Is it possible to be a transnational without having ever left home? The literature on ‘home’ reveals the tension between the physical place of home and the symbolic space, and home is seen not only as a territorial attachment but also as an adherence to ‘transportable cultural ideas and values’ (Al-Ali and Koser 2002, 7). In the Pacific nations, countless numbers of residents are involved in preparing members of their family to make the voyage to join other diasporic communities in other countries, while the same residents remain at home and send local products to home-sick transnationals, collect returning travellers from airports, maintain the family and the village at home, and share news and information. Those that remain are exposed to, engaged in, and are as much a part of the transnational experience as those who leave; they are in fact essential to its existence although they may never have left home. The knowledge and exchanges in which they are involved change how they see themselves and the rest of their world and differ significantly from those individuals that do not have similar relationships.

As new relationships develop and new circumstances arise within Pacific communities, both in and beyond Pacific nations themselves, the concept of Pacific transnationalism is challenged in its attempts to describe and reflect these phenomena. West Papuans, for example, can be regarded as ‘enforced’ transnationals as they fight to reclaim their land, their sovereignty and the retention of their culture from Indonesia. For some Pacific nations’ peoples, the notion of being ‘landless’ transnationals is a reality and transnationalism becomes critical to their survival as they witness the disappearance and destruction of their islands. For example, the Fangataufa and Mururoa atolls have become radioactive and uninhabitable due to France’s nuclear testing; in the Solomon Islands, tsunamis have destroyed villages forcing the government to consider resettling the locals; and in Tuvalu, climate change is causing erosion, spoiling crops and affecting the islands’ fresh water. In these instances, identity and relationship to homeland may exist only in memories, and oral and recorded histories, and reciprocal exchanges between communities, as they relocate to different countries, will be necessary to sustaining these memories and histories.

Understanding Pacific transnationalism with accuracy and relevance is not nearly as important as first understanding ongoing change within the Pacific due to factors such as political instability, struggling economies, climate change and social upheaval. This book is a collaboration between those authors whose research has taken them into the Pacific and the Pacific diaspora and those for whom the Pacific is their gafa (genealogy) and fanua (land) and this allows for intersections to be made in theorising about Pacific transnationalism. For those familiar with what they observe and theorise as Pacific transnationalism, there is an acceptance that these observances are likely to change in concept and circumstance for the next observer, researcher, or writer of Pacific transnationalism.