- 1 The book Love in the South Seas (Danielsson 1956: 10) provides a long list of Western literature an (...)
1Who has not seen images of Tahitian dancing, Hawaiian hula, or Polynesian haka performances—whether in the context of tourism, sports, or 20th-century Hollywood films?1 While it may be tempting to simply equate these performances with folklore that conforms to the stereotypes and obligations imposed by the (post)colonial gaze, the results of our study among people involved in staging these performances in mainland France tell a more nuanced story. Could these performances and everything around them be considered spaces of agency and reassertion of a sense of ethnic belonging that, more surprisingly, includes race? Based on a research program focusing on the mobility trajectories and social and cultural practices of Polynesians in mainland France, this article investigates the processes involved in (de)constructing ethnic boundaries in spaces where Polynesian performances are produced. The study thus extends recent research on the social practices and mobility of people from French Pacific communities living in mainland France (Bréant 2022, Fardeau et al. 2021, Gay et al. 2025, Sierra-Paycha 2022, Flipo-Boucontet and Jézéquel 2024, Jézéquel et al. 2024, Néa 2024).
- 2 We agree with Wimmer (2013) that racialization is a process that can contribute to defining the sym (...)
- 3 Minoritization is understood in the sense established by Colette Guillaumin (1985), as the dynamics (...)
2The notion of ethnicity is used here in its theoretical understanding, established since Fredrik Barth (1969), as a “continuing dichotomization between members and outsiders,” in which scientific interest lies in the processes of (de)constructing the boundaries between “Us” and “Them,” rather than in the content or “cultural stuff” of the categories thus produced (Wimmer 2013). Ethnic constructions sometimes involve racial symbols,2 particularly in physical activities and sports (Gaudin 2017, Nauright and Wiggins 2016). The central place of the body in these practices makes them particularly conducive to the (re)habilitation of an ideology that reduces women or “Others” to an embodied “nature,” while intelligence and rationality remain the prerogative of the majority (Guillaumin 1978). Although these forms of biologization belong to power dynamics that produce minority ascriptions,3 racialized individuals can, in some cases, adopt biologizing discourses and invest their content with positive value (Mazouz 2020, Wimmer 2013, Garner 2010). This analysis centers on these ethnic ascriptions and claims, as well as their implications, in the context of Polynesian practices and performances.
- 4 Out of a total population of 279,000 in French Polynesia according to 2018 INSEE data.
3Issues relating to ethnicity in French Polynesia find their roots in a long history of power dynamics involving missionaries, British traders, and later French colonists, soldiers, and civil servants. The islands that form present-day French Polynesia first held the status of a protectorate and a French colony, then in 1946 became an Overseas Territory (TOM) and in 2003 an Overseas Collectivity (COM), progressively acquiring greater internal autonomy since 1984. The (post)colonial political and administrative organization of the French state has widely contributed to the movement of civil servants from mainland France to these South Pacific archipelagos, notably in the context of public services such as education, justice, and health, as well as the army (Schuft 2007, 2010). However, the administrative status of these archipelagos within the French Republic seems to have had little impact on movements in the other direction toward mainland France. According to data from the French Polynesian Statistics Institute (Institut de la statistique de la Polynésie française - ISPF) (Dixte 2006), apart from the military mobilization of the Pacific Battalions during the two world wars, the frequency of movements to mainland France only started to increase when the Fa’aa international airport (1960) opened and the Pacific (nuclear) Experimental Center (Centre d’Expérimentation du Pacifique - CEP) was created in 1963, introducing major social and economic transformations (Vrignon and Meltz 2022). The presence in mainland France of people born in French Polynesia has since increased from 10,600 in 1990 to 17,186 in 20204 (Gay et al. 2025). Fewer people born in Wallis and Futuna, another French Overseas Collectivity (COM) in the Polynesian region, reside in France (811 in 2020) due to the small population of the islands (Gay et al. 2025). They first formed a protectorate, then an Overseas Territory in 1961, and finally a COM in 2003. However, since the 1980s, a significant proportion of people from Wallis and Futuna have moved to New Caledonia. Migration from New Caledonia to mainland France thus includes many individuals from Wallis and Futuna (Gay 2014).
