Premium
Planting Roots, Making Place: Urban Autochthony in Port Vila Vanuatu
Author(s) -
Kraemer Daniela
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
oceania
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.356
H-Index - 25
eISSN - 1834-4461
pISSN - 0029-8077
DOI - 10.1002/ocea.5239
Subject(s) - personhood , port (circuit theory) , geography , identity (music) , sense of place , ethnology , sociology , gender studies , socioeconomics , political science , economic geography , law , physics , electrical engineering , acoustics , engineering
A contentious issue for Pacific Islanders, as well as researchers of the Pacific Islands, is ni‐Vanuatu notions of ‘belonging’ to urban centres. Previous research in Vanuatu has shown that despite generations of people born and raised in Port Vila, the nation's capital, the urban centre is not generally perceived as a ‘place’ to which urban migrants can say they are from. For many, exclaiming that one is ‘from’ town is tantamount to admitting one has ‘no place’. This paper, based on fieldwork among a group of urban young men in Freswota, a residential community of Port Vila, argues that in contrast to this, Freswota young men are generating a new locative identity. Their urban community rather than their parents' home island places is emerging as their primary location of belonging and the source of their sense of self, personhood and social identification. As such, these young men are the urban autochthones of the country.