes gathered at community meetings. Such meetings were held sporadically to organise events such as weddings and fundraisers or to discuss or discipline individuals for unacceptable behaviour, which ranged from adultery to viewing pornography on mobile phones. Meetings were generally scheduled for weekend afternoons, when fewer Paamese had work commitments. However, as Solomon described, attendance was often low. For those who lived far away, community meetings required an investment

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of time (both travel time and the duration of the meeting itself) and money (transport costs and cash contributions to community events): You see, there are too many things when you only have a small salary. We have to give some money to the church, some more to a marriage, a bit more for a funeral. You’re giving away money all over the place; 26,000 vatu (A$305) a month is not enough for me to have any money left over for myself. (Murray, fifty-five, thirteen years in Vila)

Some Paamese did not attend community meetings because they did not respect their jif. Jifs who ‘played around’ and did not take their job seriously, as well as those who argued over titles or did not belong to ‘true’ chiefly bloodlines, did not command rispek: All of our chiefs, because they’re always fighting over their chiefly titles, it means that we no longer . . . no one wants to listen to the chiefs anymore. (Ralph, age unknown, twenty-one years in Vila) People don’t respect our chief in town. People don’t respect him because they play jokes on him, and he plays jokes on them too. (Trevor, twenty, several years in Vila)

Respect for jifs was important, but some Paamese blamed poor meeting attendance on community members who were more interested in drinking kava than participating in community life. Probably, it was a bit of both, alongside the opportunity costs and real costs. There was some sense of a wider urban Paamese community, but this communal identity was most often mobilised in opposition to other ethnic or island groups: for example, Paamese considered those from Tanna volatile and disrespectful, traits that were not associated with being Paamese, while those from Ambrym harboured black magic and were to be avoided. On a day-to-day basis, however, urban Paamese tended to focus their energies on supporting core kin groups such as the household, a long-standing and increasingly common trend in urban Melanesia (Barber 2010; Levine and Levine 1979; Umezaki 2010). Husbands and wives worked together to negotiate the ongoing economic demands of urban life, and even though most Paamese did not know how much their spouse earned, cash and food resources were pooled for household purposes or shared with brothers, sisters, children and parents who lived nearby. These items were generally not shared with more distant kin, as they sometimes would have been on Paama. Kin were not the only ones urban Paamese socialised with or called upon for help, and social networks based on place of urban residence, employment and sporting clubs were also important. At times, these friends took

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the place of kin, and some urban Paamese asked workmates or church friends to assist with wedding preparations, a role that was traditionally that of relatives. In many instances, close workplace relations were framed in kin terms: some men had been supported, mentored and treated kindly by their bosses and described them as being ‘like fathers’. New social relationships were adapted to fit old ones, as friendships were described in kin terms; friends and neighbours from other islands became brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, aunts and uncles. In one informal settlement, the Paamese community often socialised with their neighbours from Tongoa. These were people they saw every day, and they knew each other’s affairs intimately. The older generation drank kava together and chatted about local goings-on, while their children, who had grown up together, played, gossiped and were never out of one another’s company for long. Yvette was one such youth: Yvette had been born and raised in one of Vila’s many informal settlements. Now fourteen, she was the eldest of four children born to a second-generation Paamese mother and first-generation Paamese father. Yvette had visited Paama only briefly as a child and could not remember the trip but was able to describe in some detail (including landmarks such as trees and the colour of nearby houses) where her family land was located on the island. She could understand, but spoke only limited, Paamese; instead, like many of her peers, she preferred to communicate in Bislama. Because of what was said to be her stronghed (‘strong head’, stubbornness), Yvette no longer attended school, and her parents had given up on trying to provide her with a formal education. Instead, Yvette was paid a nominal amount to work as a haosgel for her two employed parents. There was a sense of resignation amongst Yvette’s extended family members that it was only a matter of time until Yvette got herself pregnant and became a young single mother, as so many other young girls had done. Having grown up next door to Tongoans, Yvette’s ‘first’ or best friend was a Tongoan girl who she had known all her life. They traded secrets and clothes and stayed the night at each other’s house. Together, they whispered about boyfriends (Yvette’s worked on a ship and was not Paamese) and experimented with alcohol (yet claimed they had not tried marijuana or kava). While she happily mingled with her Tongoan neighbours, Yvette did not like attending Paamese community events, as she felt uncomfortable amongst all the unfamiliar faces. On the rare occasion when she did attend, Yvette would stap kwaet (‘stay quiet’, be quiet, shy) in the corner. Yvette thus felt more at home in the mixed environment of the informal settlement where she lived than amongst members of her own kin group who she did not personally know.

While there was sometimes a sense of shame in not knowing one’s kin, there could also be freedom in the valuable anonymity of urban life; less scrutiny meant fewer constraints, but it also meant some disengagement

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from Paama, and those who rarely mingled with their urban relatives had, in some ways, effectively ‘disappeared’ from the community. Living in a mixed environment could result in new bonds and a feeling of urban community. In Blacksands informal settlement, membership of the Liro area community was based on a combination of island identity (most residents had some connection to families originating in Liro Nesa or Liro) and place of residence. People from other islands who lived within the area, particularly husbands and boyfriends of Paamese women, who would not traditionally have been considered ‘Paamese’, had been incorporated into daily social life and were accepted as members of the Paamese community; they attended church, shared food, socialised and participated in community events together. One of these, a man-Pentecost, acted as the community’s elected jif and chaired weekly meetings to discuss matters affecting residents. Paamese residents of Blacksands regularly attended these meetings, although many did not attend community meetings for their village of origin, which, for some, had little relevance. For these Paamese, their sense of community was largely localised to their place of residence. Diverse occupations, incomes, education levels and land tenure types had led to noticeable differences in living styles and standards within the Paamese community. There was now some evidence of tentative class formation and the emergence of middle-class ideals amongst economically successful migrants. These ideals boiled down to an enjoyment of private space free of the interruptions and demands associated with community living. Max had constructed a large house in the formal suburb of Beverly Hills, whose name itself suggests aspirations to social mobility. This suburb was located at some distance from town and contained many large brick houses. Max explained his preference for Beverly Hills as follows: ‘Oh, Seaside is crowded. You can’t breathe properly; there are too many people. Here, where I’m living, I feel good because the area is good, it is quiet and you don’t hear much noise. You live in your own yard by yourself’ (Max, fifty-four, in Vila since 1970s). As in some towns in PNG, class was related to lifestyle and the ability to consume, and middle-classness was associated with being ‘modern’ and ‘developed’ (Gewertz and Errington 1999). For Paamese, this entailed some combination of holding good employment, owning urban land, living in a permanent house and not succumbing to the constant demands of sharing everything with kin. Some confessed they enjoyed the privacy and anonymity of their large houses, and they did not want kin settling on their urban land or staying with them, even if they were criticised by other Paamese for being ‘selfish’. While those who enjoyed this idea of privacy were more likely to own urban land, there was no strict spatial component to these attitudes, and class-based ‘suburbs’ had

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not evolved. Successful businessmen (and women) could live anywhere. Those who were the most vocal about their enjoyment of private space tended to be fluent in English, successful in their field of employment and held a certain amount of status as a result. These were the kinds of people who could afford to regularly drink coffee in tourist cafes and spend money on unnecessary consumer items without a second thought. However, they were still a small minority. New social networks and communities were not always seen as positive, and those who had lived in Vila for a long time described how the urban social environment had altered: Before, those of us in town, we were very close even though we came from different Paamese villages, because when you come to Vila, you tend to be very protective towards each other . . . If there was an incident and something happened to one of us, if someone came and attacked one of us here, we could retaliate. But now we just mind our own business. Before, even though our island is small, we weren’t scared to fight to protect ourselves. But recently people have started to just look after their own families. This is one of the things that is happening that isn’t very good. (Frederic, forties, in Vila for twenty-two years)

As Paamese began to ‘just look after their own families’, it was becoming more difficult to organise life-cycle events that required contributions from the whole village community. This lack of community involvement was visible evidence of both weakening kin ties and diminishing ties to Paama and was widely considered problematic, as it could lead to further breakdown of traditional social norms: If you have an event that you need to organise in Vila, it is hard. You can’t do it by yourself because you need the support of the community to help you – you need them to contribute a little bit of money to help with your work. So it means that now, in Vila, there are lots of young men who have girlfriends, and they just live together [without marrying]. Because there are no meetings, so who is there to help them organise a marriage? They have kids, two or three, and they just live together [without being able to marry]. This is the problem. Before it was good, but now life is hard. (Marcus, fifty-three, in Vila since 1970s) There are a lot of us, but we don’t cooperate well. One lives over there, one lives over there and there isn’t time to hold meetings. Some people you only meet when there is a death . . . When there is a funeral, we eat together, and then we go our separate ways and don’t see each other . . . We don’t have cooperation like we used to have before. Like going to meetings and talking, making plans and saying that all of our family needs to work together for something [like a marriage], or to organise a fundraiser

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or something else  – we don’t have this anymore. But before, it was good. (Terry, ­forty-eight, more than thirty-five years in Vila)

Despite this, urban Paamese generally knew of significant happenings concerning others from their own village, and whenever a member of the wider Paamese community died or was involved in a punch-up, the news spread rapidly. Most Paamese always planned to attend weddings, funerals and other community functions, and there was a general sense that one ‘should’ attend these events to mingle with kin and strengthen community cohesion. But often Paamese were tired from long work hours or could not afford gifts or other cash contributions and never quite made it to these gatherings. Lack of frequent contact meant many of the younger generation were not known by, and did not know, members of their extended families, further contributing to the weakening of traditional community relations. It is hardly surprising that, just like Yvette, some were unfamiliar both with those living elsewhere in Vila, and those who remained on Paama: In my village, there are some boys, I already don’t know who they are . . . I just know the members of my own family line. I know the children who come to town, but those who live on the island, I have to ask their names again and again to know who they are, or I wouldn’t be able to tell you. (Saul, fifty-four, in Vila since 1970s)

Mobile phones were used to share information and gossip and, to some extent, bridged geographical distance, but the cost of usage, and their high turnover (mobile phones were frequently lost) meant phone communication was not always reliable. The recent introduction of no- and low-cost text messaging meant many urban Paamese preferred to send messages rather than make calls. Chain texts, which varied from simple messages like gud naet (good night) to jokes or religious blessings, were forwarded between family, friends, neighbours and casual acquaintances. Mobile phones were used more to reinforce existing close relationships and for workplace communication than for contacting more distant kin. At the same time, wrong numbers or krangke (crazy) calls could also lead to new relationships, and even love, between strangers. One Paamese woman, Lilith, established a remittance relationship with a man she came to refer to as a son on the distant island of Pentecost. Lilith had never visited Pentecost, and she had no family there. Rather, this arrangement arose after a series of wrong numbers. In Lilith’s case, the relationship formed through calling krangke was respectable, but sometimes such calls led to hidden love affairs. Mobile phones enabled unseen, private communication and made it easier than ever to conduct secret romances, leading some Paamese to associate mobile phone use with moral decay and the erosion of traditional values

