Pratiques et transmission des créoles antillais dans la “troisième île”

For the last two decades, much of the increase in the French Caribbean population has taken place outside Martinique and Guadeloupe through the settlement of thousands of Caribbean migrants in the French metropole. It is thus that some refer to the Caribbean population of the metropole as “the third island”. Does the cultural dynamism of the population in metropolitan France extend to the use of Creole in the home ? The Family History Study (Enquête Famille, 1999) provides the opportunity of studying the transmission of languages other than French to children and to analyse the various types of transmission according to generation, social origin, education level and family form. The specific role of women in transmission is examined. The possibility of giving more than one language in the answer to the questions has allowed us to nuance the decline of Creole announced in previous surveys in France. Although it is rarely passed on to children as a first mother tongue, it is frequently a second language in the home. In addition, a question on the wish to return to live in one’s country of origin has enabled us to show the relationship between transmission of Creole and expressed desires to return to the Caribbean