Oiapoque, the city where it begins Brazil: the frontier in construction and regional development’s challenges

Abstract

Oiapoque, the city where it begins Brazil: the frontier in construction and Regional Development’s challenges Abstract Oiapoque is the only brazilian border with an european overseas, the French Guiana. Particularly this region and its boundary condition are faced with challenges to their effective integration into the regional development process, since it presents different conditions of other brazilian borders with independent countries, involved in cross-border agreements. Brazil and French Guiana have diplomatic restrictions that limit migration, cooperation, solidarity and trade relations, so the socio-spatial and economical practices, guided by these dynamics of restrictive relationships to the free movement of people and trade, they are built up often to State default. Regional challenges for the development of Oiapoque county are discussed in this article showing that the social invisibility, territorial isolation and the condition of "marginal" border contexts are being broken by the new dynamics of socioeconomical and political organization emerged in the last decades.