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(Taylor 2016). Girls, whose movements were more closely policed than their brothers, found mobiles particularly handy for arranging liaisons with forbidden lovers. Indeed, some girls conducted their relationships almost solely through their phones and had boyfriends they had only met once or twice in person. Mobile phones were therefore used to both reinforce existing relationships and establish new ones, in ways not yet evident or possible on Paama. Whereas Port Vila once provided a safe haven to escape sorcery, by 2011 the widespread presence of ‘mixed’ migrants from different island groups meant town had also become a place where conflict and sorcery seemingly flourished. Sally, whose father was from Tanna, described an inter-island conflict from a few years earlier: Life in town isn’t good, because when you live in a place like this, there are always arguments and conflicts. There was a really big fight between the people from Tanna and those from Ambrym . . . A woman from Tanna died, and they found out that she died because of sorcery. It was black magic done by an Ambrymese man. When the Tannese discovered this, there was a riot. They went and attacked all of the Ambrymese; they burned their houses. All of the Ambrymese who lived here hid. I was terrified, because they were attacking people in so many different ways. They used axes and knives. Then they burned the houses that were over there and over there . . . Lots of people use nakaemas in town. (Sally, nineteen, second-generation Paamese)

More recently, some Paamese boys from elsewhere on the island had been accused of vampirism and drinking blood. Tales of nakaemas were abundant, and as populations increased, interactions with strangers (who could potentially be sorcerers) were increasingly common and difficult to avoid. Many Paamese migrants avoided unfamiliar places because of the perceived risk of nakaemas that contact with strangers brought, and daily life was largely restricted to known places such as workplaces, houses of close family members and the local area in which one lived. This restricted spatial movement was reinforced by the need for money. Many Paamese never visited central Port Vila without a specific purpose, as there was little to do there that did not require cash. Some Paamese, particularly youth, aimlessly wandered the streets, but this was frowned upon, especially if the wanderers were female, and was more common in residential areas than the centre of town. When they did wokbaot, Paamese tended to travel in groups for safety. Married women tried to avoid unexplained absences from the home, which could lead to accusations of adultery and savage beatings at the hands of jealous husbands. Young women made sure they were visible and loud, particularly after dark, as appearing meek could invite rape. Once

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a relatively safe haven, unknown urban areas had become places where threats, both physical and magical, could lurk. In Port Vila, Paamese were thrown together with people from different islands, and working out what this meant, and how one should behave, was a constant act of negotiation. Some strangers had become friends, workmates and neighbours, even fictive kin, but there was always danger lurking in the unknown. Over thirty years, Paamese social organisation had adapted to the opportunities and uncertainties of these new urban conditions, with the result that less village based and more hybrid forms of social organisation and sociality had evolved.

Leisure in the City Life in the city could be fun. Certainly, Vila was full of seemingly interesting people; young men listened to Bob Marley and sported dreadlocks and Rastafarian-style clothing; businessmen wore suits and carried important looking folders; women pierced their ears and wore shorts or trousers in public, a departure from the conservative dresses and skirts of island life. In downtown Port Vila, the streets were full of buses and taxis blaring a combination of foreign pop music and local string band hits. Movement and colour were everywhere, and there were many ways to pass the time. Some leisure activities varied by location, and participation was often structured by place of residence and not ethnic group. In Blacksands, bingo was popular with mamas, while in Freshwota, boys enjoyed boxing training. In formally established suburbs, older males often joined residents’ associations where they attempted to improve the area’s physical and social amenities. Unlike on Paama, where men played soccer and women played volleyball, in Vila young women also participated in soccer training and matches, but commitments requiring girls stay out after dark, and associated safety fears, often resulted in parents calling an end to this pastime. For Paamese who worked long hours and up to six days a week, their day off was a chance to relax and was generally spent doing not much of anything in and around the home in the company of kin and neighbours. The unemployed and marginally employed, who had limited access to cash, also spent most of their time in and around the home. Playing cards was a popular pastime (Figure 6.7), and it was common to bet smol vatu (generally ten to twenty vatu (A$0.11–24)) on games. Losses and winnings were small, often only enough to buy a tiny bag of rice or a few sweets. Much like fundraising on the island, these games were primarily a way of redistributing very small sums of money between friends and relatives. Those who had access to televisions often watched imported DVDs; Filipino soap operas and American action films were particularly popular, as was a local soap

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Figure 6.7  Playing cards was a popular urban pastime, Port Vila, 2011. Photograph by Kirstie Petrou.

opera that was televised every afternoon. A few Paamese owned computers, and although most were not connected to the internet, they could be used for playing games or making music CDs. Kava bars proliferated and ranged from permanent buildings that were run much like pubs to ‘windows’, literally a window rented in an existing structure from which vendors could sell a bucket or two (or more) of their own kava. Others sold kava from their houses or constructed small ‘bars’ in their own yards. Kava was consumed in the evenings, and while Paamese preferred to patronise known kava bars and sellers, this was not restricted to kin, and extended to workmates, neighbours and other friends. It was disrespectful for Paamese women to drink kava in public, but some older women purchased it to drink discreetly at home, claiming kava aided their digestion. Others did not care and drank in public; why should boys have all the fun? Some Paamese paired kava with alcohol and drank a beer (referred to as kale) at the end of a kava session, as it helped them sleep and recover quickly the next day. Kava, as well as alcohol and marijuana, aided Paamese to relax and unwind, providing a brief reprieve from the stress and uncertainties of urban life, so even those who could barely afford to do so often drank kava. Young people smoked marijuana to feel strong and invincible when life was getting them down. Sharing these drugs reinforced relationships; it was unthinkable to hide these substances from friends, and doing so

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could block or end relationships. However, the much greater cost of alcohol and marijuana, as compared to kava, meant they were a rare luxury. Some begged kava (or alcohol) off others, and when they could not pay them back with money, did so the only way they could: Now kava has become very popular. Girls drink kava. If they don’t have any money to drink it, they borrow money, and then they make trouble. This is why girls have so many babies these days . . . If you go to drink kava and you don’t have money, how do you pay for it? You go and find a man, and you ask him to buy you some, and when you have drunk it, and you’re feeling drunk, you follow him. He pays for your kava and you drink it, but you must give him something back. If you don’t give him something back [sex], he’ll beat you for it tomorrow. (Anais, fifty-two, thirty-six years in Vila)

Sometimes the cost of a fun night out could be huge, and not just economic. Many Paamese blamed the breakdown of community cohesion and traditional social values such as rispek on the use and abuse of substances: Everyone [in town] is stubborn and hedonistic; they no longer have rispek. Rispek is something that all of our ancestors taught us, but here rispek isn’t as it should be. I think it’s because we live in town, and you’re exposed to a lot of different things, and all of the youth smoke marijuana. Lots of them smoke it. We try to stop them, but they all hide and smoke . . . And it’s not just youth who smoke, I think there are some fathers who smoke it too. (Francis, fifty, more than ten years in Vila)

Marijuana use, along with kava and alcohol, had become a metaphor for the social ills of urban life. Village-based fundraisers were often held to raise money for things like community buildings or nakamals on the island, or the construction of new churches in town. These fundraisers generally revolved around selling kava and food and were enjoyed by some, but to others, they were yet another expense and a drain on scarce cash resources. Organised entertainment such as Independence Day celebrations were eagerly anticipated by youth who enjoyed the excitement of flashing lights, music and free entertainment. Many adults felt ambivalent about the cost of attendance (buying refreshments, etc.) and the potential danger of nakaemas that arose from mingling with strangers. Leisure time in town could be exciting and included many activities unavailable on Paama. But taking part in some of these activities involved costs and uncertainties that went beyond mere economics, and there were legitimate and illegitimate ways to pass the time; fundraisers and other functions that reinforced community cohesion were considered ‘good’, while pastimes that challenged traditional values were viewed as ‘bad’.

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Socialisation versus Heredity: Second-Generation Paamese and Belonging The rise in inter-island marriages in town meant many second-generation Paamese were of mixed parentage. In the past, lineage identity was simply passed from father to child and hence aligned with the father’s home place. However, by 2011, many children who had been raised within the urban Paamese community identified as Paamese when only their mother was from Paama. This was especially so for children of single mothers, who often had only infrequent contact with their father. In fact, some of these children did not know who their father was and could not identify with his island even if they wanted to. When couples had children before marriage, men often lived with their partners’ family, as it would not have been correct for her to join his family before braedpraes had been paid. Lisa and Carl were children of mixed heritage who identified as Paamese: Six-year-old Lisa and her four-year-old brother, Carl, were born to a Paamese mother, Jean, and a Banks Islander father, Bill. Bill and Jean had been together for roughly seven years, but in 2011, they had only just gathered the resources for Bill to make a kastom marriage ceremony in which he ‘paid’ for Jean and the two children. Bill did not have the right to take Jean to live with his own family until this payment was made. As a result, they had been living with Jean’s parents and siblings within a Paamese enclave in one of Vila’s many informal settlements. The two children had limited knowledge of their father’s language and understood but could not speak the Paamese language. They spent most of their time with their Paamese relatives, visiting their father’s family mainly for specific celebrations or events. After their kastom marriage ceremony, Bill’s relatives hoped he and Jean would start living with them in another area of Vila, but Jean laughed off this suggestion, as they were well established at their current location. The two children, whose identity would traditionally be associated with their father’s island, identified as Paamese and were treated as such by their mother’s family, although they were sometimes jokingly called man-Banks by the other children with whom they lived.

Whereas Lisa and Carl lived with both of their parents, many ‘mixed’ children, such as Kelvin, did not: Eighteen-year-old Kelvin was also of mixed parentage; his mother was Paamese, while his father was from Futuna. He was an only child to his mother, who had never married. While Kelvin knew who his father was, he had limited contact with him and had grown up living with his mother, her parents, siblings and extended family members from their village on Paama. Kelvin understood and could speak limited Paamese and identified as a man-Paama. Unlike some children in his position, Kelvin

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expressed no interest in accessing land via his father (although this may have been influenced by Futuna’s matrilineal system of land inheritance). However, he believed he might be able use some of his maternal grandfather’s land on Paama if he asked. Kelvin had visited Paama twice: once during his school holidays, and a second time to assist his grandfather in repairing his house on the island. Despite being only ‘half Paamese’, Kelvin functioned and was accepted as a member of the Liro area community.

