Migration

• Rural-to-Urban Migration

– Both push (bad things at home) and pull factors (good things in new destination) are at work

– Migrants often leave behind young and old family members, whom they in turn support by remittances.

• Resettlement Schemes

– Move groups of rural people from overpopulated areas to less dense areas. (most common in Indonesia)

• Reasons include: food production, regional development, national integration, and population redistribution.

– Often moved to indigenous areas, or areas with little agriculture potential

• Indonesia has largely abondoned these once democracy came

Migration (cont.)

• Migration out of the Region

– Done by both skilled and unskilled migrants

• Is a major source of foreign currency (#1 in Philippines)

– Women now make up 60-80% of the migrants

• Filipinas work as nurses all over the developed world

– In SW Asia, work in food service, hotels because of familiarity with English

• Indonesian women work as maids in SW Asia

– Men make up low and mid level employees in merchant marine, making middle class incomes

• Refugees from Conflict and Disaster

– Conflict mostly between central governments and minority groups, or settlers and minority groups

– December 2004 Tsunami displaced 130,000 persons (killed nearly as many)

Measures of Human Well-Being

• GDP and HDI is very high (in Singapore and oil-rich Brunei) to moderately high (in, Malaysia, and Thailand) to very low (in Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Timor Leste).

• The UN’s Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) has missing data for five countries in the region.

– Singapore is highest; women often work, but often for lower wages than men

• Compared to South Asia and Africa, even the poorer countries are improving

– Many of the highest educated women in nursing and technical professions from Philippines and Malaysia leave their countries for better salaries

Oceania

Oceania

• Australia plus most South Pacific Islands

• Themes

– Reviving Pacific Regional Consciousness

– Reorientation towards Asia

– Environmental Problems beyond Their Control

– Increasing Indigenous Rights

– Increasing Intra-island Connectedness

Physical Patterns

• Outside of Australia, the Pacific defines everything from climate to economy to the relatively self-sufficient traditional cultures

• Australia

– Some of the oldest rock on earth (part of the Godwana landmass of Pangea), stable with few quakes and no volcanoes (center is lowland Australian Desert)

• Also New Guinea, New Caledonia & Fiji

– To the Northeast is the Great Barrier Reef, the biggest in the world

• Other Pacific Islands are volcanic (3 types)

– High Islands – where volcano is above water

• Hawaiian Islands formed as plate moves over the same hotspot

– Atoll – low lying island of coral on top of volcano

– Makatea – an uplifted atoll

Physical Patterns (cont.)

• Climate

– Warm waters of Pacific bring year-round mild temperatures

• Tasmania and Southern New Zealand have most variation

– Most islands have year-round rainfall

• Interior Australia is dry b/c of Eastern highlands (most people live on the East Coast)

– Whole continent has only one river system

• Islands near the equator do not catch trade winds, are drier

• New Zealand permanently covered by long, white cloud caused by being only landmass in “Roaring 40’s”

– Like in Southeast Asia, El Nino brings drought to the region since warm air off of South America, not New Guinea’s coast

Physical Patterns (cont)

• Within the region, many species are endemic, meaning they exist nowhere else on Earth

– Islands capture life from sea, which evolves to match ecology

• New Zealand has no native land mammals (mainly birds and a few frogs and reptiles)

• Plant and Animal Life in Australia

– Unique b/c continent’s isolation, large size, relatively homogeneous landforms, & arid climate.

– 144 different species of marsupials (birth very immature young, raise them in pouch)

• Fill many ecological niches like those of rats, moles, cats, wolves, grazers, and bears.

– Also have monotremes, egg-laying mammals that include the duck-billed platypus and the spiny anteater.

– Two plant genera make up most of forests: Eucalyptus and Acacia

Environmental Issues

• High public involvement in environmental issues characterizes this region

– Many nonnative species, mining impacts, nuclear testing, global warming cause most people to be aware

• Green Parties popular, newspapers lotsa coverage

• Australia

– Non-native species which came with the British, have wrecked eco-systems

• Lost 41 birds and mammals, 100 plants

• European Rabbit is the worst, brought to be hunted: had no predators, ate local species to extinction, holes caused erosion

– Brought foxes & cats to kill rabbits, killed native animals (thus hurting native predators) instead

» Used rabbit diseases, now have immune super-rabbits

Environmental (cont.)

