Migrations To Islands Of The Western Pacific Ocean

Pacific Islanders have engaged in transnational practices since their first settlement of the many islands in the region. As they moved beyond the Pacific and settled in nations such as New Zealand, the U.S. and Australia these practices intensified and over time have profoundly shaped both home and diasporic communities. This edited volume begins with a detailed account of this history and the key issues in Pacific migration and transnationalism today. The papers that follow present a range of case studies that maintain this focus on both historical and contemporary perspectives. Each of the contributors goes beyond a narrowly economic focus to present the human face of migration and transnationalism; exploring questions of cultural values and identity, transformations in kinship, intergenerational change and the impact on home communities. Pacific migration and transnationalism are addressed in this volume in the context of increasing globalisation and growing concerns about the future social, political and economic security of the Pacific region. As the case studies presented here show, the future of the Pacific depends in many ways on the ties diasporic Islanders maintain with their homelands.

With a series of rich case studies focused on mobile laborers, this book demonstrates how the regional migrations of the early modern era came to be connected, contributing to the creation of an increasingly integrated nineteenth-century world.

Oceanic Migration studies the prehistoric peopling of the Pacific. It uses science and mathematics to expand the research base of Pacific prehistory and casts new light on this final human expansion. It explores the fundamental roles of oceanography and of global climate change in determining the paths, sequence, timing and range of Spice Island-based maritime migrations ranging across a quarter of the globe. The book is of interest to Pacific prehistorians, oceanographers and American anthropologists concerned with the diffusionist debate. For oceanographers it presents the new idea of the role of the West Pacific Warm Pool and of three of its four major currents in determining the evolution of voyaging in two oceans. For diffusionists it provides new chronological and technological contexts in which the issue of diffusionism needs to be reconsidered. For prehistorians it creates a paradigmatic shift by establishing a new time depth and mechanism for Polynesian exploration, offers a new view of voyaging and exploration strategies and of economic imperatives and adds a new dimension to the debate on Polynesian origins.

"The papers in this volume are mostly from the 1990 conference on Pacific Islander Migration: Australia, New Zealand, and the USA, organised by the Centre for South Pacific Studies at the University of New South Wales"--Page 4 of cover.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1877.

"A spectacular transition is under way in the Pacific Islands, as a result of which all our lives will be radically different. In the last fifty years or so, Asia has begun to play a bigger and bigger role in all aspects of Islands life - migration, trade and investment, aid and development, information and media, religion, culture and sport. It is replacing the West. The process is irreversible. With his trademark breadth and depth of knowledge and understanding of the region, based on over half a century of experience, study and deliberation, Ron Crocombe documents the early connections between Asia and the Pacific, details recent and continuing changes, and poses challenging theories about the future."--Publisher.

This book critically and succinctly examines recent changes in land ownership, mobility and livelihoods in various Pacific island states, from East Timor to the Solomon Islands, where climate change, environmental change (including hazards of various origins), population growth and urbanization have contributed to new tensions and discords and resulted in complex structures of migration and resettlement. This has brought new and varied experiences of income and livelihood generation, and consequent reinterpretations of ‘modernity’ and ‘tradition’. In a series of detailed case studies this book traces various responses to such socio-economic changes both in how they are locally envisaged, as pressures on land have intensified, urban informal settlements and livelihoods have expanded and perceptions of identity and property rights have changed, and in national development policy responses. It offers valuable reflections on the complex balance between continuity and change, the tensions between social and economic development, the will to develop and the management of dissent and difference. This book was published as a special issue of Australian Geographer.

The Austronesian-speaking population of the world are estimated to number more than 270 million people, living in a broad swathe around half the globe, from Madagascar to Easter Island and from Taiwan to New Zealand. The seventeen papers in this volume provide a general survey of these diverse populations focusing on their common origins and historical transformations. The papers examine current ideas on the linguistics, prehistory, anthropology and recorded history of the Austronesians.