Bridging Fluid Borders : Entanglements in the French-Brazilian Borderland

Examining the inequalities imposed on borderland inhabitants by the de facto ‘one-way’ cross-border bridge between French Guiana and northern Brazil, and the ways in which they deal with them, this book shows how the region’s European-American borderland illuminates entangled histories and their concomitant inequalities on a large scale.

Interweaving rich ethnographic descriptions with an innovative theoretical approach, this book explores and unsettles conventional maps and understandings of Europe and the Americas. Through an examination of the recently inaugurated cross-border bridge between France’s overseas department of French Guiana and Brazil’s northern state of Amapá, which effectively acts as a one-way street and serves to perpetuate inequalities in a historically deeply entangled region, it foregrounds the ways in which borderland inhabitants such as indigenous women, illegalised migrants, and local politicians deal with these inequalities and the increasingly closed Amazonian border in everyday life. A study that challenges the coloniality of memory, this volume shows how the borderland along and across the Oyapock River, far from being the hinterland of France and Brazil, in fact illuminates entangled histories and their concomitant inequalities on a large scale. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology and border studies with interests in postcolonialism, memory, and inequality.