• The Pacific Islands

– Small size, populations, and influence give the islands little say about international forces affecting their environments.

– Some success:

• Ok Tedi mine in PNG was sued by villagers, got US and German partners to give up shares

– Mine settled, giving villagers 10% ownership and right to sue in vigorous Australian courts (not weak ones on PNG)

• Bougainville Island natives rose up against copper mine that PNG government would not control

– Though initially backed by Aus and NZ, PNG forced to stop attacks, and peace negotiations underway

Environmental (cont.)

• Nuclear pollution from weapons tests and reactor waste is a major issue in Marshall Islands (U.S.) and Mururoa (France).

–  Rates of cancers, infertility, birth defects, and miscarriages among the native population are higher than other control groups.

– Despite many islands signing anti-nuclear treaties, non-independent territories still eyed as dump sites

• UN Convention on the Law of the Sea supposed to tackle borderless ocean problems, proved hard to enforce

Environmental Issues

• Even tourism is not the clean industry it is touted to be, water used, beaches eroded, human waste created

• Global Warming and Ozone Loss

– Have little control over these issues (except Australia, a major coal burner), though vigorously promote Kyoto  Protocol

– Atoll islands (like Tuvalu) could be completely lost due to rising sea levels of 4 inches per decade within 50 years; already evacuations in Kiribati

– Changing sea temperatures leads to changing rain patterns

– Thinning, holes in ozone layer allows in Ultraviolet light

• Australia has highest rates of skin cancer in the world, temperatures could rise by average of 8 degree

The Peopling of Oceania

– Australia’s Aborigines are the longest surviving inhabitants of Oceania (originally from N India)

• Related to people of Melanesia (Papua New Guinea area)

– Followed by Austronesians, the highly skilled navigators from SE China

• First went to Micronesia (E of Philippines, N of the Equator)

• Then went to Polynesia (Triangle from N.Z., Hawaii, Easter Island)

– Also mixed with populations in Samoa, Fiji

– During Japanese colonization, teaching of traditional navigation techniques of using only stars and wave patterns banned

• Are being revived today

Colonialism

– Before colonization:

• Larger islands (or those with many resources) tended to have relatively un-stratified societies.

• Smaller islands with scarce resources tended to have hierarchical societal structures with ruling elites.

• Antagonism between groups settled by ritual and tribute, meant no group ever took too large an area

• In many groups women could be chiefs, men did cooking and agriculture, women crafts

– Europeans’ early interest in the region (in the sixteenth century) was for its spices.

• First contact brought kill off, like in Latin America

– During the Romantic era in Europe, the natives of the South Pacific were “glorified” as the “noble savage.” (until the people rose up in protest)

• Their lives were compared to dirty, crime ridden cities of Europe

Australia & New Zealand

• Australia and New Zealand had similar historical paths to U.S. and Canada

– American Revolution caused British to look elsewhere (Australia) to send its convicts from home and Ireland  who committed petty theft

• They were joined by larger numbers of voluntary migrant farmers seeking cheap land

• This leads to Australia’s rustic self image

– New Zealand was not a penal colony; farm only

• Like in U.S. and Canada, natives killed, died of disease, or pushed to the margins of society

– Only in the roughest areas was their land not taken

• Maori (native people of NZ) have faired a little better than other indigenous groups

– In both countries, these groups form an underclass which is much worse off than Europeans or newer Asian immigrants

Growing Ties with Asia

– Before WWII, closest ties were with Europe; after WWII closest ties with the United States

– Since 1970, Oceania has been drawn into the economies of Asia, as witnessed by membership in Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation

• Australia is a supplier of raw materials to Japan and China

• New Zealand is a dairy and wool supplier throughout Asia.

• Other islands get as many Japanese as Euro/North American tourists

– Many islands in this region have significant Chinese, Filipino, Indian minorities.

