Inter‐island relations in Oceania's archipelagos: Identity and everyday politics

Abstract

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.

France and Oceanian Sovereignties

“…12 'Postcolonial turns,' the expression is willingly plural as the trajectory of French Pacific overseas territories was anything but linear as evidenced by the range of institutional statuses and denominations applied to them (territoires, pays, collectivités d'Outre-mer, as opposed to the départements supposed to be straight extensions of the metropolis, which they are not; Bonilla 2015). Within each of them we also observe different forms of polarization or segmentary logic based on a center-periphery as expressed by Marquesan islanders and Mangareva islanders against a perceived Tahitian hegemony (Moulin 1994;Prinsen et al 2021;Saura 2009). Loyalty islanders have also developed a specific positioning within New Caledonia due to colonial and postcolonial differences (e.g.…”