The Americas’ Multi-Polar Displacements as A New Pattern in Haitian-French Guyanese Migrations

Romanovski Zephirin*

ABSTRACT

Migration shifts over time. The attractive immigration policy of French Guyana, which
allowed Haitians to migrate in the early 1970s, was changed into a repulsive one in the
mid-1980s. This dramatic change modifies migrants’ linear trajectories from the Haitian
departure point to the French Guyanese arrival. Many immigrants or would-be immigrants
use multi-polar and scattered movements. They link origin, third and host countries in the
Americas as a system of displacements where migrating becomes an inter-American journey.
On their way out to French Guyana, Haitian emigrants, before being immigrants are already
migranrts. Multi-polar displacements through multi-polarized migration streams pass through
the physical and cognitive borders of neighbouring states. Consequently, this new development
in trajectories of Haitian migrations systemically connects de facto French Guyana to
other migration poles in the American space and sets forth a theoretical and methodological
consequentialness.

© 2018 The Author
International Migration © 2018 IOM
International Migration
Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. ISSN 0020-7985