Formed during colonial times and made more complex by significant migratory contributions in the 19 th century, the population of French Guiana, Surinam and Guyana has experienced a history in which the construction of socioracial hierarchies has gone together with ongoing processes of categorization, which continue today to characterize the social interactions. In all three Guyanas, politics is thus often racialized or ethnicized, and ethno-racial relations underlie many social, professional and administrative interactions. However, these relationships are also very fluid, the ethnoracial groups are heterogeneous and their boundaries are not fixed ; they fluctuate and their actualization, recomposition and uses must be questioned in a diversity of political, administrative and social scenes. © 2020 Institut des Hautes Etudes de l'Amerique Latine (IHEAL). All rights reserved.