This volume brings together indigenous scholars, foreign field researchers, and international authorities from many of the social sciences: anthropology, demography, economics, geography and sociology. It presents a set of multicultural statements about the mobility of particular peoples within a region of the third world. This collection about specifically Melanesian issues aims to stimulate broader visions among population scholars, and it underlines the pressing need for more theoretical and empirical work on a volatile, yet neglected, category of population movement.