Neo-Rural Hmong in French Guiana

Abstract

The Hmong have been living in French Guiana since 1977. They are mainly market gardeners and live in two main villages, which are mostly mono-ethnic. At the end of the 1990s, a new Hmong settlement, Corossony, was founded by Hmong from mainland France, neo-rural and neo-agriculturalists, driven by a more individualistic lifestyle and aspiring to work towards ideals of freedom, a return to a more authentically Hmong existence and social success. This study examines the characteristics of these neo-residents who stand apart from other Hmong in French Guiana, living in a way they perceive to be at variance with their previous lives in France. Their situation must be analyzed less as a new relationship to the rural world and to agriculture or a reappropriation of a past way of life than as a counter-model to their integration in mainland France.

Keywords

• hmong
• french guyana
• france
• neo-rurality
• authenticity