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International audience; Dans cet article, j’analyse les appropriations du logement social par les classes populaires bushinenguées à Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, en montrant comment les enjeux du gouvernement de la maison sont étroitement liés aux modes de gouvernement étatiques. Pour leurs occupants, les logements sociaux matérialisent une ascension sociale et une intégration urbaine, voire une émancipation conjugale pour les femmes : ce « changement de vie » leur permet de devenir « libres » (frey). Les habitants réalisent des marquages de l’espace extérieur et/ou intérieur et revendiquent l’aménagement du quartier. Les aménagements qui leur sont apportés font l’objet d’une dénonciation de la part des autorités françaises, selon des frontières de classe, race et nationalité. Les enjeux de « gouvernement de la maison » mêlent donc indissociablement les rapports de pouvoir internes au groupe de parenté et au couple, et les tensions entre habitants bushinengués et administrations françaises du logement.

In this paper, I investigate how the houses in the villages are maintained and transmitted to urban dwellers, and how these configurations inform social ties in the city. Maroon inhabitants of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, located in the estuary of the Maroni River at the border between Suriname and French Guiana, maintain ties with Maroon upriver territories. Most people do not dwell in a single house. Their ‘configurations of houses’ can encompass both banks of the river and connect coastal cities with upriver rural places. The occupancy of and investments into upriver houses are not only the consequences but also the means to ensure the continuity of kinship in town. Beyond the diversity of the uses of those rural houses, I analyse the link between their maintaining and urban dwelling. Spatial disposal of the houses in the villages both reflects and result from matrilineal ties between kinsmen. In the urban context of Saint-Laurent, related houses are not always located nearby from one another, depending on housing policies and removals. Kinship ties in the city are activated in reference to those upriver spaces. Upriver houses have a role of remembering of those genealogies. Common building projects can also renew the ties between urbans.

International audience; This paper focuses on the turning point in Maroon categorization by the State that happened in the 1980's. Previously considered as " primitive " or " indigenous " , Maroons progressively became categorized by the French government as foreign migrants, and later as illegitimate refugees, following the outbreak of Surinamese civil war. In 1986, 10,000 people of whom most were Maroons, fled from the civil war and spilled over the border from Suriname. Instead of granting them legal refugee status, the French deemed them " Temporary Displaced Persons from Suriname " (Personnes Provisoirement Déplacées du Surinam), thus depriving them of the legal protection granted to refugees. They settled in camps far from the city center and were only informally referred to as " refugees ". I will analyze the processes that led to the categorization of Maroons in the first urban removal policies that occurred in the 1980's, and in state refugee policies. My objective is to investigate the diverse identification processes at work in these policies, the production of official categories that make Maroons " legible " to public authorities. For this purpose, I will rely on archival research in the local Department of Public Works (Direction Départementale de l'Equipement) and of the local Sub-Commissioner's Office (Sous-préfecture).

International audience; This chapter focuses on daily life in twin cities spanning a European border, where the same living space (the Maroni river) became administratively separated at the time of Suriname's independence in 1975. Its approach is to look more specifically at the concrete and daily implications of life in twin cities for the Ndjuka working-class inhabitants, and their perception and experience. Forms of transnationalism at a local scale also involve kinship relations. Building on Marcelin's concept of “configuration of houses”, this analysis is based on a ethnographic case-study of one large family who lives on both sides and show how they dealt with the political border and how the border affected them. First, I describe this group’s conceptualization of living on the border in a configuration of houses straddling both sides. I then explore the circumstances, both private and administrative, forcing on of its female member to return to her maternal family on the Surinamese side. Finally, I examine the experiences of this woman and other border inhabitants facing the complex entanglement of State administration policies on houses, healthcare, social benefits and land-access.