4Today, the Polynesian community in mainland France has gained recognition and visibility in certain cities with a large military presence, notably naval bases such as Toulon and Brest (Gay et al. 2025). Their presence is also more noticeable in the major university centers in the southern half of France, where a large number of Polynesian organizations have developed cultural activities such as dance, music, canoeing (va’a), or crafts (Camus-Le Pape 2022, Gay et al. 2025). These cities have also seen an increase in the number of Polynesian organizations performing for different types of audiences, either from the Pacific or mainland France. In this article, Tahitian dance and rugby have been chosen as prime examples for analyzing the French context of what Kaeppler (2010) conceptualizes as “a spectacle of ethnic identity”: traditional practices or rituals deprived of their original meaning, “reprocessed and recycled as a new kind of identity ritual.”
- 5 Vahiné means “woman” in the Ma'ohi languages but now refers to Polynesian women in French. First ci (...)
5Today, the social structures inherited from colonization and the center-margin dynamics between the people and places of “mainland France” (la Métropole) and the “Overseas” (l’Outre-mer) (Gay 2026), which could be described in terms of a “coloniality of power” (Quijano 2000, Grosfoguel et al. 2015), continue to impact the distribution of material resources and social status in an ethnicized and gendered social order (Schuft 2013). In addition to the material and economic inequality created, the mainland has long held an exotic view of Polynesian populations. This colonial phenomenon has been reinforced over time by the frequent performances of these ethnic and gendered representations—notably the myth of the vahiné5—for the promotion of the territory or tourism in the islands (Schuft 2012, Schuft and Massiera 2012). The aim of this study is to investigate the mechanisms behind the ethnic and racial reconfigurations that occur through Polynesian performances in mainland France where Polynesian populations experience different types of marginalization (Jezequel 2025). To what extent are these exotic representations prevalent in mainland France, and how do they influence the experience and “racial reconfigurations” (Le Renard 2016) of Polynesians living there?
6The study is based on semi-directive interviews and observations conducted with individuals involved in producing Polynesian performances. Taking these community spaces as a starting point, the researchers were able to observe collective dynamics and focus on what one “does” rather than who one “is” (Brun and Cosquer 2022a). Although the observations are not widely mobilized in this article, immersion in these spaces gave the researchers access to practices and discourses in context. This fieldwork approach made it possible to avoid the methodological pitfall of “groupism” (Brubaker 2009), which is to focus research on an essentialized “group” rather than on the social dynamics that create its apparent existence. This proved to be particularly important since in many collective spaces where Polynesians come together in the mainland—notably in military sports, which was one of our fieldwork spaces—they identify with a wider “us” extending to people from other “islands” or the “Pacific” (Jezequel 2025), identifications which are not observed in the islands of origin.
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Survey methods
The analyses are based on a qualitative study consisting of semi-structured interviews and observations carried out around Toulon in the Var department of Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur (PACA), and around Brest in the Finistère department of Brittany. These are two departments where a large number of people from the French Pacific islands reside: the Var has the highest number, and the Finistère is in fifth position (Gay et al. 2025). The survey was conducted between May 2022 and July 2025. Observations were collected on the following occasions: at several Polynesian fairs and events organized by Polynesian organizations; at two group training sessions of a military rugby team representing the Pacific Battalions; and at weekly Tahitian dance lessons in the PACA and Brittany regions. These spaces, which are also strongly gendered, all devoted time to the preparation and staging of cultural performances, notably Tahitian dances accompanied by music, but also traditional sports (va’a - dugout canoe, stone lifting), and haka songs and performances by the rugby team.
Initial contacts were made with individuals from French Polynesia via Polynesian organizations listed in the Official Journal of the French Republic and on the Tahiti en France website. Polynesians not involved in community organizations were also contacted by snowball sampling (non-probability sampling) based on the first contacts made within the network of Polynesian community organizations. Although this recruitment method introduces a selection bias, since the individuals approached were identifiable and accessible, its impact was reduced by the diversity of individuals surveyed in terms of age, socioeconomic profile, reasons and trajectories for moving to France, and degree of involvement in community organizations. Altogether, 66 interviews were conducted with individuals who were born in French Polynesia or had parents born in French Polynesia, 38 in the Var department and 28 in the Finistère. Additional meetings and five interviews were held with people from Wallis and Futuna encountered in these performance spaces. Some of the interviewees were met on multiple occasions on the premises of the organizations, outside of the formal interviews.
