This paper has brought a fa’a-Samoa perspective on transnationalism examining how social, cultural, political, and economic practices have changed over time, and the forms these transnational processes take. Fa`a-Samoa frames work within local idioms, which in turn feed into and influence change. Local culture is not simply acted upon by external agents, as many accounts of change in Samoa suggest, for people are dynamic, proactive, and perpetually creative. As we have seen in previous accounts, while i`inei has been transformed through contact with fafo the relationship is reciprocal. Not only is fafo imagined and constructed through i`inei idioms, but more practically, it too is transformed through the ideological, economic, and physical exchanges which take place in movement. At times, the ‘periphery’ (fafo) becomes a central source of meaning and identity, as overseas `aiga, Samoan churches, and matai councils are established. Fafo (overseas, abroad) has become more like the ‘core’ Samoa (i`inei) over time. Places of the ‘periphery’ including Auckland, Los Angeles and Sydney are increasingly becoming ‘cores’. Core and periphery are therefore always in flux. Home is not only multi-local but trans-local. In population movement, fafo and i`inei have become part of the inextricably transnational character of Samoan identity.

`Aiga need population movement for economic, social and cultural development; migrants need spiritual and emotional nourishment themselves. This replenishment of the soul is fulfilled in the exchange of gifts and especially by the deliverance of delicacies from home such as umu package (taro, breadfruit, and palusami), fai`ai pusi (eel in coconut cream) fai`ai fe`e (octopus in coconut cream), fagu sea (bottle of sea cucumber) or koko Samoa (Samoan cocoa). Salelologa people produce the essence of i`inei for kin in diasporic spaces and places to consume but themselves consume modernity through the goods sent back to them from fafo. Gifts exchange is thus as much about social relationships and the respective power of givers and receivers as it is about the hegemony of places.

Through negotiations made possible by population movement, `aiga and i`inei have changed, become multi-local and trans-local. Households neither simply expect ‘expatriates’ to send remittances and receive partially symbolic gifts of taro, sea cucumber, koko Samoa or handicrafts in exchange; nor are these transactions purely bilateral between the island home and one or another rim country. Instead, Samoa, New Zealand, the United States and Australia are sites of transnational, triangular, and circular exchange. As Hau`ofa (1993, 11) emphasises, ‘the resources of Samoans, Cook Islanders, Niueans, Tokelauans, Tuvaluans, Rotumans, I-Kiribati, Fijians, Indo-Fijians, and Tongans are no longer confined to their national boundaries. They are located wherever these people are living, permanently or otherwise.’ In short, envisioning a ‘world enlargement’ and considering social and cultural meanings of transnationalism (Hauofa 1993). In Salelologa, multi-local families are becoming increasingly dominant. None of this dynamic is captured by the twin images of emigration and depopulation formerly theorised in the mobility literature.