{"title":"‘On the ship, you can do anything’: the impact of international cruiseship employment for i-Kiribati women","authors":"Sophia Kagan","doi":"10.33318/jpacs.2016.36(1)-3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33318/jpacs.2016.36(1)-3","url":null,"abstract":"Kiribati is a remote, small island country with a long history of male temporary migration as a mechanism for relieving unemployment and facilitating remittances. This article looks at a unique case study of female i-Kiribati migration and is based on interviews with a small sample of i-Kiribati women who worked on international cruiseships between 2009-2012, thus providing interesting insight into first-time migration experiences of women from a remote island country. The findings suggest that while the experience did not generally lead to observable changes in their ability to manage remittances, nor in gender relations between husband and wife, employment on the ship did nonetheless have strong reported benefits in terms of independence, skills development and confidence of the women interviewed. These findings corroborate existing literature showing while entrenched gender norms rarely shift directly due to women’s migration experiences, migration does contribute to the women’s empowerment through increased agency and ability to make decisions, both during and after their migration.","PeriodicalId":29702,"journal":{"name":"Locale-The Australian-Pacific Journal of Regional Food Studies","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83484744","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Uncertain Belongings: Relationships, Money and Returned Migrant Workers in Port Vila, Vanuatu","authors":"M. Cummings","doi":"10.33318/jpacs.2016.36(1)-2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33318/jpacs.2016.36(1)-2","url":null,"abstract":"New Zealand’s Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme allows Pacific islanders, including many from Vanuatu, to migrate as temporary agricultural labourers. For government stakeholders, the program’s success can be measured, in no uncertain terms, by the increased consumption of foreign goods and community development projects funded by returned migrants. Yet it is precisely in these terms, of new belongings and one’s sense of belonging, that returnees, especially young men, experience the greatest uncertainty. How should they use the money they earn overseas: to strengthen their kinship networks and communities by sharing their wealth, or to purchase clothes, stereos, cars, or even land, which will belong only to them as individuals? Each strategy has its potential promises and pitfalls, and the outcomes remain uncertain. Will workers who spend on belongings alienate themselves from their kin and island communities? And how might they be forging new kinds of belonging as young urban wage earners? In addition to exploring these questions, this paper suggests that these strategies might inform and inspire relevant policy that is able to better grapple with the very uncertainties the RSE helps to create.","PeriodicalId":29702,"journal":{"name":"Locale-The Australian-Pacific Journal of Regional Food Studies","volume":"99 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78385818","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Australia – A Hegemonic Power in the Pacific Region","authors":"Hermann Mückler","doi":"10.33318/jpacs.2016.36(2)-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33318/jpacs.2016.36(2)-8","url":null,"abstract":"“The Australian colonies displayed expansionist tendencies almost from the beginning” is a pointed statement, and there is evidence that Australia exerted its influence on and expanded its spheres of interest to neighbouring territories in Melanesia and in the Pacific region as a whole almost from the beginning of its existence. This article gives an overview about Australia acting as a hegemonic power in the Pacific Islands before World War I, its engagement in the decades afterwards, and its regional political involvement recently, perceived and interpreted from a European viewpoint.","PeriodicalId":29702,"journal":{"name":"Locale-The Australian-Pacific Journal of Regional Food Studies","volume":"25 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72517180","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Regulations, Costs and Informality: The Case of Fiji","authors":"Dibyendu Maiti, Devendra Narain, Sunil Kumar","doi":"10.33318/jpacs.2016.36(2)-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33318/jpacs.2016.36(2)-4","url":null,"abstract":"Informal sector is considered to be a ‘cushion’ for the majority of workers in the developing world, where the formal sector jobs are limited and social securities for the unemployed do not exist. While the size of the sector is quite large in the developing world, it appears to be relatively low in Fiji even when the economic growth of the country has been abysmally low during the last three decades. This is because the entry requirement to the informal sector has been quite stringent and time consuming, and may have led individuals to either remain unemployed or concentrate on subsistence production. Relative flexibility for entry and running businesses in the informal sector would not only improve the economic condition of the workers, but also overall economic growth. Separate and flexible legislations are, therefore, needed for the informal sector to grow and contribute to the economy.","PeriodicalId":29702,"journal":{"name":"Locale-The Australian-Pacific Journal of Regional Food Studies","volume":"50 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80329446","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Internal Migration in the Pacific Islands: a regional overview","authors":"V. Naidu, L. Vaike","doi":"10.33318/jpacs.2016.36(1)-6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33318/jpacs.2016.36(1)-6","url":null,"abstract":"Internal migration in the Pacific islands, especially in Melanesia has become more widespread and intense over the last 50 years. However, this movement of people from smaller ‘outer’ islands and interior regions of the larger islands to ‘main’ islands and coastal towns and cities is less documented, and studied when compared to international migration from Pacific Island Countries PICs). This paper seeks to provide an overview of internal migration in PICs using the apparently contradictory standpoints of urban bias theory, and new economic geography as well as by using historical and contemporary information to provide the context of current internal migration trends. It is shown that there are significant gaps in the provision of statistics relating to both inter-provincial migration and urbanization, particularly with regards to gendered information. The paper maintains that with modernization there has been on-going improvement in girls