Overview
- INSEE began the exhaustive operation on November 27 in partnership with communes, deploying about 700 enumerators and 80 coordinators across the island.
- Authorities seek an authoritative update after Cyclone Chido’s displacement, with official estimates at 329,000 contested by local officials who cite up to roughly 500,000 residents.
- Enumerators knock on every door, collect household and housing data, and municipalities input the forms before INSEE retrieves them for analysis.
- For persistent non-response, agents ask neighbors and, if needed, INSEE imputes Mayotte’s average household size to avoid penalizing communes, with officials citing only about 4% unreachable dwellings.
- Teams use local languages such as shimaoré and stress that the survey is not an immigration enforcement action, with controls and verification to follow and first estimates expected in summer 2026.