Temporary versus permanent population mobility in Melanesia: a case study from Vanuatu

"Melanesia's urban population tripled from...7 percent of the region's total population in 1955 to 20 percent by 1985. The recency and magnitude of this development...virtually rules out natural population growth as the principal cause behind this process of rapid urbanization and suggests massive internal population mobility as the most likely cause....This article argues that much of the alleged continued predominance of circular mobility owes more to its underlying operationalizations, ways of measurement, and theoretical conceptualizations than reflects contemporary reality. This argument is substantiated by an analysis of recent developments in Vanuatu mobility set in the local and historical conditions of migration from the island of Paama.... Evidence for this mobility change is derived from a comparative analysis of lifetime mobility histories of urban and rural Paamese men and women."