Ensuring human security in “the sea of islands”: a case analysis on Tuvaluan repatriate migrants from Nauru and its implication for an adaptation strategy against sea-level rise

Abstract

Engulfed in the debates on climate change and sea-level rise, Tuvalu-a small atoll and reef island country in Polynesia-has come to be recognized as the global symbol of the victims of these phenomena. The possibility that sea-level rise could cause a mass migration in Pacific Island countries such as Tuvalu has been widely recognized; nevertheless, scientific research is far from reaching a consensus about when it will occur and how bad it will be. Meanwhile, the media already oversimplifies its reports that Tuvalu will soon be submerged and that its entire population will be forced to emigrate from its home land as "environmental refugees". In the mass media, the Tuvaluans are considered as passive victims who are helpless against these global environmental issues. In this paper, I will show the potential of the people to deal with the effects of sea-level rise by analyzing migration and their kinship networks. In order to achieve this objective, I will address the case of Tuvaluan repatriate migrants from Nauru. This paper will focus mainly on how the repatriated migrants found a place to stay when they returned to Tuvalu. The results demonstrate that inter-island kinship networks produced by migration can work as a safety net. They also suggest that such safety nets could also serve well during possible environmental crises in the near future and hence, migration could be an effective adaptation strategy for climate change.