ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the recent ethnographic literature for mobility and transnational migration in remote Oceania (i.e., Micronesia and Polynesia). This literature is important because it highlights some of the major social, cultural, and affective themes and issues that accompany the intensification of islander mobility in the post-colonial era. This chapter focuses on an epistemological tension that reflects the different social and cultural standpoints of the researchers who study islander mobility. For many Euro-American researchers, epistemological assumptions based on both a ‘cartographic imaginary’ and ‘methodological nationalism’ frame their studies. For many indigenous researchers, assumptions of ‘world enlargement’ are important. The studies reviewed in this chapter show how each perspective provides valuable insight into processes of mobility and transnational migration in remote Oceania. Thus, it reflects a rich history of interlocution between islander and non-islander experts that has existed since the people of remote Oceania first discovered Europeans centuries ago.
