“Where have all the young boys gone?” During my last research trip in Vanuatu, in October 2023, a large part of the people with whom I conducted my researches in the popular neighborhoods of the capital (Port-Vila) were absent. In many neighborhoods and villages of this independent archipelago, the majority of adults have left to work on farms in New Zealand or Australia for a period of several months, through a strictly codified program of seasonal work. Perceived as a negative consequence of global capitalism, this temporary migration can also be seen – and it is my hypothesis here – as a direct consequence of climate change, which makes self-subsistence agricultural practices in Vanuatu more and more random. In 2023, three violent cyclones have hit Vanuatu, ruining fresh produce harvests, the main sources of food and money for the majority of the inhabitants.

The increase of climatic events of this type encourages people to find other means of subsistence. The temporary economic migration towards huge plantations, perceived at first glance as inevitable and as a constraint, therefore also constitutes a boon for the people of Vanuatu, who see it as an opportunity to earn much more money, and much more quickly, than in their own country. In Australia and New Zealands, they work and make money, but they also develop new solidarities, personal projects, new churches, music bands and political initiatives. Between constraints, material desires and ambivalent representations of the future, the study of these temporary migrations among Islanders of the South Pacific offer a stimulating case study to understand the question of climate change and its consequences as a global phenomenon, at different scales and over the long run.

This project draws on my long experience of State building and postcolonial issues in the South Pacific, and specifically in Vanuatu. Fieldwork will be conducted among the very families I have studied for many years, who massively contribute to the worker’s seasonal program. Meanwhile, I will also pay attention to the political initiatives taken by the Vanuatu government to put forward the climate issues in the agenda of international organisations.