Wednesday 30 January 2013

On becoming an adult in French Guiana

For a few months, part way through 2012, I landed an awesome job, which would take me to places I'd never have the money to get to by myself, AND take care of some of the logistics of getting to those places: A Horse-Gift Opportunity Not to be Looked in the Proverbial Mouth.
And so I took part in the survey "Becoming an adult in French Guiana".



The mission

French Guiana has a not unnoticeable level of population growth: 1 in 2 is under 25 and fecundity is nearly 3.5 per woman. There is plenty of immigration (as mentioned in a previous post) and I would say demographics are a little difficult because it's so easy to cross borders. In some communes, populations have tripled since the early 90s, and schools are opening fast in an attempt to keep up with demographic changes.
All this background to explain the rationale for this survey - there is a feeling that these young people are poorly understood and that to serve them now and into the future, some attempts must be made at comprehension.   So, we were dispatched, a 17-person team with a 66page survey, across the entirety territories of French Guiana (conveniently and inevitably missing out one or two communes). With one hour per interviewee; we would seek to understand economic situations, ambitions, cultures, relationships to friends, family, partners and children, educational needs, beliefs.....obviously, an unattainable goal, with an apparently noble aim. This was to be carried out with 1600 young people, sixteen to twenty five, with various quotas to be filled in different locations of age, gender, occupation, commune of origin.. The results would then be analysed and passed to the relevant beaurocrats and politicians, certainly, ultimately, to be largely ignored (?).

For the first few weeks, we asked questions in educational institutions: Collèges, Lycées, the University, in FG's biggest towns: Cayenne, Kourou, St Laurent. This was a captive audience, booked in to take part by their teachers and mentors, educated and supposedly francophone. The survey was written in an unwieldy academic manner that meant little to even us the surveyors, so we perfected our techniques of question translation, which I had always been told was a no-no in previous jobs. Still, the survey would have been a field of empty leaves without this technique; so we proceeded.

After the initial captive audiences in schools and university; we would interview young people registered with various institutions for workless young people; pole emploi (essentially the job centre) and mission locale (sort of like a job centre but just for young people). This phase would continue into the more remote parts of French Guiana, to the rainforest communities of Amerindians and Bushinengue along French Guiana's two river borders, the Oyapoque and the Maroni, as well as to the rural communities of Mana, Iracoubo, Sinnamary and Roura. We would then return to Cayenne, Kourou and St Laurent to interview young people not involved in education OR in formal schemes for the workless; and finally we would interview young people in work in the private and public sectors.

17 people. 2 months. 1600 surveys. 80,000 km2 of rainforest, rivers and towns.
Play yourself some dramatic surveying music and wait for the next instalment.


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