In this article, I explore the contingent and contested boundaries of looking good for young women in Vanuatu and the ways in which they negotiate these boundaries. I use women's dress as a lens through which to focus on the relationships among gender, modernity, race, and morality, and I show the ways in which all four are condensed and embodied in the moral and aesthetic imperative for women to look good. In particular, I focus on the island dress, a dress first introduced by missionaries but taken up after independence as an emblem of national pride and as the traditional dress for women. Although wearing the island dress is the commonsense way for women to look good, the young women with whom I conducted fieldwork in 2001-2002 and again in 2008 and 2011 experienced a great deal of ambivalence about the dress. They often preferred to wear trousers and T -shirts, which frequently won them the disapproval of their elders. By focusing on the polyvalent meanings of the island dress, the realities of young people's everyday lives in the capital, and the uneven terrain of the dress-scape of Vanuatu, I show that young women's love/hate relationship with island dress reflects their frustration with their ambiguous place in the contemporary national imaginary.
New Zealand’s Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme allows Pacific islanders, including many from Vanuatu, to migrate as temporary agricultural labourers. For government stakeholders, the program’s success can be measured, in no uncertain terms, by the increased consumption of foreign goods and community development projects funded by returned migrants. Yet it is precisely in these terms, of new belongings and one’s sense of belonging, that returnees, especially young men, experience the greatest uncertainty. How should they use the money they earn overseas: to strengthen their kinship networks and communities by sharing their wealth, or to purchase clothes, stereos, cars, or even land, which will belong only to them as individuals? Each strategy has its potential promises and pitfalls, and the outcomes remain uncertain. Will workers who spend on belongings alienate themselves from their kin and island communities? And how might they be forging new kinds of belonging as young urban wage earners? In addition to exploring these questions, this paper suggests that these strategies might inform and inspire relevant policy that is able to better grapple with the very uncertainties the RSE helps to create.
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