Economic 'migration' Push and Pull Factors for Ocean Island Bases: The Cases of Okinawa and Diego Garcia

There is a rich interdisciplinary literature on the sociology and politics of (military) base economies, ranging from seminal interventions such as Cynthia Enloe's "Bananas, Beaches and Bases", to Marxist critiques represented by Wendy Matsumura's "The Limits of Okinawa", and eclectic approaches in the ilk of Gerald Figal's "War, Peace and Tourism in Postwar Okinawa". Yet, the intersection of the economics of migration, as a key aspect affecting how base societies are constituted, with the great power interests of regional geostrategy have rarely been examined in a comparative context. To address this lacuna in the literature, this paper adopts a transdiscplinary methodology in examining how ocean island base communities have responded to the impact of those great power interests in terms of forced and voluntary migration and the resulting socio-economic and geopolitical effects.

The central research question addressed is to what extent can the economics of migration be viewed as a symbiotic process in the context of relatively remote ocean island bases, such as in the cases of Okinawa and Diego Garcia? In other words, to what extent, and through what means, are base communities able to exercise agency in responding to changes imposed upon them as a function of great power (e.g., US, Japan, UK) interests? Moreover, to what extent does any such agency manifest itself in positive, democratically led outcomes or unexpected effects?

In the cases examined, it emerges that despite dramatically differing historical and socio-economic circumstances, the economics of migration (forced and otherwise) offer unique insights into unexpected effects, caused more by the framing of issues advanced through agencies of the great powers who impose their authority on these vulnerable communities than by the actors of the communities themselves. Conversely, localised agency relating to movement and relocation is typically misrepresented or manipulated for politically motivated and geostrategic ends.