France’s Prison Islands: From the Overseas Penal Colonies to Liminal Spaces of the Hexagon

This article sheds light on France’s continued use of islands as sites of incarceration in the period after the formal closure of its overseas penal colonies. The article begins by providing a brief historical outline of the overseas penal colonies in French Guiana and New Caledonia, before a more detailed overview of the varying ways in which France’s mainland islands have been used as sites of incarceration. In doing so, the article aims to show how the “postcolonial prison” was mapped back onto mainland France and, thus, does not constitute a legacy of colonialism only in former colonized states and territories, but appears in liminal spaces on the edges of the former metropolitan centre. The article will then analyse the ways in which such spaces have been and continue to be imagined, represented and memorialized, with a particular focus on Île de Ré, which continues to house one of France’s largest prisons to this day.