With their consent, the interviews were recorded, transcribed, and anonymized using pseudonyms. The interviews ranged in length from approximately fifty minutes to two hours and followed the themes of a collectively drafted interview guide designed to cover several topics addressing mobility motives, plans, and trajectories, as well as social activities and practices in mainland France.
The content of the interviews was analyzed thematically against the categories outlined in the interview guide and further sub-themes created for recurring topics (e.g., “Reference to otherness” or “Phenotype, blood, and genes”). Observations and coding were then compared between questions and across researchers, allowing for a triangulation of analyses and a working consensus on interpretations understood as the product of the encounter between the researchers’ and participants’ subjectivities (Smith and McGannon 2018). By re-contextualizing the coded statements, each testimony could be reinserted into the broader narrative and trajectory of the individuals surveyed.
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7To understand the role of ethnicity in Polynesian cultural performances, our analysis begins with the social experience of Polynesians in mainland France. Their experience is marked by the fact that the majority population ascribes a “difference” to them. This othering is based on a general lack of knowledge about French Polynesia, as well as on exotic representations and even certain “positive stereotypes” (Fiske et al. 2002). This partly distinguishes the way Polynesians are viewed in mainland France from people from other former colonies, who are more often subject to more negative stereotypes. However, comparisons are difficult to make due to the lack of macrosocial data regarding discrimination against Polynesians in mainland France, data which is more abundant for people from other overseas departments and regions (Haddad 2018, 2022, Soune-Seyne 2025).
8Although the Pacific islands have been part of the French Republic since the first half of the 19th century, in an asymmetrical power relationship, the persons interviewed emphasized how poorly their territory of origin was generally known. Hina, who lived in several cities before settling in Toulon, in the south of France, noted, for example, a general tendency “to confuse Tahiti with Haiti” given their similar names, or for people to ask: “But is Polynesia French?” Hina would usually reply ironically: “No, it’s not French. We were colonized, but it isn’t French.” This lack of understanding was sometimes combined with disparaging comments:
There’s also a great lack of information and even some people who don’t know where Polynesia is or what French Polynesia is. […] Sometimes, we even have to deal with people who make comments that I wouldn’t call racist, but borderline discriminating, such as: “Go back home. You bunch of savages!” That’s also something I’ve had. […] When I was in the north. Otherwise, it’s like: “You belong to us. Tahiti is ours.” […] It could be people you meet on the street or even sometimes just in a restaurant. You’re eating quietly. Then you hear people whispering behind you.
- 6 In the original French: “déni de francité”.
9This excerpt points out the lack of knowledge about the territory where the people interviewed come from, which contributes to a denial of the Polynesians’ French identity. It also expresses a power relationship through appropriation (“it’s ours”) and othering combined with rejection (“go home”), or even disparaging comments (“bunch of savages”). These frequently reported forms of “denial of Frenchness”6 and, more rarely, overt racism can be experienced simultaneously, as also reported by racialized individuals living in working-class neighborhoods (Roux et al. 2023) or from overseas departments and regions (Soune-Seyne 2025). The interviewees reported an accumulation of such individual experiences of othering in public spaces. Finally, the experience could take other forms, such as intrusive staring, particularly with respect to male bodies, for example: “People look me up and down. And that’s a little annoying” (Tetua, in Brest). All of these “dignity violations” experienced in social interactions could provoke, in return, forms of ethnic reaffirmation (Lamont et al. 2016), as will be addressed below.
10These experiences were compounded by bureaucratic problems encountered upon arrival in mainland France. The social security system and currency differ between French Polynesia and mainland France, and because Polynesians do not have a social security number or even a department number, French public agencies frequently treat them as foreigners. This led some individuals, such as Hina, to create a community center that provides administrative assistance and support. For her, “the big problem here in France [sic] when you arrive as a student or even as a civilian like us, is all the paperwork and bureaucracy.”
11The nature and extent of these obstacles contribute to a “denial of their Frenchness” experienced in the social space, as denounced and summarized by Heiata:
What was difficult was all the bureaucracy, knowing that we come from a French island […]. When you arrive, you’re French, you have a French passport, when you stand before the relevant government officials, and there they pull out a file and tell you that “you have to prove three months of residence on French soil” […]. But that’s when actually, you realize… actually, you are French, but when you arrive here, you feel like you’re being treated like a foreigner.
