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Don't know about these so this is an outsider's view: With the people overwhelmingly voting to stay with France, Mayotte sounds less like a colony of France tha

Don't know about these so this is an outsider's view: With the people overwhelmingly voting to stay with France, Mayotte sounds less like a colony of France than Scotland is a colony of England. The much larger Reunion with no native population doesn't seem to have much of an independence movement looking at the Wikipedia page. If they're colonies, maybe they'd be worse off independent? I mean who'd really benefit from independence? I'm sure as soon as they become independent, they'd get kicked out of the euro zone...

smcl 10y ago
Exactly - I'm an outsider too so maybe there's something I am missing (though I am from Scotland). They mentioned the Falklands as another example of colonialism - which IMO is exactly the same situation as Reunion/Mayotte (no native population, significantly worse off independent), so why not mention those? Note that I'm no defender of the British colonial legacy - I'm actually pretty critical of the whole thing, but weird contradictions like that frustrate me :)
ekianjo 10y ago
> With the people overwhelmingly voting to stay with France The only reason they are voting to stay in France is to get access to French subsidies for DOM/TOM (free flowing cash with no questions asked) and social benefits.
- deleted 10y ago
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saiya-jin 10y ago
as my french friends told me, these places get tons of subsidies from France for free (whatever reason there might be), they can come to work in France/EU anytime. yet they live in their tiny little paradises, far from stressful mainland. best of both worlds. why the hell would anybody want to leave? :)
- Hasknewbie 10y ago
  A colony in the general sense is a territory that has been invaded and is permanently occupied, and where the native population does not have equal rights and cannot decide on their independence (or integration, since the idea is that they should have a choice). Although it once was the case, it is incorrect to refer to Mayotte and Reunion as colonies. They are French departments. Their inhabitants are not "allowed to work in France", they are French, if they move to metropolitan France, they're just changing department. Saying they're a colony would be like saying Alaska or New Mexico are colonies. Moreover Mayotte did not vote to "stay" in France, the referendum was about switching from one status to another (essentially, from Oversea Department to 'normal' department) and they chose the most convenient one (shocking, I know). It is true that they receive some extra subsidies, mostly because of their isolated location (which makes the cost of life higher). Due to the high level of unemployment, they also receive social subsidies, but that's just like any other department in France (but of course you won't hear a lot of complaints about how the North-Eastern regions are costing the rest of the country a ton of money...). Moreover they also receive less government investment when it comes to infrastuctures, i.e. schools or hospitals (even though they have to contend with tropical diseases and hurricanes). The trope about "lazy black people under the tropics" (as opposed to Fench citizens who happen to live in regions where the economy is bad) is a common dog whistle in France. Much like with American nativists, there is this thing with implying who is a 'real' French and who isn't, and it seems to upset a number of white French that there are also black French who have been part of France for longer than they themselves may have been, so depicting them as remote people who are only in it to take money is quite convenient. To get back to the main topic, it's true that "last colony" is a bit weird. There are other more-or-less similar conflicts in Africa (Casamance, Cabinda, Chagos) where the locals could refer to themselves as colonized.
IkmoIkmo 10y ago
He's not saying that it's bad for it to be a colony, but simply that technically, it is a colony. But yeah I don't think anyone would disagree that it's better off as a colony.

smcl 10y ago

Exactly - I'm an outsider too so maybe there's something I am missing (though I am from Scotland). They mentioned the Falklands as another example of colonialism - which IMO is exactly the same situation as Reunion/Mayotte (no native population, significantly worse off independent), so why not mention those? Note that I'm no defender of the British colonial legacy - I'm actually pretty critical of the whole thing, but weird contradictions like that frustrate me :)

ekianjo 10y ago

> With the people overwhelmingly voting to stay with France The only reason they are voting to stay in France is to get access to French subsidies for DOM/TOM (free flowing cash with no questions asked) and social benefits.

deleted 10y ago
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saiya-jin 10y ago

as my french friends told me, these places get tons of subsidies from France for free (whatever reason there might be), they can come to work in France/EU anytime. yet they live in their tiny little paradises, far from stressful mainland. best of both worlds. why the hell would anybody want to leave? :)

Hasknewbie 10y ago
A colony in the general sense is a territory that has been invaded and is permanently occupied, and where the native population does not have equal rights and cannot decide on their independence (or integration, since the idea is that they should have a choice). Although it once was the case, it is incorrect to refer to Mayotte and Reunion as colonies. They are French departments. Their inhabitants are not "allowed to work in France", they are French, if they move to metropolitan France, they're just changing department. Saying they're a colony would be like saying Alaska or New Mexico are colonies. Moreover Mayotte did not vote to "stay" in France, the referendum was about switching from one status to another (essentially, from Oversea Department to 'normal' department) and they chose the most convenient one (shocking, I know). It is true that they receive some extra subsidies, mostly because of their isolated location (which makes the cost of life higher). Due to the high level of unemployment, they also receive social subsidies, but that's just like any other department in France (but of course you won't hear a lot of complaints about how the North-Eastern regions are costing the rest of the country a ton of money...). Moreover they also receive less government investment when it comes to infrastuctures, i.e. schools or hospitals (even though they have to contend with tropical diseases and hurricanes). The trope about "lazy black people under the tropics" (as opposed to Fench citizens who happen to live in regions where the economy is bad) is a common dog whistle in France. Much like with American nativists, there is this thing with implying who is a 'real' French and who isn't, and it seems to upset a number of white French that there are also black French who have been part of France for longer than they themselves may have been, so depicting them as remote people who are only in it to take money is quite convenient. To get back to the main topic, it's true that "last colony" is a bit weird. There are other more-or-less similar conflicts in Africa (Casamance, Cabinda, Chagos) where the locals could refer to themselves as colonized.

IkmoIkmo 10y ago

He's not saying that it's bad for it to be a colony, but simply that technically, it is a colony. But yeah I don't think anyone would disagree that it's better off as a colony.