2006 Media Releases
Friday, 17 November 2006
World scholars explore Pacific transnationalism
Scholars from around the world will meet in Melbourne next week for a three-day conference on Pacific transnationalism and the ties between Pacific migrants and their island homelands.
The conference, from Monday, 20 November, will be held at the La Trobe University Institute for Advanced Study, on the main Melbourne campus at Bundoora, (Melway reference F1).
Sponsored by the Australian Research Council and La Trobe University’s School of Social Sciences, Pacific Transnationalism: Tracing Ties to the Homelands will bring together more than 30 leading Pacific scholars from Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Canada, the United States and Norway.
Conference Convener, La Trobe anthropologist Dr Helen Lee, says it presents a unique opportunity for academics and community representatives to discuss a topic with significant implications for the viability of Pacific Island states.
While ties between emigrant Pacific islanders and their homelands have influenced economic, socio-cultural and political dimensions of Islander communities for decades, the impact of new technologies and moves towards regional integration means these are becoming increasingly complex.
What are the consequences for Pacific Island emigrants and their adopted countries, and for the kinfolk and cultures they leave behind? These are some of the key issues to be canvassed in an opening presentation by Dr Camille Nakhid (Pacific transnationalism: concept or circumstance?).
Pacific transnationalism is not a concept, she says, but an event. It begins when Pacific islanders first leave their homelands and diminishes to the point of extinction over two or three generations of intermarriage in their adopted countries.
Other presenters include sociologist Professor Cluny Macpherson from Massey University, New Zealand, and his wife La’avasa, a researcher (they will discuss the viability of a traditional Samoan lifestyle in New Zealand); Australian scholar John Connell, Professor of Human Geography at Sydney University (the impact of reverse migration among skilled health workers in Fiji, Tonga, Samoa and Niue); and anthropologist Niko Besnier from the University of Amsterdam (the “look” of imagined cosmopolitanism among the island kinfolk left behind).
The conference will also feature a forum in which representatives of Pacific Islander communities in Australia will speak about the impact of transnationalism on their communities.