12At the same time, the exoticism associated with Polynesia, and with Polynesian women especially, also shapes their experience of otherness. Unlike the difficulties mentioned above, the imagery associated with these islands tends to be positive: “It’s a paradise where you come from,” Ranitea recalled being told. Orihei similarly noted, “They are basically amazed. […] They look at me and say: ‘Are you Tahitian? […] Wow! I like Tahiti. I’d like to go there one day.” The idealized image of the Polynesian islands in the popular imagination extends to its peoples, and a Polynesian identity thus appears to ease social interactions, particularly for women.
13Faced with reactions of admiration, respondents may affirm or even biologize the valorized characteristics attributed to them, such as their “smile” or their “sunny disposition.” This was the case for Hina:
We have a reputation for being warm people […]. And it’s true that it’s in our genes: kindness. […] In Toulon, that’s the way it is. We have a sunny disposition; people tell us that we are sunny. […] Some people stop and talk to us and say […]: “Thank you for your smile” or “Thank you for your kindness,” even though we haven’t even spoken. (Laughs) […] I think it’s part of our identity.
14This excerpt illustrates the mechanism of “transvaluation” (Wimmer 2013: 57), by which the minoritized and “devalued” ethnic category (Lamont and Bail 2005, Lamont et al. 2016) “reverses” the norms or values associated with it in order to place itself in an advantageous position in the hierarchical social order. Racialization is a way of reinforcing this process and of claiming valued stereotypes by embodying them (in “our genes”).
15Although the exotic imagery tends to contribute to the minoritization of Polynesians in French social spaces, exoticism is perceived as all the more “positive” when compared to the discrimination and racism experienced by people from other postcolonial territories, such as the French overseas departments and regions (Haddad 2018) or North Africa (Cuturello 2011). A young dancer interviewed backstage at a Polynesian festival near Toulon confirmed this difference in perception. Often identified as North African, she explained how people changed their perception when she answered that she was Tahitian. Her tone became ironic as she criticized the change in treatment after her origins were revealed. Similarly, Evelyne, a civil servant in a government service—where the people she is in contact with sometimes try to identify her origins—confirmed that she systematically received a positive reaction when she revealed her Polynesian identity.
16Among Polynesian men, the experience of “positive” representations and stereotypes was less commonly shared in the interviews. Instead, young Polynesian men were more often associated with violent behavior or alcohol abuse, as evidenced in interviews conducted in Toulon with residents, a bar manager, a worker, and an elected official. While less prevalent than in mainland France, negative representations about Polynesian men (associated with alcohol or violence, or as being opposed to “modern life,” fleeing their responsibilities, or lacking maturity) are widespread in French Polynesia (Schuft 2013).
17Ultimately, the experience of otherness contributes to the internalization of a minoritized social position which, while it may be considered a “penalty”—in the sense of a social disadvantage as defined by Patricia Hill Collins (1990)—also represents a position of “privilege” in relation to other forms of postcolonial otherness in France. This context provides a better understanding of some of the mechanisms of ethnic and racial reconfiguration in spaces where Polynesian performances are staged.
- 7 Cultural appropriation can be defined as “the exploitation of marginalized and colonized cultures” (...)
18In this context of othering tinged with exoticism, Polynesian gatherings and performances provide a place where Polynesians find solace. When the cultural practices and competencies developed in these community spaces are performed, they become “ethnic resources” (Waldinger 1993) converted by the performance into symbolic value and material benefit. In these competitive conditions, these resources gain the legitimate right to be represented and shared. While in the case of “a sunny disposition,” “race” is one of the symbols of ethnic identity that confirms its social transvaluation (Wimmer 2013), in the context of a performance, “race” can also increase the dancer’s legitimacy in guaranteeing the entertainment’s authenticity and in reaping its benefits. As noted by Steve Garner (2010: 20), cited in an article by Adam Hochman (2019), a common practice among subordinate groups who seek to defend and collectively assert themselves is to attach racial meaning to one’s own group and attribute positive characteristics to it. These mechanisms of self-racialization—which depend on the specific issues at stake—underline the importance of contextualizing processes of boundary-making in social, political, and economic spheres at different social scales (Wimmer 2013). In the case of Polynesian entertainment, self-racialization establishes a distinction between a legitimate “Us” and a less legitimate “Them” who are likely to engage in cultural appropriation.7 Asserting one’s position as the legitimate owner of intangible cultural resources reinforces these ethno-racial distinctions.
