SUB-REGIONAL OVERVIEW: THE PACIFIC SUB-REGIONAL OVERVIEW: THE PACIFIC Sub-Regional Overview: The Pacific Countries Covered: Australia, the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu. Laws It is important to note from the outset of this chapter that historically the Pacific conceptions of borders, nationhood and states were much less defined and travel between islands was common and largely free. As the Tongan scholar Epeli Hau’ofa wrote: The world of our ancestors was a large sea full of places to explore, to make their homes in, to breed generations of seafarers like themselves. … Theirs was a large world in which peoples and cultures moved and mingled unhindered by boundaries of the kind erected much later by imperial powers. From one island to another they sailed to trade and to marry, thereby expanding social networks for greater flow of wealth.174 The structure and operation of citizenship laws across the Pacific today are varied and fundamentally shaped by colonial legacies.175 Citizenship Law The citizenship laws of seven states (the Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu) all operate through jus sanguinis provisions with children born either within or outside of the states automatically considered citizens if one of their parents is a citizen of the relevant state.176 There are similarities in the laws of Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu who all gained independence from colonial powers between 1975 and 1980 and drafted new constitutions containing citizenship provisions. The citizenship laws of three states (Australia, New Zealand and Samoa) also operate broadly through jus sanguinis structures with some variance between citizens born in and 34 35 STATELESSNESS ENCYCLOPEDIA ASIA PACIFIC REPORT 2023