Working Session: Diaspora, Identity and Incorporation
Organizers: Michael Lieber and Michael A. Rynkiewich; Session Chairs: Alan Howard and Jan Rensel

Jan Rensel and Alan Howard filled in for the session organizers, Michael Rynkiewich and Michael Lieber, who were unable to attend the meeting. The three-hour session was attended by 25 people, many of whom were actively engaged in a productive discussion of 4 precirculated papers (Falgout, Kuehling, Howard/Rensel, and Ahrens) and 2 additional presentations (Carucci, Helen Lee). By the end of the session, 8 others expressed an interest in participating in a session next year--Marsa Dodson (Otago), Marion Struck-Garbe (Hamburg), Kalissa Alexeyeff (Melbourne), Ping-Ann Addo (U Massachusetts), Micah Van der Ryn, Lisa Uperesa (Columbia), Dionne Fonoti (SFSU), and David Wakefield (SIL)-- for a possible total of 14 participants. The following themes and questions emerged from this yearAos session:

A Diasporic Pacific Islanders respond actively and creatively to the new social, political, and economic contexts in which they find themselves. Aspects of the new contexts may be enabling or constraining, eg, the availability of affordable land, housing, and suitable jobs, as well as the ways that the larger community perceives (or misperceives) them. In many cases there seem to be significant differences in the experiences of earlier and later migrants, sometimes leading to problematic relations between them.

• What are key markers in forming and retaining identity in new circumstances? For instance, traditional voyaging narratives may be echoed in contemporary movements; flower garlands and their scents and colors play a subtle role in communicating meanings to Saipan Carolinians; and Enewetak/Ujelang migrants on the Big Island of HawaiAoi grow and consume particular foods such as pandanus and certain types of taro as they establish a new identity and connection with the land there.
  
  
• What kinds of social and cultural categories emerge as a result of the size of the population and interactions among them and with the broader community in the new setting? Sometimes, for instance, the category "Micronesian" can be imposed by a larger society that doesn't know the difference between them; other times, such as at UH Hilo, students from various islands choose to come together as "Micronesians."
  
  
• What are the issues of concern to migrants in relation to the home community? What is the nature of the interaction between returning migrants and those who have remained at home?
  
  
• What are the contingencies confronting the next generation, the children of migrants, born in the new context? How do they respond to these contingencies, and how do they relate to the home island? For instance, transnationalism creates an ambivalent identity for the children of Tongan migrants in Australia.

The group decided that it would be premature to move to the symposium level next year, and that we would like to meet again as a working session. Michael Rynkiewich will take the role of discussant for the 2009 session, while Alan Howard and Jan Rensel will join Michael Lieber as co-organizers.

A deadline of 1 November has been set for submission of papers.

Michael Lieber, Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois, 1007 Harrison, Chicago, IL 60607-7139  USA; tel (312) 413-3577; <mdlieber@uic.edu>

Alan Howard, 2499 Kapiolani Blvd. #1609, Honolulu, HI 96826-5311; <ahoward@hawaii.edu>

Jan Rensel, Center for Pacific Islands Studies, 1890 East-West Road, Moore 210, Honolulu, HI 96822; <rensel@hawaii.edu>