Muristek
‘He is one of a gang of undocumented immigrant teens who live on the beach in Mayotte protected by their herd of dogs. They like to ask passersby: “Why are you scared?”’
I met Djoubi in Mayotte, a French territory off the coast of east Africa. I took this in 2017 when he was 17, though I first began photographing undocumented immigrants in another French territory in the Indian Ocean, Réunion, for my project La Cinquième Île (The Fifth Island) in 2009.
Mayotte is roughly 8,000km from Paris. It is part of the Comoros archipelago between east Africa and Madagascar, which includes three other main islands: Grande Comore, Mohéli and Anjouan. France colonised the archipelago in the 19th century with the intention of making it a sugar plantation. In the 1970s, three of the four islands voted for independence; Mayotte alone voted to remain attached to France, and has since become a destination for migrants from the rest of the Comoros. Most come searching for better-paid work, but others flee political instability. Despite not having legal access to education or healthcare, they risk the dangerous sea journey to reach Mayotte – and thus the EU. Migrants face deportation yet they continue to arrive every year. Many have drowned.
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