Nogat Mani: Social Safety Nets for Tufi Migrants of ATS Settlement, Moresby, Papua New Guinea

Abstract

Nogat mani, the Tok Pisin term expressing ‘we have no money’, is a familiar refrain of migrants in Port Moresby, the capital city of Papua New Guinea (PNG). In the absence of formal income opportunities and affordable housing, many are forced to resort to informal forms of shelter and income generation. Food and shelter are particularly difficult to secure which is why many rely on support from people of their own ethnic group.

One such group is the Tufi people of Oro Province who live in the ATS squatter settlement located near the city’s airport. There, kin and neighbors are important sources of support but, paradoxically, also place severe demands on those who have food, housing and money. Moreover, people must contribute to collective undertakings or risk becoming alienated from this urban safety net. This collective identity has to be balanced with the reality of being marginal citizens in the increasingly cosmopolitan city.

This thesis examines the livelihood and social safety strategies of this group of Tufi migrants over the period from the mid-1990s to 2013. It draws on a combination of ethnographic and quantitative data based on fieldwork conducted in 2013, reflective autoethnographic data and secondary sources. It examines the changing forms of indigenous Melanesian value systems in urban settings as they come into contestation with neo-liberal systems of value which dominate access to basic needs in the city.

Drawing on theoretical concepts of value, exchange, kinship and urban space, this thesis provides a grounded account of settlement life in PNG. It examines the challenges and responses of the Tufi as marginal citizens in one PNG informal settlement and demonstrates how collective identity is deployed to address the many challenges encountered in urban life. The thesis makes visible emerging forms of citizenship in urban PNG and the paradoxes of collective action and identity.