How the meaning of work changed for me over time

For most women in this study, their career journey started with low paid factory,

kitchen, or cleaning jobs. At that point in time, work meant ‘generating an income to

survive‟. While some had successfully consulted the newspapers’ job vacancy

were expected to be grateful for the help of their relatives even though they felt ‘…the job was forced onto me by my relatives‟. In general, the women felt grateful for the ‘opportunity to have an income and make ends meet‟, even though they did not like the job. Even though these jobs were far from being satisfactory to them, the participants were searching for meaning in their work tasks. Meaning could be found

even in low-key jobs as these provided opportunities to ‘socialize with others‟, ‘make

a difference in someone‟s life’, or ‘receive positive feedback and feel good about it‟

(discussed in the previous chapter). Ultimately though, doing meaningful work meant

for the participants to be in a job where they would find their ‘true calling‟. ‘Doing

meaningful work’, ‘finding myself‟, and ‘following my calling‟ became recurring themes.

I worked to survive – now I follow my vocation

The initial jobs the women took on after arriving in Auckland were not so much based on choice than on necessity to maintain a living and care for dependent

children or family. Some worked because „… I didn‟t have a choice. I needed the

money. Any job would do at the beginning‟. Others came „… alone first to generate

money for my children to come‟ or were sponsored by their family in Samoa ‘… to work and get some money for my family‟s airfares’. A number of participants had worked nightshifts, for example cleaning hospital floors, to finance their further

education ‘… because my parents and family in Samoa didn‟t have the money to

support me’. A few held two or three jobs a day ‘around the clock‟ to make ends for themselves and their families meet. For F. and others, any job would do because:

‘When you don‟t have money, work simply is getting out of hardship‟ … at that time [being new to New Zealand], I couldn‟t afford to look for the right job ... Anything to earn money would do’.

On the positive side, low key and cognitively undemanding jobs meant time for adjusting to the new environment. In comparison to Samoa, New Zealand was

experienced as a ‘fast paced world’’ and ‘adjustment required time and energy‟.

Thus, ‘a simple job helped‟. Low-key jobs were seen as temporary to make ends

meet, while the participants had their future-being as women in advanced positions in

mind. They felt that after leaving behind their home in Samoa and ‘taking not much

more than dreams and aspirations with me’, in the end, working to generate money

‘I could have done that [factory work] at home back on the Island. Coming over here, that means something more than earning money ... In a factory, I am just making money for someone else. But I would like to make a contribution, leave a mark, find my calling and do something meaningful‟.

The participants referred to meaningfulness of work in conjunction with ‘following

my vocation‟, and also ‘leaving a mark’ by ‘doing something where others could also benefit from’ in the wider society, the social, health, or educational sectors, or in their

community. As S. explained:

„Doing something meaningful, that‟s more than just doing your task. It is also more than generating money for back home. It is even more than supporting the family. Work should be good for yourself, the aiga, and people in the world‟.

The emphasis on meaning of work as „doing something to the benefit of others‟

relates to the principal ‘being of service to others’ in fa‟asamoa. However, the

paradigm ‘following one’s vocation in the service of others’ is not unique to a specific cultural background. It is widespread across cultures and serves a purpose in identity formation. The experience of ‘helping others’ can be understood as a link between personal self and self-as-being-part-of-others. Finding fulfillment in the service of others plays an important part in identity processes because, ‘Values that define our public life by definition must somehow be found outside of the self and in recognition of what is [the] other to us’ (Taylor, 1991, p.17). According to Taylor (1991), many people feel ‘called’ to make a difference for others and feel that their lives would be somehow wasted or unfulfilled if they did not do so. When employees talk about finding meaning in work by making a contribution through serving others, they relate to their inner life and sense of spirituality (Ashmos & Duchon, 2000). They show a

sense of connection to something larger than the self; ‘a sense of community

characterized by a feeling of connectedness to others and common purpose’

(Kinjerski & Skrypnek, 2008).

However, while work served a higher purpose than ‘just making money for

myself‟, the participants had arrived at a point in time where felt that they needed to

review their definitions of ‘doing something for others‟. They began to review this

concept when they felt that ‘working for the benefit of others’ turned out to be fulfilling

others’ expectations and putting considerable constraints on their own lives. Culture traversing time and space: fa’alavelave calling its dues

Gadamer (1989) postulated that ‘temporal distance’ can play a useful role in helping people to identify those pre-given understandings that exercise a problematic

influence on new situations. Distance from pre-given understandings allows an internal, dialogical interplay (Hermans, 2001; 2002) to understand and work through problematic elements. For many participants, their pre-given understanding of ‘fa‟alavelave’, donating to family members in crisis, had become problematic in their present-being since these donations tended to involve large, often unaffordable,

sums of money. The understanding of ‘doing fa‟alavelave‟ had been pre-given by

Samoan tradition. For some participants, giving to members of the extended family in crises had become one of the meanings of work.

