During the colonial period, indentured workers travelled from India to Fiji and worked in industries including sugar. Names can appear in neat rows on a register without the journeys and labour conditions behind them being fair. An administrative sequence is not itself a physical queue. An account of waiting at registration or inspection would need direct evidence of the scene, alongside the unequal power relations of indenture.
The word “contract” does not tell us how freely a worker could choose the terms. Restrictions on travel, labor and return also require examination. A line in a register must not be transformed into an attractive imagined scene of people standing neatly in line.