Becoming a Student in a French Overseas Territory
Public expenditure on education is one of the largest budget items in French Polynesia and have strengthened infrastructure, diversified the local educational offer and democratized access to higher education. The massification of access to post-baccalaureate training leaves in the shade the persistence of strong inequalities. In the local public debate, the “historical delay” of the Polynesian education system is put forward to explain these disparities. Based on a post-doctoral survey conducted using mixed methods, this article demonstrates that territorial, educational, gendered and social mechanisms combine to explain this segregative democratisation. Thus, the access of Polynesian baccalaureate holders to local (in Tahiti), national (in metropolitan France) or international (in Canada in particular) study paths is still very unevenly distributed in the local social space. Beyond the question of the efficiency of public investments, such a perspective questions the role of the school institution in the reproduction of inequalities.