For many second-generation children, identification as Paamese was based upon social interactions  – being raised, living and socialising within the urban Paamese community  – rather than upon either ‘pure’ heredity or physical experience of the village itself. And being Paamese was not reliant on speaking the language either. Paamese was spoken infrequently by the second generation, who often preferred Bislama, and while many could understand a bit of Paamese, they often had difficulty speaking it. Firstgeneration migrants saw this as a loss of culture and as an inconvenience; being unable to speak Paamese made it harder to have secret conversations in plain view (or hearing) of others from different islands. While they identified and were treated as Paamese, members of the second generation who either had not visited their island ‘home’ or did not join the community in fundraising, meetings and other events were widely criticised: Some people grow up, and you ask them, ‘Are you Paamese’? When you ask them, they tell you they are from Paama, but sometimes, yes, they just say it, but they don’t really join in with other community members. (Ben, forty-two, second-generation Paamese) It’s common for people to say that they are Paamese. They just mention the name, Paama. They say they are Paamese, but what village do they come from? Lots of people now . . . are losing their family; they no longer work together closely with their family or the community from the village that they belong to . . . Lots of people just say they come from Paama, but they have never been there. (Esme, thirty-five, second-­ generation Paamese)

Experience of the island was not always necessary, but it was considered totally unacceptable to claim Paamese identity and never join community events. At the end of the last century, very few urban ni-Vanuatu identified with town as their home place (Rawlings 1999). In 2011, urban Paamese also continued to identify with their island village as ‘home’, but many Paamese, especially the second generation, were also identifying with certain parts of Vila. One second-generation man spoke of a time in his youth when he

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had belonged to a gang of ‘Freshwota Boys’. These ‘boys’ identified with many different islands and, despite the disapproval of their elders, hung out together, drinking kava and alcohol, smoking and sometimes picking fights. Residential location, and not island of origin, provided the basis for group membership. Men, and women, were not just Paamese but Paamese from Blacksands or Freshwota or wherever else they lived in town. In some ways, urban Paamese operated at a village like scale in Vila. Paamese identity had not disappeared amongst the second generation and was flexible enough to include those who were not traditionally considered Paamese. As more and more children are born and raised in town, identity and friendships based on shared place of residence will become increasingly important as island homelands seem ever more distant.

The Excitement and Precarity of Urban Life Life in Port Vila was exciting and full of possibilities, both good and bad, and continuity and change were evident in housing options and social life. People of all kinds lived together in settlements and formal suburbs, and Paamese social organisation had altered to accommodate new relationships and networks, even though the importance of close kin relations persisted. Many enjoyed these new social opportunities, which were often born of practicality; Paamese became friends with those they saw every day, while other, arguably less essential, relationships dwindled. Long-term urban residents bemoaned the cracks that had appeared in community cohesion, but with Paamese scattered throughout town, little could be done to combat it. At the same time, uncertainty was never far away as Paamese tried to negotiate these social relations, and conflicts sometimes arose. In matters of housing, too, life was often uncertain, and one could plan only so far ahead; tomorrow might bring eviction, and if not tomorrow, then next week or next month: one could never be sure. Precarious or not, like migrants from the island of Tanna, Paamese had made a life for themselves in town and possessed a certain degree of ‘urban poise’. Urban life could be difficult, but it was also vibrant and exhilarating, and offered much more in the way of entertainment and interaction with different types of people than the island could (Lindstrom 2011). There was thus a measure of sophistication to urban life, and it had become more than just a rite of passage, as Paamese were living in more interesting but uncertain times than they had a ­generation ago. On Paama, homogenous populations and physical proximity reinforced kin relationships; there was no one else to turn to for friendship or assistance, and blocking or denying these relationships was both highly visible and difficult to carry through, as consensus was vital for social harmony. In town,

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Paamese continued to forge relationships with those who were physically proximate. However, these were often people from different islands, and, as for urban Ambrymese, it was not possible to assume relationships in town would necessarily mirror those on the island (Eriksen 2008). Anonymity had brought a certain degree of freedom to disappear from or not maintain some traditional relationships, although sometimes this occurred as a result of economics rather than desire. Even so, the variety and types of social networks in town had increased, and reflecting patterns from the wider urban population, friendships based on church membership (Eriksen 2008; Hess 2009), place of residence (Kraemer 2013) and employment (Mecartney 2001) were important. How these social networks will evolve is yet to be seen, but their diversity will continue to expand as urban populations stabilise further. At the same time, it is unlikely the significance of kin networks will disappear altogether; close kin relationships remained important, and while more distant relations had faded, the importance of households had not. Kin networks had not vanished, but they had contracted as other social networks expanded, an increasingly common feature of Melanesian urban social organisation (Barber 2010; Eriksen 2008). The lack of a clear association between housing tenure type and socio-­ economic status that exists in urban PNG (Barber 2003; Goddard 2010a) was also true for urban Paamese; people lived everywhere, and the population was truly ‘mixed’ by geography, status, class and island of origin. However, as middle-class ideals had emerged, mirroring trends in PNG, differences in type rather than degree had appeared (Gewertz and Errington 1999); it was not that some could afford more material goods but rather that some had access to things that others did not. Most notably, some, such as this embryonic middle class, were positioned as legitimate urban citizens, while others were not. These categorisations were largely informed by ideas of how an ordered, suburbanised Western city should look and function and who should inhabit it. Yet, as we have seen, there were many ways of being in Vila, and it is exactly this diversity that makes Pacific urban centres exciting, vibrant places.

7

Living on Money Urban Economic Life ♦l♦

P

overty and hardship are not terms generally associated with Pacific Island cultures, which have traditionally been underpinned by sharing, reciprocity and strong social support systems complemented by a heavy reliance on subsistence agriculture; cash was once largely peripheral to daily needs. However, as we have seen, over the past ten years or so, cash has become increasingly indispensable to finance education and healthcare and to fully participate in community social life. This increased need for cash has occurred alongside growing unemployment, failed economic growth, rising youth-dominated urban populations and unstable governments. As a result, more and more people have found it difficult to meet their basic needs, yet rural-urban migration continues, and households get larger. Urban residents, who are often unable to fall back on subsistence agricultural practices, have been the hardest hit. Hardship, defined as a lack of economic and employment opportunities, bad health, living alone, an inability to support oneself and poor or no access to garden land, cash crops or sanitation facilities, has become widespread and highly visible, even as governments remain reluctant to accept that poverty, in one form or another, is a problem. Few people are truly destitute, but many are living in relative or absolute poverty where incomes just meet or are barely enough to cover basic food, shelter, clothing and education (ADB 2003). Such people are unable to fully participate in community socio-economic life or meet customary obligations such as contributions to community, church or family events. Poverty and hardship have become an undeniable part of urban life in the Pacific Islands, yet they remain poorly understood, and little has been done to combat them.

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In 2011, hardship was at the forefront of Port Vila’s collective imagination with the success of the local Dokowia String Band hit ‘Class Six’. All around town, the song blared from taxis and buses, restaurants and cafes. People walked around singing it, bought the CD or borrowed it from others; ‘Class Six’ had become the unofficial anthem of urban life. The tune was undeniably catchy, but its popularity stemmed more from the way it resonated with the population’s urban experience. The story it told, of a man who finished school in class six (Year 6) when his father could not pay school fees, was their story. In the song, the man compares his own fortunes with those of his classmates who graduated from high school; they are driving buses and working in banks, jobs he could have done if only he had finished school. Instead, businessmen laugh when he asks for employment, and he can find only temporary construction work where he is underpaid but doesn’t realise this because of his limited education. The man is constantly confronted by things he wants, like eating takeaway food or attending football matches, but cannot afford, as the price of basic necessities such as bread, rice and bus fare keep rising. Life is hard and only made harder by a constantly changing government and endemic corruption. Echoing the frustrations of Port Vila’s population, the man sings, ‘Life is hard for me, but what can I do [to improve it]? . . . It’s not enough to finish school in class six’. These themes of access to education (or lack thereof), low wages and incomes and the ongoing struggle to make ends meet form the basis of this chapter.

Educational Attainment Education was considered key to gaining employment, and, as we have seen on Paama, schooling had become a priority for Paamese by 2011. Those who had achieved a reasonable level of education – generally accepted as at least a year or two of secondary school  – were expected to use their knowledge and find (urban) employment. Not surprisingly then, while most rural Paamese had completed school by the age of twelve, urban education levels were much higher; 49 per cent of men and 34 per cent of women had either completed at least three years of secondary school and/or gone on to attend further courses such as university, teacher training, Bible school or technical education. This was a substantial shift from 1983, when no further education of any kind was recorded; although some Paamese had undertaken further training through government-sponsored scholarships, this was rare. Overall, levels of education in 1983 were quite low; just a quarter (24 per cent) of men and 9 per cent of women had attended at least three years of secondary education, while a significant proportion (22 per cent of men, 7 per cent of women) had never attended any formal schooling. As the perceived importance of education increased and rural educational

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facilities were established, all Paamese migrants had completed at least some primary school by 2011. Changed gender norms also meant slightly more women had now attended secondary education, but women’s childbearing and associated care duties often proved a barrier to further education, explaining men’s higher levels of educational attainment. Priscilla was one of very few Paamese who made it to university: Twenty-five-year-old Priscilla had lived in town all her life. When she was younger, she had visited Paama every year with her parents at Christmas, but after starting university, she became too busy with her studies so had not been back to the island for four years. In 2011, Priscilla’s parents were staying on the island with her younger brother and frequently travelled back and forth between Vila and Paama. Her older sister was married and lived with her husband elsewhere in Vila, while Priscilla and her older brother lived together in the family home, a house their parents built. Priscilla’s parents had both worked in retail for years before retiring and had managed to save enough to build several rental properties on their urban land, which brought in a steady income. Thanks to her parents’ long-term employment, savvy investments and resultant economic success, Priscilla was able to attend the University of the South Pacific’s Port Vila campus, where she was studying towards a Bachelor of Arts. She also worked a couple of days a week as a teaching assistant at a primary school, a job she had found on a local employment website. Although Priscilla thought she might finish her bachelor’s degree within the next year, she wanted to go on and study law so that she could work as a legal adviser on marine issues. She had done some work experience with the government, and they had told her that if she studied further, there might be future work for her there as an adviser. Priscilla had a boyfriend, a love rather than kastom match, who was a police officer in the Vanuatu Mobile Force. He too wanted to study, and he sometimes travelled overseas to attend work related training courses. Together they had decided they would take their relationship slowly so that they could both get an education before marrying. This would ensure they had a steady foundation from which to secure good employment to support themselves, and any children they might have, in future years.

Not many Paamese made it to university, and those who did frequently came from families like Priscilla’s who were educated or economically successful. These parents, uncles and aunts had enough resources and knowledge to either finance university fees or apply for scholarships and other funding. Consequently, those who were economically successful were more likely to have children (classificatory or biological) who would also be successful or high achieving in employment or education, so entrenching cycles of relative success (and conversely, possible hardship) over generations. Differences were evident in educational achievement between firstand second-generation Paamese; many second-generation Paamese

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had completed their education in high school, but more first-generation migrants had participated in university or further education. For first-­ generation migrants, education was a ticket out of villages, and their rural families depended on their earning capacity to contribute cash flow to rural livelihood activities; these migrants were under a lot of pressure to succeed. Parents of second-generation Paamese also wanted their children to skul gud (‘school good’, be educated), but, faced with highly visible unemployment and the knowledge that even those who held ‘papers’ (certificates of education) had difficulty finding work, urban youth were increasingly disheartened about their long-term employment prospects. Many felt there was no point in attending school when there were no jobs to be had at the end of it, so they dropped out. Some younger urban children ronwe (ran away) from school if they encountered difficulties, such as a teacher they did not like, and while parents were often angry, there was sometimes no one at home during the day to enforce school attendance. For children, the freedom and enjoyment of playing all day with younger siblings more than made up for the brief spankings they received as punishment from irate parents. For others, the economic demands of urban life meant that, as on Paama, paying school fees was often a struggle. Education was important, but it no longer guaranteed a path to economic success. Faced with this reality, some urban Paamese had given up, explaining their reluctance to participate in further education and their resignation when children played truant.

