The article presents a study conducted with two schools (5th to 8th year of fundamental school) in the city of Cayenne, French Guiana. It analyzes discursive practices produced by pupils with the purpose of understanding how the issue of diversity is manifested, and how it takes part in the construction of the experience of schooling. The empirical device consisted of collective and individual interviews, and was supported by a perspective sensitive to the social practices, recognizing the value of the agents' capacity for action and reflection. The text examines the way in which these pupils construct their school experience in a dependent society, marked by cultural and linguistic diversity, at a school that combines the rhetoric of equal opportunities with an intensely competitive atmosphere. The sociability between peers stands out as an important dimension of the school experience, and the youngsters describe how it is oriented by the images of the self and of the other constructed from elements of the world of school, of the universe of youth culture, and of the social-cultural context of the Guiana. The pupils echo the different visions of the school in the Guiana and, caught between the criticism of the model and practices of the French school and the adhesion to it, express their expectations and formulate their perspectives. Behind the criticism they make, the adolescents demand being recognized as singular people, an issue that sits at the core of the processes of their subjective construction.
Diversity; School experience; Youngsters and education; French Guiana