Port Vila : transit station or final stop? : recent developments in ni-Vanuatu population mobility
Creators: name: Haberkorn, Gerald
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 1987
Subjects: subject: Migration, Internal Vanuatu
subject: Vanuatu Population

description: Between 1967 and 1979, urban population growth in Vanuatu has increased at more than twice the annual rate of rural population growth. This thesis examines the contribution of rural-urban mobility to this process, in the local and historical conditions of mobility from Paama and Raga (North Pentecost). The historical development of ni-Vanuatu population mobility is discussed in reference to previous empirical research carried out by Bedford and Bonnemaison, and examined in the context of a macro-analysis of national population trends based on 1967 and 1979 census data, which serve as the baseline for analysing changes up to 1983 when I concluded my fieldwork. Rather than viewing developments in ni-Vanuatu population mobility throughout time solely as the result of socio-economic change, this thesis emphasizes the ongoing interplay between structural transformations in source and destination areas and mobility, causing a recreation of new environments within which mobility occurs. Causes which facilitated and necessitated mobility in the 1950s and 1960s no longer assume the same magnitude in defining mobility in contemporary rural societies. Population pressure on limited resources on P a a m a , which cannot be dissociated from an individualization of land tenure and the introduction of cash-crops (coconuts) around the turn of the century, means that Paamese mobility has always had the character of a survival strategy. But whereas in the past, periodic rural-based moves of a short-term nature (circulation) supplemented the existence of rural households, such mobility has gradually given way to a subsidization of rural life. A communal land tenure system and multilocal residence and land rights on R aga based on vara membership have always permitted a greater flexibility to accommodate demographic fluctuations on a household and local-regional level. The contemporary persistence of ‘trad itio n al’ economic and social organization alongside more recent, albeit locally varied developments of a commoditization of land means that Raga mobility, in relative terms, appears to be more a m atter of convenience. A rapidly expanding and diversifying domestic urban economy, the nickel boom in neighbouring New Caledonia, and the rural crisis of the early 1970s illustrate how conditions, formerly both necessitating and facilitating temporary rural-based circulation, have given way to a setting more conducive to long-term, or even permanent urban relocations. While Port Vila has become a new home, a new base, for many Paamese and Raga migrants, and long-term rural-urban mobility has emerged as the predominant contemporary form of Paamese and Raga mobility, such developments have not completely replaced temporary rural-based circulation, particularly not on Paama. However, an analysis of life-time mobility histories of Paamese and Raga men and women, resident in both Port Vila, and in the Liro area (Paama) and Hurilao (Raga), unequivocally show that its significance has declined dramatically throughout the 1970s, which, alongside the stabilization of rural-urban mobility casts some doubt about the future significance of temporary circulation from a rural base.