Making a Living in Town Employment opportunities may have been concentrated in Vila, but the urban job market had not kept pace with population growth, and by 2009, Vanuatu’s urban unemployment rate had reached 12 per cent (VNSO 2011). Within the Paamese community, too, unemployment had risen steeply, and by 2011, it was more than four times higher than it had been in 1983 (Table 7.1). With fierce competition for jobs, kin networks were more important than ever in securing employment; it was not uncommon for employers to consult trusted employees about potential recruits for vacancies, and those with kin connections to the workplace were the first to be called upon. It is hardly surprising then that at least two-thirds of Paamese had found their present employment through kin connections or friendships with existing employees. These networks were instrumental in finding employment regardless of gender or migrant generation, and second-generation Paamese, who arguably had greater urban experience, did not necessarily have ‘better’ connections than those who migrated as adults; kin networks and the opportunities associated with them remained firmly translocal.

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Table 7.1  Labour force participation of urban Paamese, 1983 and 2011. Employment status Economically active Professional technical Skilled trade Clerical Sales Service Agriculture Transport Labour Informal sector Economically inactive Housewife Student Unemployed Retired

1983*

2011

M (%) M (N) F (%) 96 1 7 9 10 16 0 4 42 4 4 0 0 4 0

64 1 5 6 7 11 0 3 28 3 3 0 0 3 0

60 5 0 3 3 2 2 0 45 0 40 36 0 3 0

F (N) M (%) M (N) F (%) F (N) 35 3 0 2 2 1 1 0 26 0 23 21 0 2 0

72 9 13 2 8 4 0 4 30 28 28 0 2 13 13

38 5 7 1 4 2 0 2 16 15 15 0 1 7 7

65 2 0 4 0 37 2 0 0 40 35 8 8 13 10

34 1 0 2 0 19 1 0 0 21 18 4 4 7 5

*Source: Haberkorn (1987: 264).

Not only were more people applying for fewer jobs, but as levels of education had risen, it was increasingly difficult to secure work even in un- or low-skilled positions – a classic case of ‘diploma disease’ and a situation that left Paamese increasingly frustrated: It’s hard to find work in Vila. Now you need a certificate of education. You have to finish school in Year 12 and have papers. When you finish in primary school, it’s hard. There is no work you can do. I think the only work you could get would be as a haosgel, or something similar. That’s the only kind of work you can get. (Eric, fifty-nine, second-generation Paamese)

Youth in particular felt they were being ‘blocked’ from employment by the older generation, who were holding onto jobs and leaving them no chance to gain skills or experience. But desperate as they were for work, Paamese were not always willing to settle for just any employment, particularly when they had experience and education beyond the requirements. Some avoided unappealing, unskilled labouring and related occupations, even when being unemployed and just ‘killing time’ were considered undesirable. For the unemployed, life in town was particularly difficult, but many such as Jonah felt ‘stuck’ in Vila:

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Sixty-nine-year-old Jonah had lived in Vila with his wife, Poppy, for roughly thirty years. Their two sons, both in their thirties, were born and raised in town. Although Jonah had taken the boys to Paama and taught them the locations and boundaries of their family land, they had never lived there. In 2011, Jonah and Poppy were living on land purchased by Jonah in 1999. Despite having lived on their land since 2000, their house was an impermanent structure, cobbled together from pieces of corrugated iron and various odds and ends cast off from other building projects: the kind of dwelling that is stereotyped as belonging in an informal settlement. Jonah and Poppy’s firstborn son, Scott, was single and lived with them, while their other son, Freddy, lived and worked on Santo with his wife and child. Jonah had completed secondary school on Paama and learned English and French from friends. He migrated to Vila to find work and spent many years employed as a driver for a series of three different employers. However, in 2011, the company Jonah worked for had been sold, leaving him unemployed. He thought he might soon be able to secure employment, but for now, few jobs were available. This was a departure from the past when almost everyone in town had been able to find some kind of work. Poppy and Scott were also unemployed, and the family survived on a combination of money given to them by relatives, remittances from Freddy, ice blocks sold from the house and food that Poppy cooked and sold at kava bars. They had access to garden land at Teouma, about fifteen kilometres away, through one of Jonah’s classificatory brothers, where they grew the food that Poppy sold. Because of the long distance to their garden, however, Jonah and Poppy visited it only infrequently, so Poppy did not sell food every day. Jonah believed he was lucky his sons were already adults, as he would no longer have been able to pay school fees. Jonah was ambivalent about potential return to Paama. He had not been back to the island for more than ten years, as the cost of the trip was prohibitive. When asked if he liked living in Vila he simply responded: ‘Oh, but where else would I live? I have to live here like this, because I have bought this land, and now that it is mine, I must live on it.’ Although he had built a house on Paama, it was now in a state of disrepair, and he could not return ‘home’ without anywhere to live. With few other prospects, and unless a member of the household secured employment, they would continue to scrape by in the urban environment.

For some urban Paamese like Jonah and his family, who had lived in town for decades, there was a sense that it was simply too hard, or too late, for them to return to the island, even if they could barely survive in town. As unemployment had risen, the elderly could no longer rely on their children’s economic support, as all too many of these children were unable to find work. In addition, with no one to care for them and nowhere to live on the island, retirees could not easily return ‘home’ to Paama. Hardship could be multigenerational, and safety nets were becoming frayed and insecure. With few other options to earn an income, some urban residents were driven to crime to get by. Food was pilfered from gardens and houses,

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clothing disappeared from washing lines and rumours of prostitution circulated. Paamese took whatever precautions they could against theft; they locked their doors if no one was home and did not leave clothes out to dry overnight, but even friends and relatives could be driven to steal. One Paamese boy purloined all the plates from his aunt’s kitchen with the intention of selling them to generate some quick cash. He was soon found out and sheepishly returned the plates along with an apology. Paamese did not like having items stolen, and if the culprit was found, an apology  – and sometimes an offering of mats or similar items – was expected. But often items disappeared with no hope of being recovered, and many Paamese felt if people were really that desperate, then they were welcome to a little food or a new T-shirt, even if it meant they themselves went without. Women may have been more educated than in the past, but as employment opportunities had stagnated, there was only a slight increase in women’s employment levels. Gender norms about appropriate employment types also stifled women’s access to work; jobs in retail, office work, healthcare, teaching, housekeeping and other domestic roles were acceptable, but work such as construction or security was unavailable to women. Stepping outside these gender norms was neither encouraged nor rewarded; when she saw a female bus driver, one Paamese woman scornfully commented, ‘What does she want? Rape?’ Partly because of their higher levels of education, men tended to hold higher status jobs and were the primary wage earner in most Paamese households. Yet, some change was evident, and households such as Maggie’s were quietly challenging the gendered division of labour: Maggie, thirty-five years old, was born and raised in Port Vila. She had visited Paama twice: once as a baby when her mother had returned to the island for several months and again as an adult for two weeks to celebrate the Presbyterian Church’s Golden Jubilee. In 2011, Maggie lived in one of Port Vila’s many peri-urban informal settlements with her husband, Stefan (a first-generation Paamese migrant), and their four young children. Their extended family, including Stefan’s siblings and parents, were their closest neighbours, while Maggie’s mother and siblings lived a short walk away in a neighbouring settlement. In 2011, Maggie was working as a housekeeper in one of Vila’s numerous hotels. She had been employed in this position for thirteen years, having found the role thanks to her sister-in-law. This was her first and only job after completing school. In contrast, Stefan worked in construction and changed his place of employment regularly as projects came and went. His chances of employment relied largely on contacts from his kin network, as well as former colleagues and bosses who could vouch for his skills. In 2011, Stefan had been working at his job for just four months. His salary was slightly lower than Maggie’s, and his employment status much less secure. While they both worked during the day, their eldest

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daughter (who had dropped out of school) assisted with household chores, and they paid Maggie’s mother a token amount to care for their young baby. Maggie and Stefan shared domestic duties including cooking and laundering the family’s clothes. While this was a somewhat unusual arrangement (others often commented when they saw Stefan performing domestic chores), it was a situation that was becoming more common in dual income households.

As women increasingly contributed to household cash flow, occasionally as the main or most reliable earner, adjustments to domestic workloads were slowly being made. However, some men felt threatened by women’s economic success, and wives who tried to exert too much influence or control over household finances sometimes were met with violent beatings. Women’s employment may have increased since 1983, but gender preconceptions and cultural norms still dictated the structure of employment opportunities and could limit women’s financial autonomy. The availability of formal employment had clearly decreased, but larger urban populations had resulted in more opportunities for informal work. Paamese made the most of these opportunities and were engaging in the informal sector to a much greater degree than ever before. Whereas in the past any income earned in the informal sector was a bonus, by 2011 informal incomes were valuable and sometimes a primary source of income. Throughout Vila, informal activities were largely ‘invisible’, taking place in and around the home, and relied heavily on kin networks. Employed kin might pay an unemployed family member to perform domestic chores, garden produce was bought and sold, those who could sew were asked to make dresses, labourers helped with housing construction and so forth. Gender norms were evident in informal work; men tended to engage in activities with high economic returns such as selling kava, renting out rooms or houses or making a small ‘store’ (this generally involved selling a few processed foodstuffs, matches and cigarettes from their house). These high-yielding activities often required an economic investment and were concentrated amongst higher-income earners, contributing to economic stratification. In contrast, women tended to rely on informal sector activities as their sole source of income but engaged in lower-yielding activities such as selling cooked food, the most common activity, or taking on domestic chores. Informal sector activity was therefore associated with economically successful men, such as Ken, and less successful women: Now thirty-seven years old, Ken had moved to Santo as a teenager to attend high school. After completing school, he found work as a salesman in a mechanical parts store. Ken worked in the store’s Santo branch for five years before his employer transferred him to Port Vila. By 2011, Ken had been living in Vila for fifteen years and held

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Urban Economic Life  169 a managerial position. He owned a piece of (undeveloped) land on Santo, which was cared for by relatives, and one in Vila, where he lived with his wife, Isla, who was not Paamese. Ken had saved the money to invest in land while he was single. Together, Ken and Isla lived in a small permanent house with their two school-aged children and three young Paamese relatives who were studying in town. In 2011, Ken and Isla were building a larger, two-storey house on their land. They had been working on this house for four years, as Ken did not want to take a bank loan. He bought construction materials when he had enough ‘pocket money’ available and relied on family members to provide labour. Although they owned land, Ken and Isla did not plant any food gardens in Vila. Like Ken, Isla held long-term employment and worked at an electrical supplies store. They earned extra income from a bus and a taxi, purchased with the aid of a loan. Ken had previously owned five buses, but because of ‘monkey business’ (the proliferation of identical businesses), he decided to reduce his fleet, as it was becoming too difficult to make a profit. Ken employed a driver for his remaining two vehicles and earned a reasonable income. He also purchased kava roots from brothers and uncles on Paama and rented a spot at a kava bar where he sold the prepared beverage. He returned most of the income earned to these relatives; however, as many drinkers purchased kava on credit, it was impossible to make a large profit. Ken’s elderly parents lived on Paama in a house built by Ken and equipped with solar lighting. They were cared for by Ken’s younger brother, Jerry, and his wife, who had returned to Paama from Vila at Ken’s request. As Ken’s father had a store on Paama, Ken found it easier and cheaper to remit money rather than goods to the island, as he did not need to pay for or coordinate freight. Ken’s family infrequently sent food to him in Vila when various crops were in season. On Paama, his parents spoke highly of the way Ken supported them and were proud of his employment status. Ken visited the island yearly but, because of his job, could never stay longer than three or four days over Christmas. He lamented he had spent most of his life away from Paama and had never learned the correct way to plant yams or perform other island work. He thought he would like to move to Paama permanently when his children were grown and married, and claimed his wife also preferred island life. Ken had enjoyed living in town when he was young and single, but despite his apparent economic success, he believed urban life was becoming harder and was determined his children should obtain a good education; unlike in the past, secondary school was no longer sufficient to secure employment.