19The blurred contours of cultural legitimacy and the way the notion of race intersects with it could be perceived in the discourse of Maima, who became a Tahitian dance teacher after arriving in southeastern France. After talking about the pride she feels in being Polynesian since her arrival “in France” a few years before, she explains that she feels a duty to protect and assert Polynesian culture in reaction to people or practices that could distort it:
You tell yourself that you’re one of those people. At the same time, I feel like I’m actually representing my island here. It’s in that sense too that it upsets me to see people teaching my culture and doing it badly. Sometimes I talk about it. I say: […] “Well, it bothers me and everything.” But they say: “Well, it’s OK, they’re sharing and everything.” I say: “Maybe, but it’s not… Tahitian dance isn’t just dancing. It comes from a culture. There’s a history behind it.” So, when I see that, well it doesn’t do justice to the people this culture comes from. But I don’t know, since coming to France, this feeling has grown even more. I feel like I have to defend my (laughs) island, I don’t know, my culture.
20In the conversations from which this excerpt is taken, Maima questioned the legitimacy of two dance teachers, on the basis of their skills, but also their ethnicity or race, which she saw as determining those skills. One dancer, as she explained at another point in the interview, seemed to be “well known” in France, but not in Tahiti. This dancer’s troupe won a dance award at the Heiva festival in Paris, but she did not win an individual title. Also, this dancer “has a Tahitian mother” and therefore “Tahitian blood,” but has never lived in Tahiti. In developing her argument, Maima mentioned characteristics that could legitimize this woman as a Tahitian dance teacher (recognition, “blood”), alongside others that could delegitimize her (being unknown in Tahiti, no individual award, never having lived in Tahiti).
21In this case, the drawing of an ethnic boundary serves to negotiate not only ethnic belonging, but also the legitimacy to transmit Polynesian culture and the right to perform it. This is achieved by appealing to a racialized sense of belonging (“Tahitian blood”, “Tahitian mother”) alongside a range of symbols that include recognized and recognizable cultural competencies. Legitimacy to represent and transmit a culture thus depends on the perceived authenticity of the culture, based on the perceived authenticity of the person who transmits it.
22When two other dancers, interviewed together, questioned the legitimacy of another dance teacher, also contested by Maima, they once again referred to symbols of (non) ethnic and racial belonging:
Heiana: But she’s not Polynesian. […] No, to really be a good teacher, it has to be someone who is at least from there. Either you’ve lived or you were born there, well, we say…
Ravanui: It’s in the blood. (Laughs)
Heiana: That’s right. That’s what we say, it’s in the blood.
23While Heiana considered the birthplace or place of residence to be a criterion for determining the legitimacy to represent and transmit Tahitian dance, both agreed on the importance of “blood.” It is important to note here that the racial argument allowed them both to fully identify as Polynesian, since Ravanui was adopted as a baby by a couple living in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region.
24A biologizing view of cultural competencies also serves to ensure the legitimacy and priority of Polynesian women in Tahitian dance. This view was portrayed by Sylvie, while speaking about her daughters born in France:
All my friends ask me. Where did they learn? Did you teach them? I tell them, no, they have it in them. It’s the Polynesian race and you know the origin. A scientist noticed that our hands were not turned in the same way as the white European race. And that’s what explains the flexibility we have in our movements. […] A French woman who dances very well won’t have this flexibility. Even if she is flexible, something will be missing. Apparently, it comes from the way our elbows open.
25Dance skills are thus presented as characteristic of a “race,” but also of a gender category, as if they were anchored in the body and thus could never entirely be shared and learned. This mechanism was also observed in Brazilian musical practices, where skills were described by those who claimed to rightfully possess them as not fully teachable, “[f]or reasons of ‘blood,’ ‘native culture,’ ‘skin’” (Vaillant 2023). Although activating social dynamics of race, which were in other cases denounced and which contribute to the minoritization of Polynesians, in this case, self-racialization seems to be a tool to assert one’s legitimacy and challenge “the hierarchical ordering of ethnic categories” (Wimmer 2013: 48).
