Another form of movement that can be motivated by low socio-economic status is return migration. Connell has found that there is generally a low level of return migration in the Pacific and that ‘return migration is often an admission of failure’ (1990, 19; see also Connell 2009). He observed that those who do return often have problems readjusting and tend to remain in urban areas. Macpherson (1985) also noted problems of readjustment for the few Samoans who return, particularly younger people who had spent most of their lives overseas. He argues that the low rate of return is due to migrants’ desire to remain near their adult children and their families overseas and financial considerations such as lack of jobs and low wages. Shankman (1993) concludes that Samoan return migration has been insignificant when compared with movement out of the islands. He adds that if many migrants did decide to return it would create significant problems for Samoa’s economy, a point that rings true for other Pacific countries that have experienced emigration and rely on remittance income.
In a recent paper on Samoan return migration Macpherson and Macpherson (2009) note that more migrants began returning to retire in Samoa when New Zealand allowed them to draw on their New Zealand pensions from the islands. However, they also show that many return migrants do not settle permanently in Samoa, but go back to New Zealand after a period living in Samoa, or move between the two locations at intervals. This tendency to re-migrate was also found by Maron and Connell (2008), in their study of returnees in a village in Tonga which showed that half of the return migrants interviewed intended to return overseas.
Ahlburg and Brown (1998) investigated migrants’ intentions to return home in a study of Tongans and Samoans in Australia in 1994. Previous studies had shown that those intending to return home tend to remit more and this was confirmed by their study, although intention to return does not necessarily lead to actual return. Overall they found that only around 10 per cent intended to return, and another group (23 per cent for Tongans and 38 per cent for Samoans) were undecided. Ahlburg and Brown conclude that ‘the return of overseas migrants is not a major channel for the acquisition of human capital for Tonga and Samoa’ (1998, 131). The issue of human capital return is also discussed in the work on health professionals by Connell and Brown mentioned earlier in this chapter, and by Connell in his paper in this volume. Connell’s paper shows that even for returning professionals, re-migration is a common outcome.
The practice of returning children and adolescents to their parents’ homelands for periods of time is a particular form of return migration that has received only limited attention in Pacific studies and the wider literature on transnationalism (Lee 2009). Macpherson (1985) observed this for Samoa and Kerry James first reported the practice in Tonga in the early 1990s. She argued that it was a way to confirm kinship ties and ‘an attempt to sustain future remittances’ (1991, 17). However, she expressed a concern about this practice, reiterated in her study of fostering on a small island in Vava’u:
Some relationships appeared to be so highly subject to change and so peripatetic that I came to wonder where the loyalties of the young will ultimately lie, and whether the children will feel called upon to support either set of parents. Thus, while children are sent as remittances, to ensure social security for themselves through confirming kinship bonds and also possibly to become effective second-generation remitters because of those bonds, I doubt in many cases that the Tongan notion of ‘ofa (love, generosity) will be successfully instilled into the younger generation of migrants. Instead, they are likely to get more clearly the message of self-interest, of economic individualism, which also underlies the actions of their parents (James 1993, 369–370).
James also acknowledges the strain on people in Tonga, particularly older people, who have to take on these children and youths ‘in a situation where many of the older forms of social control have been removed or rendered increasingly ineffective’ (1991, 22).
Some of the children who are sent to Tonga from the diaspora are requested by family in Tonga and may stay for long periods and be welcomed into the household; most commonly these are grandchildren. Others, such as teenagers sent home because their parents are concerned about their behaviour overseas, may be accepted only because the family in Tonga feels obliged, and they can be resented (Lee 2009). Their time in Tonga is another case of what could be described as involuntary transnationalism. James has noted that ‘among the data lacking from studies of Tongans overseas is an estimation of the degree of loyalty to people in Tonga that exists among second-generation migrants who have lived in Tonga for a time’ (James 1997, 21). My own research indicates that the experience of being sent to Tonga for periods of time can have diverse outcomes in terms of the transnational ties maintained on return overseas, but that few who do experience this wish to live in Tonga permanently (Lee 2009).