The limitations in official statistics, paucity of good quality publications, and the marginalization of Tonga in relation to the rest of the world was the driving force behind the decision to use mainly qualitative research methods.
This went side-by-side with the fact that my research topic was new in the sense that nothing much had been done in Tonga on the effects on international migration. As mentioned earlier on, earlier studies on international migration have focused on the nature of peoples’ movement, how they adapt to the new environment, changing behaviours pertaining to Tongan culture among those born overseas, and so forth.
As a result, I had a problem of trying to locate materials on the effects of international migration. In fact, there were very few materials which were directly concerned with the impacts of international migration on Tongan society.
I therefore had to face the challenge of trying to relate the changing nature of
Tongan economy, politics, and social structure as found in other literature to international migration. This was supported by my own experience of what has been taken place in the past, my own observations of the present, and material gained from interviewing informants both in Tonga and the host countries.
In the Kingdom of Tonga, an official census is carried out in every ten years. The last census was in 1996, and another is taking place in 2006 at the time of writing. However, my own research began in 2003, seven years after the last census, so that the available figures were no longer entirely accurate.
Statistics on the movement of Tongan in most cases seem to be based on predictions and assumptions from surveys conducted by overseas consultants and researchers who spend only few weeks in Tonga. As a result, I have had to attempt to build up a picture of migration by assembling all the available data.
Another interesting challenge that I came to face during the three years of research in Tonga is the changing nature of Tongan society. Events in Tonga from 2004 onwards suggest a society in rapid change. The period of my research included some historic events, such as: the appointment for the first time of peoples’ representatives to become cabinet ministers in 2005, the first ever political demonstration (marching against the ban on the Taimi Ó Tonga news paper in 2004), the first ever civil servants’ strike to take place in the kingdom in 2005, the resignation of the King’s son as the Prime Minister of Tonga, the appointment of the first ever commoner Prime Minister, Dr. Feleti Sevele in 2005, and the establishment of the department of ‘Tongans Abroad’ in early 2006, among others. These events resulted in a need to update certain parts of the thesis during the process of writing.
In the context of personal interviews, cultural taboos and restrictions placed obstacles on the the scope of some of the conversations. For example, I had to follow traditional protocol when I interviewed members of the aristocracy such as the level of language addressed to them, given that in the Tonga language hierarchy2 is important and a question must be presented in a respectful manner. I therefore had to lower my voice and not interrupt even when the chief departed from the subject matter of the conversation or interview. Some interviews I conducted ended up talking about different issues which were not relevant at all. However, it is disrespectful in Tongan culture to stop the chiefs while they are talking.
Foreign researchers in many ways are at an advantage in relation to these cultural taboos. As a Tongan conducting an interview with a member of the Tongan aristocracy, I could not place a tape recorder in front of my aristocratic informants and to challenge their views on a particular issue despite its significance to the objective of my research. As a result, I had to record these interview by taking notes. In some cases, I had to skip some questions which seemed to challenge their traditional prerogatives and privileges.
Another interesting challenge to my fieldwork in Tonga was the fact that the current politcal tensions between the ruling regime and supporters of the democracy movement (the THRMD) deterred people on both sides from expressing their objective views on international migration and socio-political
2 In Tonga, there are three different levels of language in society. There is a different language for common people (commoners or tu’a), members of the aristocratic class (hou’eiki), and the King (Tu’i).
and economic change in Tonga. The views of informants from both parties were biased and exaggerated, and sometimes out of context from the questions given.
Responses from government representatives included some liberal views but understandably their roles require that they defend the interests of the Tongan government. Hatred and overgeneralization were obvious in some of their answers from members of the opposition.
Of the host countries, official statistics on Tongan migrants were very limited in the United States and Australia, though the situation in New Zealand was better. This made it difficult to give quantitative estimates of Tongan migrants in these two countries. The scant attention paid to the small island states of Oceania in the field of international migration can be seen as a form of marginalization. The titles of some written academic works mention the Pacific or the Asia-Pacific, but little is said about the islands in the texts. In trying to locate statistics on Tonga in works written on Pacific Islanders in Australia and the United States, Tongan migrants are often put together with ‘Pacific Islanders’ or ‘Oceania’. This makes it difficult to figure out the approximate number of Tongan migrants. In some source, statistics on Tongan migrants were mentioned but they seemed unrelated to the objective of this study.
In carrying out interviews in the host countries, the only obvious challenge was the migrants’ understanding of the situation in the home country.
Most migrated to the host countries in the 1980s and 70s and even though some had visited home in recent years, they did not seem to have much knowledge of the socio-political transition in Tonga. It was therefore my role to try and bridge the gap during personal conversations or before conducting interviews. It is
understandable that most of my informants had limited education as most had migrated for economic reasons. This was not a big issue, as the questions given to them could be anwered on the basis of common sense, but some informants presented a challenge because they thought that I was joking or asking them something that I already knew.
This challenge happened both in Tonga and the host countries. Most of my informants had never met any researchers before and had little idea of what research is all about. Some felt nervous answering questions as they thought they were only for people who had received formal education. This is common in Tonga as people assume that you can only talk to educated people if you are well educated. If you talk to an educated person but you are uneducated, people will look at you as being a fiepoto (pretending to be smart). This kind of attitude was really a challenge for me. I tried to convince them that there is nothing wrong with being an informant, and that it would be a big contribution not only to scholarship but also the socio-economic development of Tongan society. In some incidents, especially during faikava, I had to brief them about the reason for my presence, so that they would be serious with the issues and questions that I had to raise.
Despite the limitations of sampling and the research due to constraints of time and money, informants’ accounts generally did match each other and tell a simlar story, enough to give me confidence that I was tapping into at least something of the reality of migration in contemporary Tonga. Moreover, to understand more about the development of international migration and societal
change in the Kingdom of Tonga, we have to understand its history and social structure, and these are dealt with in the next chapter.