The traditional leadership structure associated with the council of elders is challenged in many ways and an increase in violent and overt conflicts has ensued. Previously, overt expressions of conflict were strictly controlled and kept in check by the village councils and the recent events point to the elders’ loss of absolute control over the faipule, pulenuku and the aumaga. At present, the situation can be described as one exhibiting a certain loss of legitimacy for both the traditional and the new leadership structures. The question of which principles should inform the present leadership configuration (democracy, titles, age or other factors) remain open, and I suggest that the difficulties that people experience at present because of this lack of legitimate leadership explains the most recent wave of migration.

As the voice of the council for the ongoing government of Tokelau itself stated, in its 2007 New Year message, ‘The Tokelau Census result has also been the target of the outside media…Tokelau is a mobile and young population.’ This statement can be read as a further example of the role of media in forging transnational connections. From the role that the Internet and radio broadcasts played in the recent referenda we see that events in the atolls and in the Tokelau communities overseas are currently intertwined and this transnational field clearly includes political life in the atoll communities. In this sense, the analytical perspective associated with the single-location traditional community study is no longer applicable. The New Year statement also points to an important fact which is often hidden behind population figures that tend to link people to specific locations; i.e., that people who inhabit the various social spaces that constitute the Tokelau transnational community are transitory. They are highly mobile and are likely to continue to be so, moving in many directions.

The social networks that constitute the Tokelau community have expanded to become truly transnational. However, the size of the population and the manner in which its patterns of sociality are constructed are such that the shapes and directions of peoples’ life-trajectories are highly vulnerable to social conflict. In conclusion, I consider it likely that the issue of conflict resolution will have the possibly greatest impact on future patterns of migration (both to and from the atolls). How leadership handle conflict is intimately connected with its social legitimacy, and hence it greatly affects its social standing (tulaga), respect (ava) and its capacity to act (its mana).