Argument

On the eve of the tenth anniversary of its departmentalization, the French Overseas Department of Mayotte will be the main thrust of the next issue of Carnets de Recherches de l'Océan Indien, the on-line, peer-reviewed journal of the Observatory of the Societies of the Indian Ocean (OSOI)

Mayotte, an Indian Ocean island covering a total area of 374 km² has been French since 1841. Popularly known as “the island of perfumes”, Mayotte became the 101st French department on March 31, 2011 and within three years, on January 1, 2014, it gained the position of the 9th ultraperipheral region in the European Union. Geographically speaking, it is the oldest and the easternmost island of the Comoros archipelago, a sprinkling of islands found at the northern entrance of the Mozambique Channel located less than 350 km from the coast of Madagascar and 8000 km from mainland France.

In 2017, figures indicated that the population of Mayotte stood at 256,500 inhabitants, of whom 48% are foreign nationals (INSEE, 2017), with 88.5% living on the hippocampus- shaped island of Grande-Terre, and the rest on Petite-Terre (11, 5%). Mayotte also has uninhabited islets. Through public transfers (budget allocations, social criteria, European funds), Mayotte maintains a catch-up policy resulting in rapid economic growth accompanied by an rise in the average standard of living of the population.

And yet this young French department has since failed to live upto expectations, to reduce the glaring inequalities in income, in purchasing power, in the working and living conditions of her inhabitants. So much so that Mayotte is the poorest department in France and the second poorest region in the European Union. In addition, with her complex multilingualism that seeks to question the notion of a “national language”, Mayotte likewise invites us to reconsider the contours of the Francophonie and the “cohabitation” of the different languages in this space.

In sum, the relevance of interrogating Mayotte’s transitions and mutations cannot be underestimated.

How can one respond to the multiple gauntlets thrown by this territory, seen as a prosperous island by the populations of the riparian states (Comoros, Madagascar), but in the throes of a deep social malaise?

Several areas of study can be envisaged:

• Social and societal evolution of Mayotte
• Health and safety issues
• The challenges of economic, social and environmental development
• Relations between the metropolis and its department
• The alignment of the civil, fiscal, regulatory and legal system with the national common law
• Relations between the European Union and Mayotte, its outpost
• Relations with the Union of Comoros, in terms of flows and diasporas
• Forms of exclusion and spatial inequalities
• The geopolitical aspects
• The role of written and oral literature as well as artistic expressions and practices in the changing Mahoran society, and in the portrayal of the major challenges it faces (representation of migrations, gendered conflicts, identity, cultural and linguistic redefinitions, the destruction of its environment and pollution ...)
• Multilingualism, Francophonie, Glottopolitics, Language Learning and School.

This call for papers is open to all disciplines of the social sciences and humanities.

Submission guidelines

Please send your articles by February 10, 2020,

to the addresses below: carnets-oi@univ-reunion.fr, malamy@univ-reunion.fr helene.pongerard@univ-reunion.fr

Style sheet https://carnets-oi.univ-reunion.fr/normes