The Outermost EU-Rope

Period: September 2025 to December 2026

The EU is also administratively composed by outermost regions (Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, Mayotte and La Réunion among others), some of which are at the core of relevant and understudied migratory systems. The Caribbean and the Indian Ocean can be considered as the outermost walls of the EU. The last step of SOLROUTES ethnography will focus on French Guiana and Mayotte, where the routes crisscrossing countries such as Haiti, Brazil, Suriname, the Comoro Islands, the DR Congo, Rwanda and Burundi converge; as a result, both regions are characterized by a particularly high percentage of illegalized migrants and deportations. Albeit outside the geographical area of Europe but within the contradictions of its reception crisis, these regions are a crucial testing ground in the experimentation of border policies and different types of institutional violences and social discriminations. Stigmatization and widespread racism are particularly visible, contributing to a major social conflict around unwanted mobilities. The research will explore and narrate the social production of hostilility and solidarity, taking in account kinship and familiy ties through a multisited transnational and translocal ethnography, connecting the two sites with “metropolitan” France, the Caribbean and the Indian ocean space of circulation.