and women’s access to education, and opportunities of employment in the formal sector. As both higher educational and employment opportunities are primarily found in urban areas, the previously male dominated migration patterns are being replaced by movements that exhibit greater gender parity.","PeriodicalId":29702,"journal":{"name":"Locale-The Australian-Pacific Journal of Regional Food Studies","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87092354","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pacific migration futures: ancient solutions to contemporary and prospective challenges?","authors":"R. Bedford","doi":"10.33318/jpacs.2016.36(1)-7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33318/jpacs.2016.36(1)-7","url":null,"abstract":"Scholarship published by staff and students at the University of the South Pacific has had a profound impact on understandings by researchers of both historical and contemporary transformations in Oceania. This paper contains some reflections by a geographer who has been researching population movement in the region since the mid-1960s. It begins by drawing attention to seminal writing by the late Epeli Hau’ofa in the 1980s and 1990s, and traces the impact of some of Hau’ofa’s messages about regional integration and identity in Oceania in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Reference is made to another very significant collection of essays by scholars, students, politicians and government officials linked with the USP in 2015 which explores what is being called ‘the new Pacific diplomacy’. Like the discourse generated by Waddell, Naidu and Hau’ofa’s (1993) A New Oceania: Rediscovering our Sea of Islands, ideas reported in Fry and Tarte’s (2015) The New Pacific Diplomacy have the potential to shift thinking about identities, regional co-operation and migration in Oceania.","PeriodicalId":29702,"journal":{"name":"Locale-The Australian-Pacific Journal of Regional Food Studies","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72866649","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Irrigated ethnoagriculture, adaptation and development: a Pacific case study","authors":"T. King","doi":"10.33318/jpacs.2016.36(2)-10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33318/jpacs.2016.36(2)-10","url":null,"abstract":"The practice of terraced and irrigated creekfield taro (Colocasia esculenta) agriculture was once prevalent in the seasonally-dry regions of many Pacific Islands. This ethnoagricultural system has been characterised as technically sophisticated, intensive, highly productive and ecologically sustainable; with links to social stability and enhanced biodiversity. The food output is highly nutritive. However, despite these advantages, a decline in irrigated terracing has been the historic trend over the last century. Given the decline, the question must be asked: how resilient and sustainable is creekfield ethnoagriculture, especially in a changing world? The late Holocene development of irrigated creekfields was probably advanced by superior characteristics of resilience and adaptation in the face of climate change, but evidence is hindered by lack of research. Conversely, creekfield decline appears to have a strong relationship with the influence of extralocal colonial, modern and globalised development during a historically benign climate period of low agricultural risk – now being replaced by a putatively higher-risk period of vulnerability driven by Anthropocene global warming. An ethnoagricultural case study of Fijian irrigated terrace systems (colloquially called vuci), amid other research from the Pacific, indicates enhanced resilience and increased livelihood stability – characteristics that are needed for adaption to the predicted adverse conditions of the future. The prospects for the revitalization of such systems are discussed. Only some of the reasons for decline are important today, and a developmental reintensification is possible, especially with increased populations and parallel food demands. Innovative technologies can be used to ‘progress with the past’, exemplified by the activities of an NGO which has been reintroducing the ideas and practice of vuci in the Fiji Islands.","PeriodicalId":29702,"journal":{"name":"Locale-The Australian-Pacific Journal of Regional Food Studies","volume":"112 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75172356","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The effectiveness of the destination websites in promoting linkages between visitors and the community in Tonga","authors":"N. Towner","doi":"10.33318/jpacs.2016.36(2)-5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33318/jpacs.2016.36(2)-5","url":null,"abstract":"Whilst tourism has brought Tonga potentially significant prospects for job creation and local business ownership, many tourists lack knowledge about the cultural experiences on offer at their holiday destination. This signifies a lost opportunity to form linkages between foreign tourists and the Tongan community. This study analysed the content of 40 Tongan websites to see how effectively they promoted linkages to community based tourism industries. It found the majority of websites had very weak content on local handicrafts, food and cultural events and were ineffective at promoting linkages between tourists and the community, thereby reducing the potential for local community participation in the tourism industry.","PeriodicalId":29702,"journal":{"name":"Locale-The Australian-Pacific Journal of Regional Food Studies","volume":"6 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82541056","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Oceanian Journeys and Sojourns. Home thoughts Abroad","authors":"A. Torre","doi":"10.33318/jpacs.2016.36(1)-9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.33318/jpacs.2016.36(1)-9","url":null,"abstract":"While clearly initiated with the intent of celebrating Murray Chapman and the legacy of his work in the fields of human geography and mobility in Oceania, this theoretically and methodologically inspiring volume greatly contributes to the current literature on migration in the Pacific region and globally in more general terms. The collection strongly advocates for what Chapman himself called the need for “alternative manners of thinking” (Chapman, 1995, p.254) about Pacific Islanders’ practices of internal and/or international mobility. An alternative thinking which should centre around the idea of movement as an embodied experience and incorporate local knowledge and socio-cultural relations within its investigation of the determinants and implications of migration in Oceania.","PeriodicalId":29702,"journal":{"name":"Locale-The Australian-Pacific Journal of Regional Food Studies","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77602677","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}