Fa‟alavelave is linked to living up to one’s rank, position, status, and financial income, which determines the sum of donations (Croulet & Sio, 1986). Once the

women worked, they were expected to participate in fa‟alavelave transactions. A few

women, like L., saw one of the meanings of work as enabling them to fulfill the duty of fa’alavelave:

‘As a Samoan, you want to give to your people and the church. That‟s why work is important. I mean the fa‟alavelave, the giving. I work, and my uncle can‟t give. So I do it for him. Working for me means funds for reciprocity. You work for the fa‟alavelave, to give to others‟.

For a number of participants, the financial burden caused by the constraints of the expected donations had become a major issue. Some had decided against unconditionally obliging the calls for donations. While they saw the meaning of work

in ‘helping and being there for others’, they now applied this exclusively to the closer

family and purposes of furthering the development of dependents, as L.’s and O.’s explications showed:

„I don‟t do the fa‟alavelave thing when it comes to extended family. You see, people who you have never seen or don‟t even know the name of suddenly turn up on your doorstep saying they are your relative and expecting to stay with you and be fed. Nuh, that doesn‟t work for me anymore. I like to work for my children‟s future, for their education. For us, education for or children is important, I am from a poor family. You and your children should come first‟.

„Fa‟alavelave - no! Helping my parents and reciprocating what they‟ve done for me - yes! I want to improve things for my parents. They live in a simple fale [house made of mats woven from palm leaves], give them a nice home. Also, my earned money goes into a fund for when things go wrong. You never know what‟s going to happen and I want to be independent of any help from relatives. Work means you can look after yourself, a financial safety. That‟s why I refuse to give to churches or distant relatives. Making a living here comes before supporting others in Samoa. If I could change anything, I would change the fa‟alavelave so that people aren‟t pressured with these obligations‟.

While a number of women saw working for financial safety for self, children, and

parents as having priority over fa‟alavelave, getting out of the obligations of

fa‟alavelave seemed a two-sided issue. On one side, in their present-being, they

made their own decisions about ‘how to live my life’ and ‘how to spend my earned

money‟ (explicated in the first analysis chapter). On the other side, based on their past-being as subjects of their primary socialization processes, the women in their roles as ‘nurturers and givers’ felt an inner pressure and guilt if they did not give, or if they could not afford, the monetary gifts.

While those women had tried to put distance between their pre-given

understandings of fa‟alavelave and their present situations, they experienced that

internalized concepts of fa‟alavelave had traversed time and space into Auckland

and ‘called its dues‟. On one side, some felt strongly about not wanting to work for

fa‟alavelave obligations; on the other side, an ‘internalized voice called‟ to meet the expectations. In these cases, past-being attempted to take precedence over present- being, and the self was ‘no longer autonomous but immersed in past relationships’ (Frank, 2005). However, since ‘it is the individual who carries past dialogues into the present’ (Gergen, 1999, p. 131) each participant as an individual remained central to the interpretation of her inner dialogues. Those women, who emerged out of these internal dialogues as being in charge of meaning making, became the agents of their decisions over how much, when, and to whom to donate.

Understanding always occurs against the background of our prior involvement and our history (Gadamer, 1989). As the participants reflected on their past-being, they became conscious of how time and place affected their present-being. It became apparent that their identity processes occurred in conjunction with traveling back and forth between past and present while moving into the future.

Dipping into the past, dealing with the present, and thinking into the future

Some of the participants’ ways of being and doing could no longer occur in the same way as they had in the past. Since it is neither possible to be exactly the same way in a different place nor extended through time (Locke, 1956), the participants’ contemplations, reflections, thoughts, and understandings of self had changed in their new environment. Those women, who were expected to fit back into the family, slip back into their past-beingness, and play the part they once played as dependent

girls ‘doing as you were told and enjoy being looked after‟ knew that this was no longer possible for them. As financially independent working women, some felt that

they could not ‘wind back the clock‟ and ‘be like back then’. L., for instance,

experienced:

‘I was expected to take my old place in the family, to fit in. It seems taken for granted that I‟ll be the same when I‟m with them. Even though my views about myself and some things about fa‟asamoa have changed. You can‟t go backwards, can you!‟

Some women, who did no longer want to ‘take their old place‟, found themselves

accused of being too palagi, wanting to be like a European (Anae, 2001). That was

not how the participants saw themselves; they felt that as a Samoan woman ‘you

can‟t shed your Samoan identity but you can start questioning parts’. By having become working women in Auckland, they had not shed their cultural identity, but

what was once handed down had now become ‘something that was up for choice‟. A

number of women said that in fact, they felt stronger about their Samoaness now that it had become a choice for them to what extent they wanted to live the Samoan way. Seeing that their choices between ways of being and doing had implications for themselves and others in their immediate environment, the participants understood that their choices of being and doing also had the potential to affect their wider socio- cultural environment over time. A number of participants made explicit the changes they wanted to see over time, like P. and M. for example:

‘We women were giving and giving and tended to put our personal ambitions on hold. This has changed for many of us. This is just the start. Changing myself also changed my views about fa‟asamoa. And since other women in the community come to talk to me, eventually their views will change too. That is, if they haven‟t already changed them. This will have wider implications for our women‟s roles‟.

„Times are changing. Things have changed over the last 10, 20 years … you know the migration and the education here for women… So it‟s kind of the roles are changing. Us who have left to New Zealand are an influence not only of what happens here but also of what happens back in Samoa‟.

The women’s changes in self-understanding were inextricably related to change

processes in the wider setting, occurring ‘as transactions between person and environment’

(Fuhrer, 2004). Since self-identity is not only influenced by, but also influences the social environment, the changes in their own self-understandings - as some women predicted - will

have implications for fa‟asamoa over time. While they were once thrown by birth into socio-

back then, they could now influence their own ways of being in the world, their ways of being with others around them, and ‘historical time and space’ (Heidegger, 1962).

Bringing this back to Bakhtin’s (1986) metaphor on identity formation - quoted at

the beginning of this chapter - ‘…a person’s consciousness awakens wrapped in

another’s consciousness’ (p.138), the Samoan women had unwrapped out of pre- given consciousness and had unfolded their selfs and lifeworlds. This, to them,

meant being Samoan on their terms. It meant, amongst many other things, being

Samoan women having extended their identity towards being successful working women.

Summary

The participants experienced themselves as identity receivers, identity carriers, and identity creators in time and space. Born into culture, the participants initially were passive recipients of views and values. As their self-concepts changed over time in cultural space, the participants became active agents who could make choices about their ways of doing and being. They did so through reflecting upon the context of which they were a part, by ‘considering the context of the past’, and by ‘imagining the context of the future’ (Valsiner, 2000, p. 51). Through the processes of adapting to their changed life circumstances, they evaluated, reorganized into new forms, and re-internalized values, views, principles, and practices. They were ‘reaching into’ the cultural past, projecting into the future, and from the positions of past-being and future-being - what they were no longer and what they wanted to become - established their present self.

The women had come a long way in their identity journeys, where they experienced opportunities, hurdles, and challenges. They had shown determination and successfully made their place in Auckland and in the world of work. They also had proved wrong the stereotype

that since fa‟asamoa is a robust and stable culture, all Samoan women must be bound to, or

choose, the customary gender role as family nurturers. Fairbairn-Dunlop and Makisi (2003), and Koloto (2003), Pacific Island researchers, also documented that, even though the

traditions of fa‟asamoa and other Pacific Island cultures are strong and pervasive, migrant

women tended to substitute some of the traditional beliefs.

As socio-cultural historical space underlies processes of mutual constitution of the person and the social world (Shweder, 1990), the women’s self-concepts as achieving women at work had the potential to contribute to dismantling socio-cultural

restrictions for Samoan women over time. For the same reasons, their ways of being and doing at work, including their achievements and relationships, also had the potential to change New Zealanders’ understandings and views about Samoan women in New Zealand.

Having undergone processes of disintegration and re-organization of their selfs, and having established new relationships with the world, the Samoan women had gone through profound changes. These changes are irreversible: one cannot revert to what one has been because time and space are of ephemeral nature and will not have remained static for a person to slip back into. Past-being can, however, be revisited. The participants needed to revisit their past to find a new connection

between their present existence and past-being - ‘to dig out their own identities, and

to re-evaluate themselves in a new light’ (Schutz, Alfred, 1971) - and to make this meaningful to their own future.