In many ways, and despite his ambivalence about urban life, Ken represented what all migrants aimed for; he was employed in a good job, owned land in town, had a house on the island and was able to support and bring prestige to his rural family through remittances. With a high school education, a good start in employment and some wise investments, it was sometimes possible to succeed in Vila. But success required multiple strategic choices; it was never easy and was becoming increasingly difficult as urban

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populations continued to grow. Indeed, it often felt as if the odds were against it. Although office jobs and other skilled positions were desirable, not all Paamese aspired to such work. Some who had other important commitments such as church-related responsibilities actively chose low-status work in preference to employment that demanded more of their time. Fifty-fiveyear-old Willy had lived in Vila for thirteen years and was heavily involved in his church. He explained his own employment choices as follows: ‘[For security work] you just stand there and look all around you. I think other kinds of work would be harder for me . . . I think this work is good . . . because I have other work that I need to do for the church.’ Others enjoyed different aspects of their seemingly low-status positions; one woman favoured haosgel work for an expatriate household over her previous experience in office jobs, as she was often given consumer items such as a television and crockery that the family no longer needed. Her take-home pay might have been small, but she saved money in other ways. Pay cheques were not the sole criteria for finding ‘good’ or enjoyable work, and no one type of work suited everyone – although most wished they could earn a little more, and many dreamed of being able to disengage from formal employment altogether. Skilled employment – that is employment other than agricultural, plantation work or general labouring – has always played an important role in ni-Vanuatu urban residence. By 1983, however, Paamese length of urban residence was not directly related to the number of years in current employment or the type of employment undertaken: those working in unskilled occupations were not necessarily recent urban arrivals. This remained true in 2011, and long-term employment covered a range of industries including retail, hospitality, construction and professional positions. In some cases, skilled professionals such as those working in financial services and policy-related roles were employed on short-term contracts and regularly changed employers as projects and contracts ended or new opportunities arose. The few lucky enough to hold these sought-after skills were in great demand and travelled to attend conferences or workshops within the AsiaPacific region, further improving their skills and professional networks. Several Paamese who worked in the hotel and construction industries, where employment was relatively abundant, changed jobs whenever more attractive remuneration opportunities presented themselves. Some urban Paamese were in a position to make calculated decisions as to the best possible employment outcome and worked the system to suit their needs. Not surprisingly, long-term employment was associated with good working conditions. By contrast, poor working conditions including low wages and bosses who were strong (‘strong’, strict) or ‘talked too much’ (were bossy) led to shorter-term employment. Rather than risking confrontation,

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Urban Economic Life  171

many dealt with undesirable employment situations by ‘running away’; they simply stopped turning up for work. Almost 40 per cent of all Paamese had worked at their current jobs for two years or less, while just over a third (35 per cent) had held their job for ten years or more. Quite a number of Paamese could not estimate their length of employment. Some had worked in many jobs, although they tended to stick to similar employment types and movement was often horizontal rather than vertical; hospitality workers, particularly chefs, moved from restaurant to restaurant, haosgels moved between expatriate households, and labourers moved between different unskilled positions. Work was scarce, unemployment had steadily risen, and although it was not impossible to achieve economic success in town, this was rare and becoming ever more difficult. Paamese were getting by however they could, and many had moved into the informal sector. Often success bred further success, and economic stratification was intensifying and much more pronounced than in rural areas.

The Cost of Urban Life: Paamese Income and Expenditure By 2011, Paamese were earning more than they had in 1983 (Table 7.2), but the cost of living had risen too, and most households had difficulty affording even basic necessities such as food, rent and school fees. Men continued to earn more than women, both through informal activities and formal wage labour. Women, who relied upon informal activities as their primary source of income, earned an average of 8,000 to 20,000 vatu (A$94–235) per month (an estimate that refers only to gross income rather than profits). In contrast, males who engaged in informal activities received 10,000 to 80,000 vatu (A$118–940) per month, in addition to formal sector incomes, which were usually superior. These incomes were concentrated amongst those with ‘better’ employment (professional or white-collar jobs) who could invest in ventures such as the construction of rental accommodation and kava bars (Figure 7.1). Only one Paamese woman, an office worker, earned significantly more than her husband, who was employed as a chef. For the most part, earning patterns had changed little over thirty years. Paamese lived and consumed in a variety of different ways, so it is difficult to generalise about how Paamese earned an income and how they spent it. Indeed, for many households, both employment and income constantly fluctuated. While Paamese households with regular employment earned an average 49,000 vatu (A$576) per month, there was considerable stratification amongst households; some earned as much as 200,000 vatu (A$2,350) per month, while others survived on around 20,000 vatu (A$235). Those without regular income survived on much less and relied on support from kin, who themselves could barely afford to part with food or cash.

*Source: Haberkorn (1987: 266).

Professional and skilled employment Lower-level white-collar employment (e.g. sales, tourism/service industry) Unskilled labour (e.g. construction, security, agriculture)

Employment type 12 20 29

13,800

M (N)

37,800 21,000

M (vatu)

1983*

8,200

33,200 11,700

F (vatu)

27

5 3

F (N)

45,867

114,828 51,000

M (vatu)

15

10 5

M (N)

2011

Table 7.2  Average incomes of economically active urban Paamese, 1983 and 2011 (primary source of income only).

20,000

45,500 25,083

F (vatu)

1

2 18

F (N)

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Urban Economic Life  173

Figure 7.1  A Paamese-owned kava bar, Port Vila, 2011. Photograph by Kirstie Petrou.

Increasingly, such help was not always forthcoming, and informed by traditional exchange practices, Paamese were sometimes reluctant to share with those who they knew could not reciprocate. Not surprisingly, high-income earners (those who earned more than the average 49,000 vatu per month) not only had spouses who earned almost double that of low-income earners but also earned significantly more through ‘other’, generally informal, activities. In addition, these higher-­ income households had generally higher expenditure than low-income households (Figure 7.2). Transport costs were the only exception; low-­income earners often lived in more marginal, less accessible areas, at some distance from employment and educational facilities, so bus fares were significant. The biggest difference in spending between high- and low-income households was on food, which was the main expenditure item for all households, consistent with patterns of both rural and urban households throughout Vanuatu and Melanesia. High-income earners spent significantly more on food, reflecting the prestige associated with consuming store-bought imported goods. Rents ranged from 1,700 to 16,000 vatu (A$20–188) per month and largely depended on location rather than housing amenities. Expenditure on water and electricity too was often linked to place of residence and the availability of a connection (either through UNELCO or informally through neighbours). As a result, expenditure on housing and

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Figure 7.2  Average monthly expenditure on essential items for low- and highincome earners, Port Vila, 2011. Figure created by Kirstie Petrou.

utilities was not always a reflection of income, and low-income earners could pay almost as much as high-income households for these necessities. Household spending in town was quite different from that on the island. In central Port Vila, the streets were lined with shops brimming with consumer items; there was much more to buy in town than on Paama. Large supermarkets sold foods imported from Australia, France and Asia, with prices to match. Shipments were sometimes delayed, leaving empty spaces on the shelves for a week or two, but even so, the choices seemed endless. Second-hand clothing from Australia and New Zealand was sold in shops around town, and each new delivery was eagerly anticipated by youth and adults alike. Packs of playing cards, children’s balls and games, posters of pop stars, plastic jewellery and other kitsch knick-knacks, DVDs and electronics were just some of the items Paamese bought or longed for. Yet, for most, these items were a luxury; most households found it difficult to meet the costs of even the ‘essential’ items listed in Figure 7.2, and for many households, economic hardship was part and parcel of urban life. Reflecting on the income he had earned in a previous job, Thomas explained how transport costs alone could consume a huge portion of his wages: Each fortnight, I had to save 6,000 vatu [A$70] for the bus for me and the kids. Every day. I’m talking about before, when I was earning 120 vatu [A$1.40] an hour, it meant I was just earning 12,000 vatu [A$141] or 8,000 vatu [A$94] a fortnight. So out of this 8,000 vatu, I had to put 6,000 towards the bus, 2,000 [A$24] towards food; then I had

Urban Economic Life  175

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another 2,000 for other expenses. I couldn’t save any money like this. (Thomas, forty, second-generation migrant)

Thomas’s maths may have been a little inaccurate, but it did not change the fact that he had very little money to spare. And his case was not unique. All too often, it seemed there was never enough money to go around, and Paamese frequently requested advances on their wages to cover basic needs. No one was starving, but some skipped meals and made other sacrifices to get by. It was always easy to pick payday in town. On these evenings, there was a sense of festivity, and the streets were redolent with sounds of gaiety and beeping horns. Men and women indulged in kava and alcohol, often to excess, and people could be seen carrying twenty-five kilogram bags of rice home on their shoulders, with the hope that they would not have to buy rice again until the next pay cheque came in. For many, it was an ongoing cycle of boom or bust as they moved in and out of employment, and pay cheques never quite stretched far enough. Many urban Paamese, low- and high-income earners alike, found the pressure to contribute to community and other events made it difficult to plan and organise finances: ‘So it means that it is a little bit difficult to organise your finances . . . because here there are always marriages, ­funerals . . . When relatives get married, you must give some money’ (Miles, ­twenty-three, second-generation Paamese). The more one earned, the more one was expected to share, so even households with relatively substantial incomes found money quickly disappeared as they paid school fees for not only their own children but also for others’, sent remittances home, contributed to village projects and responded to any other requests that arose. Some avoided this pressure by simply staying away from community events and instead channelled economic resources to meet the needs of their household or nuclear family; the emphasis was on individual income management, and urban Paamese first tried to cover their own expenses and participated in community events only if money was left over (and it rarely was). As one man put it: ‘But I think that to live in town, you have to know how to manage your own finances by yourself’ (Johnny, twenty-six, second-generation Paamese). Urban life was expensive and could take its toll on the domestic economy of even well-off Paamese households.

