Migration and Identities of “Indigenous” Socio-cultural Groups in French Guiana: A Case Study of Students Along the Oyapock and Maroni Rivers

Abstract

This article focuses on the contemporary identity of young people living in French Guiana qualified as “indigenous”, pupils of Amerindian and Maroon origin. First, we describe the historical context that led to the emergence of this identity and the research methods we employed. In our longitudinal study, 65 semi-structured interviews and 105 questionnaires were conducted over a period of three years. In the second section, we present a comprehensive analysis of this corpus allowed us to model these young people's representations (based on their migratory trajectories, family organization, schooling, attitudes towards multilingualism and visions of the future). In the conclusion section, we propose a model of the interactive dynamics of identity which best characterizes these young people. Finally, in the discussion, we highlight the contradictions of a concept of “indigenousness” constructed from a Western viewpoint that no longer corresponds to the reality of these peoples, whose lifestyles are as modern, dynamic and influenced by interactions as those of any other population.