The prevailing view in international development discourse is that small island states in the Pacific region are highly vulnerable to exogenous disruptions, including socio-economic shocks and extreme weather events linked to the adverse impacts of climate change. The representation of Pacific Island countries (PICs) as inherently vulnerable to external disruptions is largely based on the following perceived constraints: (1) remoteness and isolation, resulting in high transportation costs to markets and costly tourism, (2) small domestic markets and economies, (3) limited natural resources and narrow production basis, (4) significant trade deficits, (5) limited diversification of local skills, (6) fragile political systems, and (7) vulnerability to extreme physical disasters. However, such disempowering framings of Pacific Island societies are largely shaped by western perceptions of vulnerability, success, and wellbeing, which often do not translate to local cultural constructs. Furthermore, the discourse on vulnerability re-enforces the dominant narrative of PICs as externally dependent and passive in the face of global disruptions, which strips Pasifika peoples of their agency and self-determination efforts to engage in the global economy on their own terms, and to adapt to exogenous disruptions according to approaches they developed, to reach a desired future they determined.

This research strived to challenge the reductionist framing of small island nations by exploring the social resilience of Pasifika peoples in the Cook Islands and the Kingdom of Tonga as they responded and adapted to a series of cascading crises during the COVID-19 pandemic. While there is a growing interest in the exploration of resilience in small island societies, no studies to date have investigated how Pacific Island communities adapt to multiple interacting and compounding global systemic risks through the lens of subjective wellbeing and human agency. By applying a subjective measure of resilience through perception indicators on wellbeing and human agency, this research explored the social dimensions of resilience through Pasifika peoples’ perceived sense of agency to support a desired state of wellbeing that they envisioned and determined for their communities and natural environments. In doing so, this research aimed to address a significant gap within the vast and interdisciplinary body of knowledge that seeks to better understand the construct of resilience in small island societies in an increasingly volatile and globalised world.

The research used an interpretive research paradigm underpinned by a constructivist grounded theory methodology and comparative case study approach to explore the adaptive responses of Pasifika peoples in the Cook Islands and Tonga. Due to the COVID-19 travel restrictions, semi-structured interviews with 25 participants in the Cook Islands and 24 participants in Tonga were conducted by using online video-conferencing technologies (primarily Zoom). More importantly, all interviews were facilitated by the development of local research partnerships. The findings indicated that the social resilience of Pasifika peoples depends on their capacity to collectively act and forge networks that are simultaneously local and global, enabling the use of traditional and foreign knowledge systems to make decisions that support the multidimensional wellbeing of their island community, which in turn resulted in the revival of community spirit, traditional values, and cultural identities. The insights further revealed that participants used various forms of situated agency and social capital to support local human capacity development, increase the diversification of skills and labour forces, and enhance the collective self-reliance of their island communities. Finally, the data demonstrated that resilience was perceived by participants as a social concept that is rooted in human agency, cultural identity, reciprocal relationships, and collective self-reliance.