Urban Remitting Remitting goods and cash to rural kin was a strong social norm for urban Paamese, a way of reinforcing ties with home places and the people who lived there and considered something everyone ‘should’ do; those who remitted regularly proudly detailed how well they supported their rural kin,

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while those who did not (or could not) were reluctant to admit this failure. As a result, most migrants (80 per cent of men, 77 per cent of women) claimed they remitted to rural kin, a pattern that has existed since at least 1983, when 85 per cent of men and 78 per cent of women remitted goods or money to Paama. As their parents often remitted on behalf of the family, and they had relatively fewer relatives at home, slightly fewer second- (74 per cent) than first-generation (86 per cent) Paamese sent remittances, but otherwise the pattern had barely changed in thirty years. As in earlier years, for some Paamese, remitting kept options open for an eventual return to the island. For others, remitting was a duty and could deflect unwanted rural visitors who might otherwise appear on their doorstep demanding assistance. Some Paamese sent remittances to maintain the family reputation and attract social prestige; being recognised by the Paamese community as a generous and reliable remitter was a sign of success. Still others remitted to support siblings who had returned to Paama to care for ageing parents. Amidst a variety of reasons, reinforcing kin ties remained central. The few Paamese who never sent or received remittances either had no kin with whom to exchange items or simply could not afford to do so. First-generation migrants, who were often better known by rural Paamese, sent more remittances to genealogically distant kin than the second-­generation, who were insulated from remittance requests by their parents. This is a common pattern amongst first- and second-generation Pacific Islander migrants (Lee 2007). Spared from direct demands to contribute to broader village projects such as building community centres or repairing nakamals, second-generation Paamese could concentrate their remitting on those, such as children, siblings, parents and friends, with whom they had a close relationship. Migrant generation aside, urban men most commonly remitted to their classificatory and biological brothers, followed by their parents, a pattern consistent with traditional structures of social support. Women sent most of their remittances to parents and sisters, followed closely by in-laws and children, again consistent with women’s traditional reliance upon their sisters for assistance. Spouses and children received relatively few remittances, as most of these family members lived together in town. Remittances were sent to Paama, unless close family members lived on other outer islands. Many urban Paamese received remittances in town, with patterns of remittances received largely mirroring those sent. However, and contrary to claims by rural Paamese that they were ‘helping’ urban kin by remitting, these rural-urban flows made little economic sense. In fact, remittances were received in town at significant cost, as recipients were expected to pay freight (about 500 vatu (A$6) per box/basket), as well as transport from the wharf to their home (a minimum of 150 vatu (A$1.80)). Yet, while it

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Urban Economic Life  177

worked out cheaper to purchase seemingly identical island food from the urban market (about 500 vatu per basket), emotional associations meant food from Paama was valued more highly than that purchased in town, a common phenomenon throughout the Pacific (Alexeyeff 2004). Just as in 1983, Paamese remittances performed a primarily social function, reinforcing rural-urban kin relations. Nonetheless, the economic cost of receiving remittances caused some urban Paamese to ask their family not to send food to town. Certainly, urban Paamese did not rely upon rural food remittances for survival: Sometimes I tell them not to send things because of how much it costs to send things to Vila. Before, [freight] was only 100 vatu (A$1.20), but now it is 500, 1,000 vatu (A$6, A$12). So it’s hard for us, and I told them not to send food anymore. If we want to eat food from Paama, we’ll go and eat it on Paama . . . I told them to give me a [breadfruit] cutting to plant here instead, and I would plant it in the bush so that when the fruit was ready, I could just eat it here. I don’t want food to be sent from the island. (Rowan, born before the Second World War, in Vila since 1970s)

Some urban Paamese had also instructed rural kin such as elderly parents not to remit when they believed it might be burdensome: ‘We have spoken to my parents and told them that they shouldn’t work hard anymore. Because now they are old, they shouldn’t go to the trouble of sending food to us’ (Helen, thirty-five, twenty years in Vila). These requests reinforced the largely urban to rural direction and flow of remittances. Remitting was common but infrequent, and the vast majority of urban Paamese sent remittances only once or twice a year or wan wan taem (‘every now and then’, rarely). Those who remitted most frequently did so to members of their immediate family; young children and parents received remittances on a regular basis, while three men who lived separately from their spouses remitted every payday. For the most part, though, remittances were large and sporadic rather than regular, and were often sent only in response to specific requests. By the same token, as urban Paamese rarely requested goods from kin, most received remittances only occasionally, often when crops were in season (taem blong fruit). Remitting items only upon request, as most urban residents did, and not meeting one’s obligations to rural kin was considered undesirable. For many households however, there was little choice, as remitting was a real economic burden: It really isn’t good! . . . We only send things when they ask us, but we should send things when we think about our family. It means you don’t think about them; you just wait until they send a request, and then you think about them. I don’t think it’s right to act like this. (Annette, forty-seven, long time in Vila)

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We haven’t sent anything [to Paama] for a long time . . . When our finances are good, we send something small to our family. But we haven’t sent anything for a long time now because both of our boys are attending secondary school, so the school fees are expensive. And then we have to pay for food for ourselves too. So the bill for our food, plus the bills for electricity and water – it’s too much for us. (Wanda, thirty-five, second-generation Paamese)

Finding and allocating the resources to remit was difficult, but denying a request was never easy: They stay on the island, and they look after our land. So they go and use our land to plant gardens, but at least we have the assurance that if someone tries to do anything to our land, our family is there. So if they need anything, even school fees or anything else . . . they ask for it. We can’t tell them no. (Julius, age unknown, twenty-two years in Vila)

Food was the item most commonly exchanged between rural and urban Paamese; rural Paamese sent aelan kakae (island food) to town, while urban Paamese sent purchased foodstuffs such as rice and sugar. Money was generally not remitted to distant kin or without a specific purpose (to pay for school fees, food, village projects) in mind. Second-generation Paamese were more likely to remit to close kin and thus more likely to send money than the first generation. As men tended to earn higher incomes than women, they too were more likely to remit money. Money was sometimes sent directly to rural stores to pay for food, as it meant freight did not need to be paid. Other goods such as soap or clothes were also remitted, as were a variety of other items that had been specifically requested by rural residents such as tools, building materials, prescription glasses or boat parts. Some migrants claimed remittance arrangements had changed over the years and that there was now greater pressure on them to support rural kin. This belief was not new, but as some migrants felt increasingly disconnected from distant relations, continuing requests for goods after decades in town were met with frustration: Now, the island isn’t the same as it used to be. Before, if you sent something, they didn’t expect it. [Now] some just put a basket on the ship and it arrives. You know already [that you have to send something in return]. They expect you to say, no I’ve sent you something too. (Charlie, age unknown, twenty years in Vila)

Such unsolicited remittances acted as direct, often unwelcome, requests, but it was not possible to ignore them. Comparing remitting further

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Urban Economic Life  179

between 1983 and 2011, several patterns emerge. As women were participating more in education and employment by 2011, the expectation that they remit had increased, so more of them were remitting than in the past. But as many Paamese were only remitting items upon request, in 2011 there was a general increase in the proportion of urban residents who never remitted or did so only when asked. For those without close relatives on the island, remittances were begrudgingly sent ‘home’ out of duty rather than desire. Long-term urban residents had not stopped remitting, but they were doing so less frequently than before, as the balance of their kin connections had shifted to urban areas. Duty and social norms had their limitations. In both 1983 and 2011, ‘indirect remittances’ such as providing support and accommodation for kin who visited town or paying hospital expenses for relatives were common. Assisting rural visitors and new migrants was an obligation that came with the ‘privilege’ of town residence, and an inescapable social norm that extended to first- and second-generation Paamese alike, and never changed, but for some urban households, ‘indirect remittances’ could represent a real burden. Declining to host visitors or asking them to pay their own expenses led to disapproval from other kin: one second-­generation woman gained a reputation for being stingy when she asked her husband’s family to contribute to food costs while they stayed with her. Urban residents often resented the expense associated with visitors, but they usually found it difficult to refuse: Because lots of people come [to town], and then they realise that it is hard. So they come and just act as a burden to all their family in Vila. Because their family who live in Vila have children already who go to school [and have to support them], and people come and think they can find work, but work is hard to find. That’s why there are lots of people who come, and one day they eat at one house and sleep there, and then they get up in the morning and wander around, and then in the afternoon they go and stay with a different family member. This is what most people do. (Barry, thirty, second-generation Paamese)

By 2011, while rural kin continued to visit and expect support from urban Paamese, the greater concentration of nuclear families in town meant there were fewer close relatives living on other islands who needed support, either through direct or ‘indirect’ remittances. As in rural areas, remitting was reinforced positively, through social prestige, and negatively, through the shame and gossip that resulted when one did not behave as one ‘should’. However, for many Paamese, remitting was a financial burden, and just one more expense to add to already stretched household budgets.

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The Opportunities and Challenges of Urban Living By 2011, life in Port Vila was often characterised by hardship, and few Paamese ever felt there was enough cash to go around. Schooling was expensive and no longer guaranteed future employment, as jobs had become scarcer and competition had increased. Social norms were changing, and more women were working than in 1983, although their employment was largely restricted to ‘appropriate’ industries. Unlike in the past, informal sector activity and the income it brought in had increased significantly, and so had the proportion of migrants who were retired or unemployed. For some Paamese, there was a sense of being trapped in town, however hard life was, as their rural connections had largely disappeared. The notion of a rural safety net was fading away, and urban residence was no longer linked to employment, a trend already evident in 1983. Remittances continued to reinforce relationships with close kin and were sent far more regularly than they were received as urban migrants were expected to provide for rural kin. Many urban households struggled to meet remittance requests, but most felt it was not possible to deny them: after almost three decades, remittances were still coming from Paama, and social norms dictated they required a reply. For some, the pressure and expectation to remit and to contribute to community events and fundraisers felt never-ending; cash was inseparable from social life, and urban households were under constant pressure from seemingly every angle to support and contribute to various causes. Throughout Melanesia, cash has become integral to social life, and people have dealt with increasing demands for this scarce resource by supporting their own household first, rather than focusing on the wider community (Barber 2010; Eriksen 2008; Umezaki 2010). While kin support networks remain important, a more individualised approach to resource use and distribution has emerged. At the same time, women now contribute significantly to household incomes, despite their wages often being low (Maebuta and Maebuta 2009). As unemployment has risen, engagement in informal sector activities has enabled a degree of resilience, as households diversify their livelihood strategies beyond the single income stream provided by formal wage labour. In some instances, informal activities may even bring in higher wages than formal sector work (Barber 2010; Umezaki and Ohtsuka 2003). Yet, as policies have often prevented or stifled informal activities in the Pacific, they are a potentially under-tapped means for generating income and may prove increasingly valuable if formal employment opportunities continue to stagnate. For Paamese, urban conditions had worsened over time as life had become more expensive and opportunities for earning incomes had decreased. This is a story all too common to urban

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Urban Economic Life  181

areas of the Pacific. However, without improved access to social services such as education and healthcare, employment opportunities and some kind of government responsiveness and support in recognising the needs of the people, it is likely hardship in Vanuatu, and elsewhere in the Pacific, will only worsen.

Note This chapter draws on Petrou (2018).

