Pacific transnationalism is evident in a number of practices, for example, support for families through remittances, young people studying overseas, sports persons playing for other countries, soldiers in overseas forces, expatriate political support or protests against a particular government, church-building in the islands through financial support from diasporic communities, and billeting or hosting villagers. Governments in Pacific countries encourage these transnational connections as they provide opportunities for economic benefits through remittances, export of home products to those living abroad and investment in poorer villages and regions left behind. Transnational practices and linkages are significant in their contribution to sustainable development at home (Connell and Conway 2000), though remittances, in particular, can lead to uneven development in the home country. Kennedy and Roudometof (2002) point to the fact that transnational communities arise out of social injustices, poverty, global economic restructuring, economic and social uncertainty, discrimination and oppression, and provide opportunities for empowerment of underprivileged groups.

Pacific migrants create transnational spaces when they maintain a set of multi-related social relations that bind and connect them and link their countries of origin with their countries of settlement (Glick Schiller, Basch and Blanc 1995). A sense of longing for and attachment to country of origin or an ancestral homeland becomes part of what it is to be a transnational. For some Pacific peoples, the ‘myth of return’, as defined by Walton-Roberts (2004, 80, 92) exists when transnationals balance the desire to return with the reality of their settled life. Although at times the desire or longing for home is only emotional without any involvement or interaction, perhaps due to circumstances such as the threat of danger to oneself or family, or from being exiled, it is unlikely that we can regard those who find themselves in this situation as transnationals because of the absence of reciprocity. On the other hand, can we consider as transnationals those who, though they may interact with others in the homeland, feel no attachment to the home culture or lack the desire to return?

Lee’s opening chapter tells us that the patterns of movement which saw Pacific peoples move and settle from one place to another was integral to their survival, particularly given the disproportionate comparison in size between the seas and the lands. Pacific transnationalism is a way of life, first emerging with the onset of colonization and always entailing a disparity in socio-economic status between the colonized and the colonizer. Lee correctly argues that we cannot understate the value of remittances to the life of Pacific transnationals. However, we should be aware of the extent to which such an interest in and attention to the use and sustainability of remittances deflects and diminishes our recognition of other features of Pacific transnationalism. How we judge the impacts of other characteristics of Pacific transnationalism as to their influence and significance depends, of course, on whether the impact is being evaluated in relation to the migrant, the Pacific transnational, the country, the host residents or the home residents.

A strongly ethnographic approach is taken by the authors to understanding Pacific transnationalism and their chapters are graced by many relevant accounts of people’s experiences of migration and transnationalism. The historical salience of oral traditions in the Pacific make this an appropriate approach to understanding Pacific transnationalism through a grounded interpretation of cultural processes.