26While the idea of race is used to establish certain valuable skills as “natural” (Guillaumin 2002, 1978), the racialized body, in terms of phenotype, can also symbolize an “authentic” ethnicity, especially in cultural performances for spectators external to this culture (Condevaux et al. 2016). Authenticity can be approached from the angle of contemporary travel quests (MacCannell 2008), which are strategically met by cultural offers, namely in the tourism industry (Condevaux 2009). The staging of both Tahitian dancing and haka—which aim to represent the societies and cultures of the Pacific to spectators in mainland France—can be considered in this context as “entertainment” deprived of their original cultural meaning (Kaeppler 2010). In these circumstances, the racialized body allows French spectators, who are unable to decode the traditional meaning of the performance, to interpret it nonetheless as Polynesian entertainment. Removed from Polynesian culture, it allows these “beholders” (Kaeppler 2010) to consume a form of cultural exoticism to which the “typical” body grants authenticity.
27In the dance entertainment industry, some clients seek authenticity by requesting “distinctive” bodies and faces for certain performances, as Ravanui explained:
- 8 In the original French: “Est-ce que vous êtes typée?”.
When you have a troupe, it’s best to be distinctive, I mean, to be [shows her face], I mean, that’s what they’re looking for. Because if they see someone who’s not from there, I don’t know, they won’t […] identify, you know, the person. It’s like, I don’t know, when you take any dance… African dances, you see (laughs). It looks more authentic, let’s say, on… There’s a man who wants to book us… who is organizing […] an event with, I don’t remember if it’s a corporate event. He asked us to come. But then he kind of (laughs) told me, “Yes, I don’t want to offend you or anything, but do you have the typical look?”8 He really asked me that. And it’s not the first time. But at the same time, it’s not stupid.
28A certain “Polynesian” phenotype is requested to portray a culture—as well as the vahiné—as “typical” or “authentic.”
29The importance of having a Polynesian appearance in a performance could also be observed among the members of the military rugby team whose mission is to promote the cultures of the French Pacific islands and commemorate the history of their military participation in the French army. One of the leading members of the team emphasized the value of this “outreach mission” to promote the army, rugby, and “especially”, the “memory of the volunteers from the Pacific who came to fight in the two wars” (Alenato). Faced with the denial of their French identity and the poor knowledge of the French Pacific islands they mentioned in the interviews, they sought to reassert and give greater visibility to Polynesian peoples and cultures by highlighting their role and participation (and even their sacrifices) in French history. To achieve this mission, the players were selected, as Alenato explained, according to athletic, cultural, gender, and phenotypic criteria:
They first have to be rugby players. They have to be licensed. They have to come from the Pacific. They have to know how to sing and dance. They have to know how to sing, cook, and they have to be familiar with the traditions. […] We’re really dealing with kids who are rugby players first of all. And then, recently, in our last training camps, […] we had a player who is Tahitian, but who was adopted. […] And he doesn’t speak the language at all. So, he came… Because besides that, he has the Tahitian physique. He’s tanned. He has everything except that he doesn’t know his culture at all. So, he is a very, very good player. He’s been recruited for now.
30Thus, the racialized—and obviously gendered—body is one of the main selection criteria (namely, the “physique” and “tanned” body). While traditions can be learned—and they are included in the training camp program—the same is not true for the body selected to represent them.
- 9 “Within Māori culture, haka is the generic name for all types of dance or ceremonial performance th (...)
31In addition to this selection based on phenotype, certain athletic skills are sometimes associated with Polynesian “racial” traits, as it was for the dancers. The highly publicized performances of the haka9 by New Zealand’s national rugby team have contributed to racializing Polynesian athletic and rugby skills (Hokowhitu 2004, Jackson and Hokowhitu 2002). The members of the rugby team selected to represent the Pacific Battalions—who not only come from French Polynesia, but also from Wallis and Futuna and New Caledonia—also perform a haka for school children and their opposing teams. Although the haka performed by this team is based on a ritual specific to Wallis and Futuna (called the soamako and not the haka), the circulation and cultural origins of these practices are mostly irrelevant in the ritual that has become a form of entertainment, detached from its traditional cultural meaning (Jackson and Andrews 2025). It is now an ethnic and gendered performance particularly popular at athletic events, that is typically associated with Ma’ori men and reinforces the stereotypical association between the Polynesian male body and physical strength.
