ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the expansion of the tourism sector of Mayotte Island. It focuses on the agents of this social process by defining the effective 'imaginary makers' of Mayotte. Tourism in Mayotte is more a 'perpetual project' than a social or, even less, economic reality. Marie-Francoise Lanfant has shown how tourism is an ingenious and pervasive global phenomenon. Tourism in Mayotte today appears more as a migratory phenomenon than as something that has been thought out or imagined. The chapter explores the pieces of the puzzle preceding the genesis of this tourism imaginary. The lack of a tourism imaginary of Mayotte raises questions at a time when the island is trying to find its place in the republic. Referring to the notion of "imaginaries" immediately leads scholars in political science to think about Anderson's conception of "imagined communities". His founding work legitimated the use of the concept of "imaginary" and gave it a scientific dimension.
