Mauritius: is there a creole demography?

Nancy Stiegler, University of the Western Cape

Mauritius has a unique African demography. It underwent its demographic transition in the 1960s. However, Mauritius is by no means an egalitarian society. The paper uses historical and contemporary census data to explore whether the people of African descent--"the creoles"--have a special demography. Were they part of the demographic transition? If not, what is the purpose of maintaining the elaborate hierarchical census classification of "general population" and subgroups of "Franco-Mauritian" and "Creole". Is Mauritius a patchwork of very different populations which have very different demographic patterns or is the demography in Mauritius homogenous? In other words is there a Creole Demography? To answer the question we will consider the language, the structure of the population, as well as nuptiality and fertility issues, using the data of the Mauritian Population and Housing Census 2000.