Les mobilités en Guyane française : catalyseur et fonction-miroir des discontinuités territoriales

Abstract

Insularity, a paradoxical metaphor for a continental space, seems the most adequate concept to evoke a deep imbalance of French Guyana, whereas the centre-periphery interactions are found at each scale (international, national and regional). The demographic hyper-concentration and focussing of economic activities on three bulk-headed poles – Cayenne, Kourou, Saint-Laurent – is characteristic of a space in crisis. Migratory movements both reinforce and embrace the spatial disequilibria. Given their low drai- résinage capacity, these centralities do not have a very polarizing effect within departmental space. The concept of space crisis is read as much in the hyper-concentration of the settlement within the littoral space overdeveloped as in the weakness of the internal movements of population and the interpolarized exchanges. Analysis of internal mobility based on changes of residence and residence-work commuting, as well as on international migration, enables a better understanding of the dynamics of exchanges. Conversely, their gravitational capacities find an echo outside the departmental surface, on national and international scales. The different types of international migration (political, economic, of competences) reveal the extraversion and the dependency of this overseas French territory.

Keywords

• Cayenne
• demographic concentration
• economic concentration
• employment
• internal mobility
• Kourou