Session "The rural future under negotiation: endogenous sustainability and human diversification in European ethnic minority-based rural regions" ---------- During the last decades, some rural areas have attracted a variety of people, including international immigrants, while other rural areas continue a depopulation process (e.g., McAreavey & Argent, 2018; Woods, 2016). This paper studies various small villages of the Eastern Pyrenees, France, which is an ethnically diverse territory where international immigration is an opportunity for rural sustainability while the extreme right keeps growing. In fact, in English language, hamlet means ‘small village’, and, at the same time, Hamlet is the main character of an existential tragedy authored by William Shakespeare (Morén-Alegret & Wladyka, 2020). In many parts of Europe, including the Pyrenees, sustainable development of small villages is under threat due to, among other factors, depopulation, racism, or ageing, while many migrants or unsettled people are looking for a new place to live (Berthomière & Imbert, 2020). Depopulation makes these (often rural) places more vulnerable to natural hazards (e.g., wildfires) or uncontrolled speculation/abandonment (e.g., Badia et al. 2014). However, one can also find instances of active small global/globalised/glocal villages (Milazzo, 2015; Morén-Alegret et al. 2021): both ancient and new coming linguistic minorities can contribute to negotiate and achieve sustainable rural areas. In this sense, the humanly diverse French province (Département) of the Eastern Pyrenees is nicknamed as Northern Catalonia (Castex, 2005), including historical and socio-cultural links with the Spanish (southern) Catalonia. This paper is mainly based on semi-structured interviews with various informants as well as documental, statistical, cartographic, and photographic work. From 2019 to early 2023 fieldwork was carried out in various municipalities with fewer than 500 registered inhabitants in the French Eastern Pyrenees’ arrondissements of Ceret and Prades. This study is based upon research carried out within the UAB-ECONECOL group (SGR2021-2024 & SGR2017-20221, AGAUR) and during the project ”HAMLETS. Immigration and Sustainable Development in Small Villages” (2017-2020; see: https://ods.cat/en/hamlets-immigration-and-sustainable-development-in-small-villages/ ).