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Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic research conducted in Mayotte island between 2022 and 2023, this presentation aims to historicize and deconstruct the discourse of freedom in the ongoing construction of consensus «from below» in the last French overseas department of Mayotte.

Paper long abstract:

The achievement of French departmental status in 2011 was the result of a long fight of Mahorais people to detach irreversibly from the «neighboring» and «cousin» islands of Comores that acquired independence in 1975. While locally the post-abolition of slavery was marked by the search for peace between slaves and slaveholders by leveraging the common Islamic base, the liberation of Mayotte from Comoros was built on the claim of a different «identity». Interestingly, while the history of slavery has almost fallen into oblivion, in contrast, separatist history has been strengthened through a process of fabricating the foundation myth of a « protective and emancipatory France » (Roinsard, 2022). Today, however, this paternalistic image of France is beginning to falter as a result of laxity vis-a-vis what locally it is called the «invasion» of Comorians seeking «for freedom» in the so-called European «Eldorado». Additionally, the increasingly soured relations between locals and «muzungu community» (white-skinned) give a different perspective of how freedom is perceived and lived. Without questioning Mayotte dependence on France, new declinations of freedom are built in the local discourses and political rhetorics around ideas of intercontinental mobility, economic development, environmental protection, aspiration for jobs historically assigned to metros (main-land France inhabitants), and multiple identity claims, etc.

Based on ethnographic research conducted in Mayotte between 2022 and 2023, this presentation aims to historicize and deconstruct the discourse of freedom in the ongoing construction of consensus «from below» in the last French overseas department of Mayotte.