32As with dancing skills for Polynesian women, the racialization of gendered physical abilities was also acknowledged and naturalized by Polynesian men. One of the team’s leaders told us, for example, that rugby “is a sport that suits us, our physique, and our education” (Pierre). In this case, self-racialization reinforces a skill that is valued as a positive ethnic stereotype, and it transforms rugby—notably via the haka—into a space of transvaluation for Polynesian men, who are negatively stereotyped in other contexts. In addition, the specific competencies they can claim as Polynesians and as men earn them the privilege of being highly sought athletes. The haka performance by Polynesian rugby players has contributed to the sport’s expansion among men in the Polynesian geographical space (Hokowhitu 2004) and to their over-representation in professional rugby teams in mainland France (Gay 2018).
33Drawing on theories of ethnicity and its processes of boundary-making between (re-)valued “Us” groups (Lamont et al. 2016) and minoritized “Them” groups, this empirical study of Polynesian performance spaces reveals certain mechanisms of self-racialization and their implications. Outside the ethnic and racial reconfigurations occurring in the context of Polynesian performances in mainland France, Polynesian women and men systematically experience gendered forms of ethnic othering. The othering they experience, ranging from ignorance to denigration, in both social and administrative contexts, contributes to a “denial of their Frenchness” (Roux et al. 2023). While Polynesians experience this sense of being “a minority unlike the others” (Haddad 2018), their relatively “privileged” position (in the sense of Patricia Hill Collins, 1990) compared to other postcolonial ascriptions—notably due to exotic representations—leads them to assert their ethnicity and find new pride in it.
34Polynesian identities and skills may also be monetized. We observe how, in the context of a competitive industry, these identities and skills are transformed into ethnic resources, converted by the performance into a symbolic—and even material—profit. Full appropriation of a Polynesian identity becomes synonymous with rights to a cultural heritage, to its representation, transmission, and economic exchange. Self-racialization is one of the symbolic elements that Polynesians mobilize to assert their legitimacy, anchoring it in their body and in an unchanging nature. Their racialized body, from a phenotypic point of view, also becomes a resource to legitimize their “authenticity” in cultural performances whether for tourists in Polynesian spaces (Condevaux 2009) or for the majority population in mainland France.
35By asserting the valued dimensions of their biologized Polynesian “nature,” Polynesians demonstrate their agency, drawing from the otherness imposed on them to choose to endorse certain racial stereotypes that have relative symbolic capital. Restored pride in these biologized symbols allows them to secure a legitimate place—vis-à-vis non-members—in appropriating, transmitting and performing Polynesian culture, and to defend their ethnicity by a mechanism of transvaluation (Wimmer 2013). While racialization is first imposed on them by the majority population through an othering process, in these contexts, it is also the product of the racialized individuals themselves, who biologize the positive stereotypes they have selected. This empirical study thus builds on previous research on the agency of individuals and the strategies they use when confronted with the loss of value experienced in subordinate social positions, while illustrating the importance of context and the role played by self-racialization in this case.
- 10 This expression is borrowed from the title of Sarah Mazouz's (2017) book, La République et ses autr (...)
36Finally, the study reveals the importance of gender in these processes. Ethnic representations vary widely depending on gender. While they are more stigmatizing among men and more exoticizing among women, in both cases they are endowed with symbolic capital as compared to other “Others” of the French Republic.10 Racialized cultural characteristics are also typically gendered in both Polynesian dance performances and in physical activities and sports (flexibility for female dancers, strength for male rugby players), and are considered “natural” in both women and men (Guérandel 2016). These claims thus reflect a dual identity reaffirmation associated with both their gender and their Polynesian origin. These analyses demonstrate the “consubstantial” nature of gender and race in this context, in the sense that these social dynamics are intertwined and nourish each other (Kergoat 2009, Collins 1990).
37Racial and gendered reaffirmation thus appears to be a strategy used to assert identity and gain agency by taking part in a subtle social struggle against the minoritization and exclusion experienced in mainland France. Polynesian performances emerge as spaces where ethnicity and race are reaffirmed and (re)produced, not only to leverage the rare resources possessed by the Polynesian community in mainland France, but also to protect them from cultural appropriation. Thus, the migratory context in postcolonial mainland France lays the foundations for gendered “racial reconfigurations” (Le Renard 2016) in the Polynesian practices and performances developed there.
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