Mobility in transition : an analysis of population movement in the New Hebrides

Abstract

This scudy of population movement in a Melanesian archipelago, the New Hebrides, adopts a variety of approaches to consideration of three essential aspects of human spatial mobility — who moves, their reasons for moving, and their destination choices. Existing theoretical statements were found, in Part One, to have limited societal, spatial, and temporal domains. A flexible approach was therefore required where hypotheses concerning selectivity in migration, the process whereby the decision to move or stay is made, and spatial characteristics of aggregate flows of migrants could be used to examine a higher-order proposition that patterns of human spatial mobility undergo sequential change with modernization. In the context of the New Hebrides it was proposed that distinctive phases could be identified in patterns of inter-island migration which were associated with various social and economic changes initiated by European colonialism. These phases could be linked in a transition from mobility within restricted spatial and social domains in the pre-contact period towards much more frequent and extensive inter-island movement during the colonial period. A particular form of mobility — circular migration — which is usually considered to be a transitional phase associated with the early stages of modernization, was found in fact to have persisted in the New Hebrides as it has in some African countries with a limited potential for industrial development. Circular migration emerged as a relatively stable compromise for a people who wish to retain the security of their traditional social, economic, and political institutions which are associated with residence in rural communities, while acquiring some of the benefits of wage employment and a different social life in towns and other centres of commercial activity. However, there have been changes in characteristics of this circular mobility, especially in the frequency, duration, and direction of inter-island movement. These changes form a transitional sequence which can be likened to a spatio-temporal diffusion process where coherent phases in mobility behaviour have propagated themselves onward through time and outward through space from focal points of development. While it was not possible to test quantitatively that such a transition is functionally linked to processes of social and economic change termed ’modernization', an analysis of historical evidence in Part Two suggested such a proposition could be sustained. The frequency of inter-island circular migration increased throughout the postcontact period and the spatial extent of migration fields expanded as information on opportunities for wage employment in alternative locations diffused throughout the Group, Analysis, in Part Three, of the only comprehensive statistical information available pertaining to spatial characteristics of migration fields — the 1967 census — demonstrated that the islands where the two towns are located have national migration fields in terms of the sources of their immigrants. Inter-island mobility for wage employment exhibited strong directional biases which disturbed any simple relationship between volume of movement and distance. Sub-regional networks in the overall mobility pattern were, however, apparent once the influence of the major employment centres had been factored out in a principal components analysis. While the 1967 census provided a useful basis for testing long-established hypotheses concerning the roles of distance and the spatial distribution of opportunities on aggregate patterns of mobility, this cross-sectional approach ignores the essential circularity in movement behaviour. To examine structural and behavioural aspects of circular mobility field research was necessary in both rural areas and a major destination for migrants. Three islands with a range of rural destinations (a European plantation, a mission hospital, and school) as well as village communities experiencing varying degrees of land shortage were selected as a base for the greater part of this inquiry. The town of Vila was also included to complete a sample of the major areas which Islanders circulate between in the context of inter-island mobilityo Examination of migration histories for a sample of adults emphasized the significance of temporary absences from rural communities for all sectors of the population The circularity in movement behaviour was clearly demonstrated through use of a simple graph-theoretic measure and moves away from and back to rural communities could be related to differential social and economic pressures at various times in an individual’s life. Although the dynamic interrelationships between choices for different economic activities (subsistence gardening, cash cropping, local business enterprises, and wage employment) could not be precisely specified, it was suggested in Chapter 4.2 that circular migration could be understood in the context of a riskminimizing strategy. By maintaining a number of options for economic activity, and not becoming fully committed to any particular one, Islanders were retaining desired aspects of their traditional way of life and obtaining returns, even if sub-optimal, from the commercial system introduced by foreigners. When the mobility experiences of New Hebrideans from these villages who were living in Vila were examined, it was found that, for the great majority, most of their working lives had been spent in rural communities. The rural-urban drift in the New Hebrides, as in other Pacific territories, is different to that which many contemporary urban-industrial societies have experienced. Pacific urban migrants are not a wage-dependent proletariat: they have vested interests in property and security in the rural areas. The village is a source of income as well as social security and, with the importance of land ownership to most Islanders, remains significant to those who received a major part of their socialization in such communities. The changes in characteristics of circular migration in the colonial period could not be accounted for by a more generalized mobility transition which has recently been suggested. It was argued that there is no one transitional sequence applicable to all societies even though there is mutual dependence between human mobility and social and economic changes associated with modernization. The manner in which these relationships are manifested in movement behaviour, particularly in the early stages of modernization, is very much dependent on the society in which change occurs and the circumstances under which modernization is initiated. This somewhat idiographic conclusion does no more than acknowledge a fundamental methodological problem concerning theories of migration — they may be applicable only at certain times and in certain societies.