ABSTRACT
In the second half of the twentieth century, migration in the Pacifi c went through a series of transformations, culminating in this century with migration being of almost universal importance. Until the 1950s, in Melanesia especially, migration was either typifi ed by waves of male labourers moving to coastal plantations, remaining there for three or four years and returning to the villages and agricultural life they came from, or by a very limited movement to the small towns that were the colonial centres. Little else was possible. Melanesian towns were for colonial authorities, villagers were unwelcome and a crude apartheid even existed. In Micronesia, under Japanese rule, mobility was more frequent, as it was in Polynesia, where there was a tradition of overseas travel for young men, often as ships’ crew. Micronesian and Polynesian towns were as small as those in Melanesia and were just as much places where islanders had only a tenuous connection.
