By the mid–1980s, limits to expansion and elaboration were becoming apparent. The time, energy and resources required to meet the obligations of an expanding and increasingly active transnational kin group began to exceed the resources available to its overseas members. Servicing the growing demands of the kin group in different nodes was placing social and financial pressure on migrant members, on whom the burden fell most heavily. Some pressures were the consequence of expansion itself; others were the products of demographic and cultural factors, while still others were the result of a general economic contraction of the New Zealand economy. Each of these factors is treated separately here for analytical purposes.

As kin-sponsored events became larger, and the numbers of contributing relatives increased, so did the number and size of debts incurred on those occasions by those who sought to mobilise āiga. A new category of debts was created when friends and workmates from outside the āiga contributed to the events, generating still more debts which honour demanded be satisfied. Migrants encountered real problems as they attempted to repay existing social debts by contributing to more frequent and expensive ceremonies, sponsored by those to whom they were indebted. There was simply not enough time or resources to settle escalating debts within the migrant enclave, before even contemplating meeting kinship obligations in other nodes. Yet expectations, fuelled often by the mistaken impression that migrants were wealthier than they were, continued to grow. For a time, individuals borrowed from finance companies and took larger or more expensive home mortgages in order to meet short-term obligations. These practices created more serious longer-term problems by replacing existing debts, which honour demanded be repaid, with more expensive ones which the law demanded be repaid.

The situation of migrants was exacerbated by the contraction of the national economy between 1984 and the early 1990s (O'Brien and Wilkes 1993; Roper 1993). Heavy job losses occurred in industries in which Samoans had become concentrated (Statistics New Zealand 1995), as tariff protections were removed and companies were forced to close or to move offshore (Ongley 1991; 1996). This produced increases in Samoan unemployment rates from historical levels of less than one per cent in the 1960s and early 1970s to 22 per cent for men and 21 per cent for women by 1991. Significantly, long term unemployment increased from 28 per cent in 1988 to 54 per cent in 1995 (Statistics New Zealand 1997: 346). This was accompanied by a decrease in full-time and an increase in part-time employment (Krishnan, Schoeffel and Warren 1994).

The situation of migrants was made worse by the early 1990s by four factors. First, deregulation of the labour market and restructuring of labour relations led to the loss of union protection for many workers^[13] and to falls in real wages (Macpherson 1992; Statistics New Zealand 1997: 356–7). Second, the reduction of welfare benefit levels, on which Samoans were becoming increasingly dependent, placed further downward pressure on incomes. (Macpherson 1992). Third, the institution of a range of ‘user pays’ charges, only partly offset by reductions in direct taxation, placed further pressure on Samoan families’ discretionary income. Finally, the numbers of children born to early migrants who were starting to graduate, marry and have children; the numbers of migrants’ parents becoming ill and dying in the islands; and the numbers of migrants leaving the work force were all increasing. Along with the increase in the actual numbers of those people came an increase in the number of postponed demands on migrant income and time.

Migrants found it increasingly difficult to meet the postponed debts from declining incomes and find the time required to meet the costs of appropriate demonstrations of solidarity. The requirement that people take and present gifts in person required considerable amounts of time and expense in travel. In a period when conditions of work were tightening and the labour market was contracting, the real costs of time off work were becoming higher.

These factors produced a situation in which the numbers of debts being incurred by mobilisation of the extended kin group were increasing rapidly just as resources available to settle these were contracting very quickly. Failure to meet due debts led to embarrassment, ma, and humiliation, masiasi, and made people increasingly reluctant to incur debts which they would be unable to repay, for, as Samoans declare somewhat starkly, ua sili le oti i lo le masiasi, death is preferable to humiliation. This growing pressure was to have significant impacts on both kinship and the transnationalism which it underpinned.