In the early phase of Samoan settlement, kinship remained an important feature of migrant social organisation. Within enclaves, related individuals and households exchanged goods and services informally in the same ways as they had in Samoa. This pattern was a consequence of choice and familiarity, and of a lack of familiarity with the dominant society’s organisation and institutions. Kinship remained a matrix within which goods, services and information were routinely exchanged. Daily, informal exchanges among migrant kin had much the same consequences as they had in Samoa: they reproduced dependence on kin, and a preference for dealing with relatives in a range of matters (Macpherson 1974).

In this early period, however, the second role of kin groups, the mobilisation of greater human and physical resources to commemorate life crises, or fa’alavelave, was more difficult to reproduce. Generally, there were too few members of āiga present able to fund the celebrations in ways considered appropriate. Young migrants were acutely aware of their lack of the cultural knowledge required to manage such events and of the absence of older people with the necessary competence. Lack of familiarity with air travel discouraged many older people, who were familiar with ceremonial and protocol, from travelling to New Zealand. Fine mats, or ‘ie toga, a central element of these ceremonies, were not readily available in New Zealand. Finally, the absence of appropriate Samoan-owned or controlled venues for the celebration of such events and dominant group’s reluctance to hire facilities to unknown migrants, made finding places in which to celebrate life crises difficult (Macpherson 1974).

So, when migrant life crises occurred throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, celebrations were transferred to Samoa where the critical mass of most āiga remained and where the necessary personnel, expertise, venues and fine mats were readily available. There, they were performed by chiefs and elders of the āiga according to traditional protocols. Parties of kin moved between New Zealand and Samoa to ensure that members’ achievements were appropriately commemorated and that the kin group demonstrated its ability to mobilise and its claim to recognition. These movements were central to the continuing connection between nodes of kin groups and to transnational Samoa.

In sum, expatriate āiga continued to exchange goods, services and information informally but were unable to carry out other more formal activities so important to the reproduction of commitment to kin groups: the periodic, public demonstration of a group’s power and claims to recognition. The co-dependence of ‘home’ and ‘migrant’ nodes also necessitated the connections which underpinned emerging transnationalism. But this was about to change.