Conclusion

Fluidity and Flexibility A Generation of Paamese Migration and Urban Experiences ♦l♦

T

he week before I left Port Vila, I went to visit my Paamese friends at Manples. Walking up the hill leading to the settlement, I could hear trucks moving around and the unmistakable sounds of destruction. An eviction was underway. A piece of land had been sold to build a church, so the people living on it were being removed. The residents, who had an informal agreement with the landowner, had been notified of this development a week or so earlier, but with nowhere else to go, most of them had stayed put. Now they had no choice but to leave as a bulldozer was literally ripping apart their houses in front of their very eyes. People sat next to piles of belongings and quietly wept. Many had lived at Manples for years, and some had known no other home. A group of police officers from the Vanuatu Mobile Force stood discreetly off to one side, supervising in case anyone resisted or made a scene. Many of these men probably lived in informal settlements themselves, so theirs was a grim duty. Other Manples residents soberly spectated. Everyone was aware it could very easily be their turn next time. Every now and then, a car turned up and an evictee would load their possessions in and depart. For now, they would stay with whomever could accommodate them until something more permanent could be arranged. No services were available to assist them in this time of upheaval; they lived informally, so policy (or the lack of one) and practice seemed to imply they did not need, and would not receive, any official help.1 This latest eviction was yet another reminder to all Manples residents of the precarity of urban life, and their lack of rights to the city they called home. Stories of eviction such as this have become synonymous with urban life in the Pacific, and elsewhere in the Global South, where migrant populations

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Conclusion  183

are treated as illegitimate, impermanent imposters to the city, even as many have been born and raised in urban environments or have lived in town for decades. Paamese are just one migrant community amongst many, but although they are a relatively small population in global terms, their experiences of rural-urban mobility, the precarity and hardship of urban residence and nostalgia for idealised rural homelands, themselves characterised by a poverty of opportunities, are by no means unique. This book has taken a longitudinal approach to examine these issues and to determine how they have been sustained or altered over time. This conclusion summarises these findings and considers how the Paamese case, a population from a tiny rural outer island in Vanuatu, is applicable more widely.

Vibrant and Sustainable Rural Places The world is now unquestionably urban, and it is often assumed these growing urban areas will cause the decline or even disappearance of rural places. Certainly, on first inspection, life on Paama appears doomed to failure; high outmigration and limited on-island resources do not suggest a system that is sustainable over the long term. Yet, comparing Paamese social organisation and livelihoods over a generation quickly challenges these assumptions of rural decline. In fact, livelihood activities had changed little in thirty years and were in no way on the brink of collapse; subsistence agriculture had persisted, cash cropping was limited (and closely linked to global markets) and small businesses generated minimal profits. As social life and food transactions became increasingly monetised, small adjustments had been made, and the tabu on using borrowed land to plant impermanent cash crops such as kava or food for sale had been lifted. Long-standing practices of high outmigration ensured the local population remained relatively stable and did not exceed the limits of available natural resources. At the same time, strong translocal kin networks guaranteed access to livelihood opportunities beyond the island’s shores; the Paamese community and rural livelihood activities were not limited by geography, and, as on the small island of Aniwa, Paamese engaged in a combination of on- and off-island livelihood activities to survive (Wilson 2013). The number and type of livelihood activities depended on local conditions including human, social, natural and physical capital, so Paamese, who did not have access to the same natural resources or niche markets as Aniwans, placed greater emphasis on off-island activities. Even so, and just as for other outer-island populations, flexibility and diversity were keys to resilience and warding off vulnerability, and Paamese were careful not to depend too heavily on any single livelihood activity (Christensen 2011; Christensen and Gough 2012). Although outer islands may appear to be isolated, marginal places, rural

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livelihoods can be both sustainable and adaptable over the longer term, and translocal connections are crucial to this. As for many small island populations, sustained high levels of outmigration meant only a fraction of the total Paamese population lived on Paama. However, even as migration was an unexceptional, accepted part of everyday life, not everyone wished to leave the island, and those who remained on Paama had neither failed nor been ‘left behind’ (Tan and Yeoh 2011). Instead, as custodians of family land and other rural assets, villagers played a vital and respected role in the translocal community; they were the keepers of culture and provided a crucial and enduring link to home for their migrant kin. Island life remained vibrant, and although empty houses were a constant, visible reminder of departed family members, rural villages continued to function as an important node in the translocal community; they were neither disappearing nor in social or economic decline. It is hardly surprising that by 2011, villagers were engaged in a greater number and variety of non-subsistence livelihood activities, but even so, land and subsistence agriculture remained central to culture; Paamese who did not garden were criticised for denying their origins and, by extension, losing their identity. Moreover, rural land ownership was widely considered potentially crucial to security, provided a valuable source of food and served as a critical safety net should the cash economy falter. As in rural Southeast Asia, monetisation and increasingly diverse livelihood strategies had not obliterated the cultural importance of agriculture and land, and development did not result in a simple trajectory away from traditional agricultural practices (Rigg and Salamanca 2011; Vandergeest 2012). Despite growing urbanisation, rural places remain both culturally and economically significant, even as they may be typified by a relative poverty of opportunities.

Evolving Urban Sociality Whereas rural areas were once the sole focus of Pacific Island ethnographies, in recent years there has been growing recognition of the significance and diversity of urban sociality as urban populations have grown, and town has become a home place. In Port Vila, urbanisation had a distinctly Melanesian flavour: mobility to Vila, urban social life and access to employment, housing and other urban resources were generally structured by traditional kin networks. However, change was always apparent, and new forms of social organisation and networks that both resembled and differed from those of the past had evolved. In Melanesia, kinship is about more than just blood relations, and bonds must be constantly reaffirmed through repetitive social practice. As Paamese met migrants from other islands and found themselves regularly sharing food, working, playing and worshipping

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together, they formed new social networks based on these activities. These were the people with whom Paamese interacted every day, so they had become ‘kin’ and were referred to using kin terms appropriate to age and social status. New relationships had evolved, but they were informed by traditional understandings of social relations. By the same token, relations with kin whom Paamese saw irregularly had faded, as bonds were not constantly reaffirmed. Just as in urban settlements in PNG, kinship for urban Paamese was increasingly acted out and rooted in town spaces (Hukula 2017). These urban networks were particularly important for those who had fewer direct links to kin on Paama. In addition, for those who felt little connection to Paama, identifying with urban home places and planting roots in town provided an important source of geographical identity; more and more urban Paamese asked, ‘Where did you grow up?’ rather than ‘What island are you from?’. Material and emotional ties to Paama were fading, and although traditional kin relationships remained valuable, for some they were not the most important network or the most useful one. Urban social life had evolved its own distinctive, hybrid social organisation that blended traditional social structures with new urban ways. One of the most striking aspects of life in town was the variety of urban experiences within the Paamese population. If it ever had been, it was no longer possible to describe a ‘typical’ urban Paamese resident, especially as Vila had increasingly become a long-term home to most migrants. Paamese lived under a variety of housing tenure types, worked in many industries, inhabited different suburbs, and although hardship was a common aspect of urban experience, incomes and socio-economic status were heterogeneous and varied between and within households over time. Similar processes are occurring throughout the region, and further afield in the Global South, and policies for these urban populations must accommodate the great diversity of urban experiences that now exist. As migrant populations have grown around the world, the second generation has become an increasingly important demographic group. A generation ago, Paamese had only just begun raising children in town, and it seemed these children would feel little connection with distant rural homelands and would be unlikely to keep in contact with them through remitting, visits home and so forth. These predictions are common to second-generation populations in the Pacific and elsewhere (Lee 2007; Levitt and Waters 2002) and for the most part have been proved correct. By contrast, for Paamese, it was kin ties rather than migrant generation that had the most influence on how they interacted with ‘home’; those with close kin (parents, children, grandparents, spouses, siblings) residing elsewhere actively maintained these ties through remitting, visits and phone calls. In the same manner, and regardless of migrant generation, Paamese without

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such ties were the least likely to display enduring attachment to Paama, and first-generation Paamese were no more or less committed to longterm urban residence than their children. Continuity down the migrant generations was considerable, and where translocalism is a strong social norm, as it was in Port Vila, the location of close kin rather than migrant generation can be a deciding factor in how individuals interact with ‘home’ places.

The Enduring Culture of Mobility Focusing on Latin America, Robert Kemper (1971) argued the temporal aspects of mobility are just as important as the geographical ones; migration does not end upon arrival in town, and migration streams do not necessarily remain the same over time. For Paamese, gender norms had changed in response to global flows of information and new technology. Women had become more mobile and were now migrating independently in a way they had not done in the past. Even so, mobility norms remained gendered, and different expectations and rationales were still applied to men and women’s mobility. However, the ways men and women moved, and the explanations behind their mobility, were becoming more similar; men moved more for family-related reasons than in the past, and women moved more for economic reasons. Mobility continued to be a natural response to coping with the pressures of rural life and, just as in the 1980s, Paamese often stayed on in town for reasons unrelated to their initial move. Nonetheless, cultural norms regarding ‘correct’ or ‘useful’ behaviour in town endured. Likewise, ties with home were expected to be maintained, although by 2011 Paamese without close family members on the island tended to let such responsibilities lapse. Yet, most maintained a discourse of eventual return. Town had become a long-term home to most urban Paamese, but publicly voiced longings for the homeland reinforced translocal relationships with rural Paamese and, theoretically at least, guaranteed access to rural resources. In the same manner, rural Paamese benefitted from this discourse through ongoing access to off-island resources and kin networks. Paamese mobility had changed a little, but continuity was an important and enduring aspect.

Looking to the Past and Moving Forward Longitudinal restudies can provide a comprehensive, historically informed picture of processes such as urbanisation and migration. Certainly, this book has benefited from the insights offered by longitudinal data. Drawing on Gerald Haberkorn’s work, it has been possible to build a detailed,

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historically situated understanding of the Paamese culture of migration and experiences of urban life, as well as the continuities and changes in these practices over time. Employing longitudinal data has underlined the processual and temporal nature of cultural practices such as migration and urban sociality and how they can be influenced by seemingly distant events such as global markets and the infiltration of global cultures. This approach has emphasised the long-standing nature of translocal practices that have long sustained the Paamese community across a geographical divide; ­translocalism in the Pacific is not at all a new phenomenon. Whereas many longitudinal restudies have focused on change over time (e.g. Gewertz and Errington 1991; Small 2011), as we have seen, a remarkable degree of continuity was evident in many aspects of Paamese life. For some, this was a source of frustration, as urban economic opportunities had stagnated and ‘development’ had not reached rural areas, which continued to be characterised by a poverty of opportunity, however sustainable livelihood activities were; continuity was not always viewed positively, and sometimes Paamese longed for change. Indeed, continuity occurred partly because Paama was a small island with limited access to economic resources and thus excluded from certain possibilities. Longitudinal data were particularly useful in highlighting gradual or incremental change over time, such as the relatively greater emphasis men now placed on family reasons for mobility; such changes would have been invisible and ignored without this longitudinal perspective. Similarly, comparing attitudes to those of the past meant subjective statements and beliefs could be ‘tested’ to some extent; Paamese now claimed the island had become ‘empty’, but population size had barely altered over a generation. Conversely, many older Paamese thought women were migrating more than they had in the past, as indeed they were. Longitudinal data allowed these claims to be checked and analysed in further detail than would have otherwise been possible. Some obvious and expected changes had occurred; monetisation had increased, new technology had arrived, but underpinning all of this was a great stability of cultural practices and values. Culture is often quite conservative, and longitudinal restudies would do well to consider not only what might change in the future but also what will not.

