Paper short abstract:

In an event of migration, this work seeks to analyse through an interdisciplinary approach how the separation from the original place affects land appropriation. We also analysed migrants’ identity through their plants’ history, those immutable objects connected to the ‘old place’ and ancestors.

Paper long abstract:

In an event of migration, the question is how the separation from the original place affects land appropriation. We choose to focus on small scale contemporary migrations of people from the overpopulated island of Mota Lava who began to migrate from the 1980s to the feebly populated Vanua Lava (Banks islands, Vanuatu). Combining cultural geography and social anthropology, we have highlighted how the host community and migrants differ in their customary practices. Disputes occur frequently, because Mota Lavans have not participated in mortuary payments for the deceased ancestor, and have no knowledge which matriclan they belong to. They only use their family tree to assert their land rights, and justify their migration as rightfully re-establishing links that already existed. The actual migration would be the reciprocal of an old migration undertaken by an ancestor from Vanua Lava.

In order to understand how the migrant's identity is affected by a change of place, we studied their living space. If it is sometimes difficult to ask to migrants to speak directly of their migratory experience that can be painful and hidden, we analysed migrants' identity through their plants' history. Vegetatively propagated plants are the only immutable objects from this landscape marked by a humid and cyclonic climate, in which no object can resist to deterioration through time. Transported plants are the memory of their land of origin and ancestors, whereas the ones found or exchanged on the settlement site are the tangible proof of their "integration".