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Focusing on the small island of Paama, Vanuatu, and the capital, Port Vila, this book presents a rare and recent study of the ongoing significance of urbanisation and internal migration in the Global South. Based on longitudinal research undertaken in rural ‘home’ places, urban suburbs and informal settlements over thirty years, this book reveals the deep ambivalence of the outcome of migration, and argues that continuity in the fundamental organising principles of cultural life – in this case centred on kinship and an ‘island home’ – is significantly more important for urban and rural lives than the transformative impacts of migration and urbanisation.
“Petrou provides a highly useful and informed work on the experiences of Paamese over three decades, looking at both continuities and changes. The specific attention she gives to gender differences in the way these experiences unfold, as well as to the careful transcription of Paamese’s ambivalent feelings and the detailed analysis of their economic opportunities and situations, makes If Everyone Returned, the Island Would Sink a great read not only for scholars working on urbanization and migration issues in what she calls the ‘Global South’, but also for everyone interested in Melanesian contemporary lives and ethnographies.” • Pacific History
“This is an excellent study of rural/urban migration in the Western Pacific… well-written, free of jargon while scholarly in its approach. It is unique in presenting longitudinal, comparative data.” • Martha Macintyre, The University of Melbourne
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1. Urbanisation and Migration: Rapid Change but Enduring Patterns
Chapter 2. Subsistence Realities, Material Dreams: Rural Lives and Livelihoods
Chapter 3. It’s Like We Live in Town Already: Island Social Organisation
Chapter 4. The Everyday Ordinariness of Mobility: Persistent Patterns of Rural Outmigration
Chapter 5. I Just Came to Visit My Kin: The Evolution of Urban Permanence
Chapter 6. Friends, Lovers and Stranger Danger: Urban Social Worlds
Chapter 7. Living on Money: Urban Economic Life
Conclusion. Fluidity and Flexibility: A Generation of Paamese Migration and Urban Experiences
Glossary
References
Index