La frontière et ses échelles : les enjeux d’un pont transfrontalier entre la Guyane française et le Brésil

Abstract

Political borders raise multi-scalar issues. At the border between French Guiana and Brazil, the proposed cross-border bridge over the river Oyapock may lead to different interpretations depending on the scale at which it is considered. On the Guiana Shield scale, French Guiana is in a situation of isolation. Road continuity with Brazil could be a way to open the French-Guianese territory to the South-American continent. However, the realities of the network in which the bridge must fit impede this goal of continuity. Eventually, the project sends back to the international scale and to a symbolic dimension: as a cross-border bridge, tool for the revival of international relationships, it pushes the logic of crossing and road continuity behind the one of the breakpoint and of the symbolic contact point between the French and Brazilian territories.

Keywords

• border
• geographic scale
• bridge
• transport network