Significant rural-urban migration has characterized the postcolonial Melanesian states including Vanuatu. Over the past 30 years, most people who once lived in Samaria village (Tanna Island) have moved to squatter settlements that ring Port Vila, Vanuatu’s capital town. Life history interviewing of migrants now living in Port Vila’s Blacksands and Ohlen neighbourhoods, and also of those remaining back on Tanna, document peoples’ participation in urban migration, wage-labor, mobile telephony and other new media, religious organization, leadership and dispute settlement, and other aspects of urban life and how this participation is shaping a new urbanity in Vanuatu.