Migration and remittances: a Tongan village perspective

Abstract

Kinship is often assumed in discussions of Pacific migration and remittance to be a constant, pervasive factor responsible for both sending workers to metropolitan centres and also for distributing their remittances among the wider community at home. Kinship is not primarily based on economic interests and its obligations may be invoked and fulfilled in a variety of ways. I observed loyalty within families from Falahola, a small island in the north of the Tongan archipelago, maintained in many other ways than sending back cash and goods to the island. Material remittances are highly individual, and the most significant are sent by temporary migrant workers to their most immediate families, that is, as a form of savings for themselves for their eventual return. Fostering children may be seen as another form of remittance, a bid to secure the loyalty of "second generation remitters' as well as gaining social security for them by activating the kin bonds of children born overseas - a bid which may not prove successful because of the instability and contradictory messages transmitted in the irregular processes of socialisation that occur. -Author