(Re)thinking Europe from a Caribbean perspective: the imaginations, identities and projections of students in Guadeloupe and Martinique

Based on a field survey of students in Martinique and Guadeloupe, using online cartographic questionnaires and interviews, this article examines their practices and representations of Europe and its relations with the macro-regions that are most prominent in their imaginations (Caribbean, West Indies). The aim is to analyze internal and local representations of Europe, those of an internal periphery regarding a center, but also of Europe as a margin. Comparing the EU's discourse with students'practices and representations of Europe allows us to delve deeper into relationships that appear to be differentiated. While the status of Outermost Region (OR) positions these territories as a link between the EU and the world, Europe appears to students as an administrative margin on the other side of the Atlantic. The place (or the absence) of Europe in their macro-regional imaginations raises questions about mobile territoriality and the expression of identities in a post-colonial context. Students in Martinique and Guadeloupe use their relationship with Europe and the EU to (re)think their place and links with the Caribbean, France and the world. The students' macro-regional imaginations allow to reflect on how to consider the articulations and complexity of individual and collective relationships to spaces, which the concept of "in-between" helps to extend.