Population Patterns

• Only 38 million in the whole region

• In Australia most people live on coasts, and New Zealand and Australia are both highly urbanized like Europe

– Much of both are lightly inhabited, although in New Zealand, more of it is productive for agriculture or sheep herding

• Nauru has region’s highest population density (is also smallest country in world in area and population)

– Became rich from mining phosphate created by thousands of years of bird poo

• Now it has run out, looking towards offshore banking and holding asylum seekers to get income

• Smaller islands only now urbanizing, people still relatively self-sufficient for food and housing

– Urban areas have the usual slums, esp. on Tahiti, Fiji, Samoa

– The cities with the largest Polynesian populations are in New Zealand and Australia; large diaspora

Measures of Human Well-Being

• Human Wellbeing

– Papua New Guinea, despite mineral wealth, at the bottom.

– Subsistence agriculture in islands, government assistance in Aus and NZ mean GDP figures deceptively low

• HDI very high in Australia

– Gender Equality measures very high in Australia and NZ

• Though not kept in Pacific Islands, likely is comparatively high

Economy Stuff

• Australia’s exports are mostly wool and minerals (coal, bauxite, gold); New Zealand is farm & timber products

– Little manufacturing b/c of small domestic markets, high salaries, & restrictive policies of Asian neighbors

– NZ charges a premium for high quality ag products grown in clean, lush environment

• Many islanders grow/raise/fish most of their own diets

– Small populations, small markets, high transport costs mean little is manufactured, much imported

– Good local food resources, low energy costs, and migrant remittances, leads to subsistence affluence

» Means live comfortably (though w/o much opportunity for advancement) w/o much money

» Called a MIRAB economy: MIgration, Remittance,  Aid, and Bureaucracy

» Former colonialists give aid for bureaucracy, which then employs the educated

Tourism

– Tourism is a leading industry on most Pacific Islands, mostly coming from Asia

• It is very susceptible to economic downturns, political events (ie 9/11 attacks)

– First thing people cut out during SE Asian Economic Crisis, Japan’s recession

– Hawaii (tourism 23% of GDP)

• Asian focused, but not just hotels, also office towers, second homes, real estate in general

– Many restaurants, hotels, nightclubs hire staff who can speak Japanese, Mandarin, Korean

• Has helped preserve native dancing, but also is done so frequently it loses meaning

– Last native Hawaiian villages have actually managed to stop a few mega-projects

– Guam, gets students and middle/lower class Japanese and Koreans, also suffered during recent downturn

Ethnic Roots Reexamined

– The 19^th century European settlers wanted to erase/ignore native culture, and recreate a Europe at the edge of the world

• Both NZ and Australia had whites only immigration policies until the 1960’s

– After WWII, Eastern and Southern Europeans came, countries began to liberalize

• In 1970’s, large numbers of Vietnamese came after U.S. left, increasing numbers of Chinese and Indians

– Now Australia is one of most diverse countries on Earth

• In the 1990’s, in both countries, number of people claiming indigenous heritage increased

Reexamining Ethnic Issues (cont.)

– Used to be laws on the book that Aborigines could not drink alcohol, and children of mixed parentage were wards of the state

• After 1993, laws that took away lands from the Aborigines were declared void

– In Fiji, division between urban and prosperous Indians and rural Fijians

– Maori lost most of their land by 1950; New Zealand now leads the world in  indigenous/settler relations

• Has opened itself up to immigration from other islands, Auckland is largest Polynesian city in the world

• Australia is also opening up its universities to Pacific Islanders

– Festivals celebrating traditional skills like navigation and tattooing are on the rise

• Pacific Way, a governance style that emphasized local pride and consensus building is growing

– Still, the many languages are losing ground to English

• Pidgin English (Eng + local words) now official in PNG

Gender and Sexuality

– Women in New Zealand and Australia are marrying later and taking jobs outside the home, many in the public service sector. (Similar to US, Europe, Latin America)

• In Australia, a lot of work was done to get past Crocodile Dundee type masculinity of the outback drifter

– Gender roles varied greatly from island to island and changed over time

– Gender roles may change dramatically over the life course;

• Young Pacific women may raise children, but go back to school and work in middle age.

• Women send back more remittances than men in the region, though they earn less.

– And…. Just in the past few weeks, after long years of activism, by popular vote, legalized same sex marriage.