“…This was exacerbated by the COVID‐19 pandemic, as participants were distressed given the uncertainty about when they would be able to see their families again. Kinship and community are imperative parts of culture and way of being for many Pacific Islanders (McDonald and Rodriguez, 2014; Keck and Schieder, 2015), so making the decision to study abroad was a huge sacrifice, especially for those with children. One participant shared their feelings on the difficulties of being separated from family:‘Yeah, it's tough, being away from your family.…”
Section: Challenges Of the Aas Programmementioning
Tertiary education scholarships for individual students from developing countries, including those in the Pacific Islands, are a key pillar of Australia's development policy. Understanding students' experiences of these scholarships are important in identifying both positives and challenges, which can help foster improved future opportunities. This is especially the case for Pacific Islander students engaging in the Australia Awards Scholarship programme for which there is limited understanding of experiences. As such, this paper identifies that although educational mobility programmes can offer a wealth of opportunities for students, the COVID‐19 pandemic has highlighted the challenges of such programmes which can inhibit students from reaching their full potential. Educational mobility programmes that effectively address the needs of students and empower them to achieve their goals are required to better facilitate transformative development pathways for Australia's Pacific Island neighbours.
“…This was exacerbated by the COVID‐19 pandemic, as participants were distressed given the uncertainty about when they would be able to see their families again. Kinship and community are imperative parts of culture and way of being for many Pacific Islanders (McDonald and Rodriguez, 2014; Keck and Schieder, 2015), so making the decision to study abroad was a huge sacrifice, especially for those with children. One participant shared their feelings on the difficulties of being separated from family:‘Yeah, it's tough, being away from your family.…”
Section: Challenges Of the Aas Programmementioning
Tertiary education scholarships for individual students from developing countries, including those in the Pacific Islands, are a key pillar of Australia's development policy. Understanding students' experiences of these scholarships are important in identifying both positives and challenges, which can help foster improved future opportunities. This is especially the case for Pacific Islander students engaging in the Australia Awards Scholarship programme for which there is limited understanding of experiences. As such, this paper identifies that although educational mobility programmes can offer a wealth of opportunities for students, the COVID‐19 pandemic has highlighted the challenges of such programmes which can inhibit students from reaching their full potential. Educational mobility programmes that effectively address the needs of students and empower them to achieve their goals are required to better facilitate transformative development pathways for Australia's Pacific Island neighbours.
“…However, Pacific Islander do not only migrate to the countries by which they were colonised (Cave & Hall, 2015). PICTs have experienced growing outward migration, particularly to Australia, New Zealand and the United States—and in smaller numbers to Canada, the United Kingdom and the Middle East (Barcham et al, 2009; Connell, 2006; Keck & Schieder, 2015). Opportunities for Pacific Islanders to participate in international labour migration has further opened up through short‐term labour visas and managed labour migration schemes, such as various seasonal worker programmes for the agricultural industry in Australia and New Zealand (Gibson & Bailey, 2021).…”
Section: Literature Review: Travel Motivation In a Pacific Contextmentioning
The mobility patterns and travel motivations of Pacific Islanders have largely been neglected by discourses and discussions on Asia-Pacific tourism. To examine the travel preferences and travel motivations of Pacific Islanders, we administered surveys (n = 1100) across the five Pacific Island States and Territories of Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Samoa and Solomon Islands. The research offers a comparative analysis across national boundaries by highlighting commonalities and differences among the five groups. Family, kinship and religious dimensions stand out as shared and crucial factors influencing travel preferences and travel motivations across the region. Nonetheless, the research identified differences between the Pacific communities which can be explained with each country's level of socioeconomic development, political structure, geography, cultural context and globalisation. The study advances knowledge on the mobilities and travel motivations of non-Western tourists by conceptualising the Pacific Islands from the perspective of a tourism-generating region.
“…Lilomaiava-Doktor, 2009). However, late twentieth century and twenty-first century mobilities in Oceania appear have generally been described as more oriented and activated towards metropolitan centres in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and the continental United States and less towards the outer-islands of their archipelagos (Lee, 2009), notwithstanding significant 'contradictions and complexities' (Keck and Schieder, 2015) in regional mobilities overall.…”
Section: No Island Is An Island: Archipelagic Foundation and Fragmentationmentioning
Oceania includes sovereign states as well as overseas territories of metropolitan powers. In both cases, contemporary geopolitical borders are legacies of colonialism. As in many (de)colonised places, materialisations of spatially anchored social imaginaries and practices of self and otherness, play a role in the everyday politics of Oceania's communities and states. Notably, cultural intimacies (Herzfeld, 2016) in this region are also shaped by tensions between islands in an archipelagic unit. Characterised by plural identities, Oceania's communities must navigate solidarities within the colonial borders of unitary sovereign states or non-sovereign island territories. Given this context, we ask whether spatially anchored identities within archipelagic contexts are politically engaged, playing a role in the politics of state (dis)cohesion across the region. This paper presents findings from 73 interviews across four pairs of Pacific islands -Wallis-Futuna, Tahiti-Mangareva, Rarotonga-Manihiki, Pohnpei-Chuukexploring how communities define their own identities and the identity of those on 'the other island'. We find both sides in agreement on six complementary and rather respectful identities. We therefore suggest that while political tensions and calls for secession in archipelagos are real, it is unlikely that identity politics at this point in time inflames political break ups.
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