Island Studies Journal (Nov 2016)
Greenland and the Pacific Islands: an improbable conjunction of development trajectories
Abstract
Predictions for the future of small islands and island states are often pessimistic. Multiple discontents have followed decolonization. In Pacific island states poverty and inequality have increased, free trade offers few development possibilities, governance is weak and urban biased, and aid dependence has not declined. Economic niches, including ‘sovereignty sales’, have largely failed to emerge. Populations are contracting from outer islands, resulting in unmanageable urbanization in primate cities. One outcome has been rising international migration, along with remittances, as a safety valve and diversification strategy. Selective out-migration and limited return migration have contributed to a skill drain. Yet migration has enabled the periphery to survive, and brought improved welfare. Diaspora engagement and deterritorialization have ensued. Formal development strategies, more international than national, emphasize ‘modernity’ with culture to be abhorred and ignored, yet hybridity offers possibilities for a more equitable and environmentally sensitive sustainable development, where modernity has inherent disadvantages. Even so a combination of migration, selective economic diversification and cultural hybridity, can only be shaped within the difficult context of globalization. Seemingly very different Greenland shares multiple similarities with post-colonial Pacific states, including urban bias, deterritorialization and the marginalization of culture, but especially where ‘welfare colonialism’ has been prevalent. These parallels point to both uncomfortable similarities and lessons, and difficult future decolonization and development trajectories in the Arctic.