Paama in the Global Context Rural-urban mobility and other forms of internal migration have faded from research agendas in recent years, but for many populations, like the Paamese, limited visa agreements and the huge cost of international mobility mean it is simply not an option. For most Melanesian populations, internal migration dominates. Focusing on the flows that sustain Paamese migration

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and the translocal Paamese community, this book has highlighted points of commonality between international and internal mobility; migration at both scales is constituted of flows of information, people and goods that keep mobility streams and translocal connections alive. In addition, and even as few Paamese had participated in seasonal agricultural work in New Zealand, it is clear mobility norms were consistent across scales; remittances were sent, success was judged on house construction and migrants needed to behave responsibly. Mobility, regardless of what scale it occurred at, was a privilege. Thinking about how migration flows differ from or resemble one another across scales provides a useful point of comparison in the study of internal and international migration, which, although not identical, are certainly not totally dissimilar. There is no doubt that urban areas around the world are large and growing. Many populations, like the Paamese, are still discovering what it means to be urban, and doing so involves a constant process of negotiation as they are faced with the opportunities and uncertainties that come with living in a heterogeneous, multicultural environment. It seems inherently obvious that what it means to be urban differs with cultural, climatic and geographical contexts, yet it is often assumed all urban areas should strive to mimic those of the Western world. But they do not, and in many cases, simply cannot, because of economic, cultural and other reasons. The cities of the Global South are not perfect, but neither are those of the North. Towns such as Port Vila are vibrant, vital places, and in a context where governments are often detached from or unable to provide for the needs of the people, ‘undesirable’ practices such as informal livelihoods or living arrangements are an essential and important means to urban resilience. Paama may be but a tiny dot on the world map, but the Paamese community face many of the same issues experienced in the increasingly connected contemporary world. For Paamese, access to technology such as mobile phones meant information was flowing faster and more freely than in the past, transport links were increasingly regular, and although internet use was limited (and in most cases non-existent), access to portrayals of the outside world had increased thanks to DVD technology. Nonetheless, culture persisted; while in many respects Paamese were modern people trying to understand and find their place in an ever-changing world, continuity with past practices and beliefs was apparent via sustained fear of nakaemas, the ongoing role of jifs and the enduring importance of kin connections. At the same time, the influence of seemingly distant cultures and nation-states was evident in changed gender and mobility norms, the role of the church and the greater significance of money. Lessons from the Paamese example, including the value of longitudinal studies, the importance of considering continuity as well as change and the temporal

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aspects of migration, have relevance beyond the once quite isolated shores of Melanesia.

Note 1. In late 2018, the Government of Vanuatu (2018) introduced a Climate Change and Disaster Induced Displacement policy, which aims to provide support and assistance to victims of eviction. The efficacy and impacts of this policy are not yet known.

Glossary of Frequently Used Bislama Terms ♦l♦

braedpraes

‘bride price’, the payment made in cash or kind received by the bride’s family from the groom’s family upon marriage haosgel ‘house girl’, a girl or woman employed to perform domestic duties jif chief kampani ‘company’ or ‘community’; ‘kampani work’ refers to community work commitments in Liro area villages. grin kakae ‘green food’, raw or uncooked garden produce hadwok hard work kastom ‘custom’, loosely translates to the English ‘custom’ or ‘tradition’, often used to define indigenous ways in opposition to Western ways man-Paama ‘man-Paama’, Paamese man/person; ‘man-island name’ is used to designate a person or man who claims membership to the island. nakaemas black magic, sorcery nakamal traditional meeting house; in contemporary Vanuatu, nakamal is also used for kava bars. natangura traditional plant material used in house construction smol vatu ‘small vatu’, a small amount of money stret ‘straight’, true or correct tabu ‘taboo’, forbidden wokbaot ‘walk about’, to walk or wander with no particular aim

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Index ♦l♦

A adoption 68 agriculture cultural importance of 50–51, 91, 184 subsistence, rural 50–52, 66 urban 146, 166 alcohol 155–156 B blackbirding 22 black magic. See nakaemas braedpraes 27, 36n, 68–70, 85, 157 business. See small business C cash. See expenditure; income; monetisation cash crops 183 barriers to producing 55, 59 cocoa 53–54 copra 25, 53 kava 53, 55, 56 sandalwood 53, 146 change 183–89 education 162–63 employment, urban 164, 167–68, 180 identity 157–59 livelihoods, rural 53, 55 longitudinal research 4–7 mobility 43, 46, 79–81, 91–92, 98–99, 100, 104, 114–16 remitting 178–179

social organisation 68–72, 110–12, 113–14, 147–54, 151, 159–60 urban life 130, 137 chief. See jifs and power. Christianity. See Presbyterian Church; religion circular migration. See migration (circular) class 18, 150–51, 160 community work 27, 57, 67, 72–77, 130 condominium government 12–14, 24 continuity 183–89 livelihoods 50, 54, 57, 59–60, 64, 65–66, 86 longitudinal research 4, 5–7 mobility 88, 92–94 population 43, 107–08 remitting 176, 180 social organisation 73, 159–60 urban life 137, 170 copra. See cash crops (copra) crime 17, 20 stealing 146, 166–67 D demography. See population drugs. See alcohol; marijuana E education 25, 26, 64–65, 70, 79–80, 82, 85, 89, 97, 98, 100–01, 104, 165 level of attainment 78–79, 162–64

202  Index electricity 48, 139, 140, 173 employment 14, 24, 25–26, 28–29 formal, urban 164–68, 169–71, 180 informal, urban 19–20, 168–70, 180, 188 mobility, and 97, 100–01, 114–15, 117 rural 59–60, 61–62 evictions 144–45, 146–47, 159, 182–83 expenditure rural 64–65 urban 148, 173–75 F family. See kin networks fieldwork 29–35 fishing. See marine resources food cultural importance 64, 83–84, 177 diets 52, 64 Frater, Maurice 38, 41, 68, 70 friendship 148–50 fundraisers 76, 156 G gender 30–31, 59 education 79–80, 162–63 employment 89–90, 167–68, 180 land ownership 44, 145–46 migration 21, 22, 23, 26–29, 34–35, 44, 77, 79–81, 92–93, 99–100, 101, 102–03, 120, 122, 123, 186 remitting 176, 178 See also migration (young women) H hardship. See poverty and hardship household size and structure 57, 59, 62, 110–112 housing rural 46–48, 95–96, 131 urban 17–18, 137–45, 147 See also informal settlements

♦ I identity 135 land-related 50–51, 70, 101, 184 Paamese 32–33, 100, 148, 157–59 urban 27, 158–59, 185 income rural 59–60, 62–64 urban 171–173 inequality 49, 62, 168, 171–74 informal sector employment. See employment (informal, urban) informal settlements 17–18, 139–44, 182 J jifs and power 69, 72–73, 77, 85, 148 job rotation 24, 71, 114 K kampani work. See community work kastom 14, 35n, 88 kava, consumption of 53, 142, 148, 155–56 See also cash crops (kava) kin networks employment, urban 164, 168 housing access 144–45 migration, facilitators of 25, 26–27, 29, 77, 80, 89, 102, 115, 118, 120–21, 122–23, 129–30, 134 rural livelihoods 60, 62–65, 86, 183–84 rural social organisation 69, 71 urban orientation of 123, 133 urban social life 147–52, 159–60, 184–86 kinship responsibilities and obligations 28, 44–46, 105 L land access and ownership 28, 51, 52, 54–56, 66, 90, 116, 124–125, 134, 145

♦ disputes 49, 56, 91, 125 See also identity (land-related) language, Paamese 158 leisure 80, 81, 154–156, 159 livelihoods longitudinal research, and 5–6 rural 37, 49–66, 67, 77–78, 85–86, 183–84 urban 164–75 See also employment livestock 52–53 longitudinal research 4–7, 31, 186–87 Luganville. See Santo

Index  203 New Caledonia. See Noumea Noumea 22, 26, 47–48, 93, 95, 98 O outer islands 29, 65–66, 85–86, 183–84

M marijuana 74, 89, 155–56 marine resources 49–50, 66 marriage 67–70, 112–14 See also braedpraes migration 2, 186–89 circular 26, 27, 46, 65, 77–78 history of 21–29 international 22–23, 26, 28–29, 93, 94–96, 104–05 plantation labour 22–24, 104–05 return, rural 130–34, 166 rural experiences of 65, 73, 79–81, 85, 87–105, 183–84 urban experiences of 114–18 young women 44, 65, 79–81, 85, 91, 100 mobile phones 84–85, 122, 152–53 mobility. See migration modernity 3, 4–5, 6–7, 80, 83, 89, 136, 150–51, 188 monetisation 4–5, 20, 37, 61, 68–69, 183 urban social life, of 147–48, 175, 180

P pigs status and traditional exchange 22–23, 68 See also livestock Paama 37–86, 130–34 environment 37–38 infrastructure 41, 46–49, 65 livelihoods 49–66 population 43–44 settlement patterns 38, 70–71 social organisation 67–86 transport 42 plantation labour migration. See migration (plantation labour) population Paamese 38–41 rural 43–46, 65 urban 107–12 Port Vila 106–30, 134–81 livelihoods 161–81 migration to 92, 97, 114–18 Paamese population 38, 40, 107–12 social organisation 136–60 See also urban permanence poverty and hardship 18–20, 161–62, 166, 174–75, 180–81 Presbyterian Church 68, 70–71, 71–72, 76–77

N nakaemas 20, 59, 60–61, 90–91, 113, 116, 117, 121, 124, 128–29, 131, 137, 153–54, 156, 188

R religion 71–72 remittances 53, 81–84, 85–86, 152, 175–79, 180, 185–86

204  References

♦

Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme 28–29, 64, 93, 94–96, 104–05, 112, 188 rental properties 56, 125, 139, 145 restudy. See longitudinal research

stratification. See inequality subsistence. See agriculture (subsistence, rural) sustainability 50, 64–65, 65–66, 86, 183–84

S sandalwood. See cash crops (sandalwood) Santo history 14, 15, 24, 25, 133–34 migration to 90, 92, 98 second-generation Paamese 27, 107, 113, 116–18, 120–21, 124, 130, 131, 134, 144, 145, 149, 185–86 demography 108–09 education 163–64 identity 157–59 remitting 176, 178, 179 Second World War 15, 24–25 sharing 54–55, 61, 76, 148, 150, 155–56, 171–73, 175, 185 small business 60–61, 62–64, 125, 168–70 social life and organisation rural 67–77, 80–81 urban 2–3, 137, 147–60, 184–85 See also monetisation (urban social life, of) social status 60, 79, 81, 82, 122, 169, 176 See also class stores. See small business

T telephones. See mobile phones translocalism 7–8, 11–12, 183–89 See also kin networks; livelihoods (rural); remittances transport 25, 42, 141–42, 173 U unemployment 19–20, 164–66, 180 urbanisation, history of 11, 15–21, 35 urban permanence 106–12, 113–16, 118–19, 123–30, 134–35, 185–86 urban settlements. See informal settlements V Vanuatu 12–14 Vila. See Port Vila violence 14, 70, 74, 113, 153, 156, 168 visits to Paama 119–123 Y young men 28, 69, 81, 89, 92, 101, 104, 112 young women 44, 65, 79–81, 85, 91, 97, 100, 104, 112, 153