The Americas’ Multi‐Polar Displacements as A New Pattern in Haitian‐French Guyanese Migrations

Abstract

AbstractMigration shifts over time. The attractive immigration policy of French Guyana, which allowed Haitians to migrate in the early 1970s, was changed into a repulsive one in the mid‐1980s. This dramatic change modifies migrants’ linear trajectories from the Haitian departure point to the French Guyanese arrival. Many immigrants or would‐be immigrants use multi‐polar and scattered movements. They link origin, third and host countries in the Americas as a system of displacements where migrating becomes an inter‐American journey. On their way out to French Guyana, Haitian emigrants, before being immigrants are already migranrts. Multi‐polar displacements through multi‐polarized migration streams pass through the physical and cognitive borders of neighbouring states. Consequently, this new development in trajectories of Haitian migrations systemically connects de facto French Guyana to other migration poles in the American space and sets forth a theoretical and methodological consequentialness.