Conclusion

The main aim of this study was to analyse the construction of macro-regional imaginaries through students’ practices and representations. One of the specific features of this study, in terms of its methodology, is that it uses digital mental maps to understand spatial imaginaries. The scales of the entities analysed - regions of the world with a wide range of coverage (from the city to the world) - are also original for this type of survey, using a tool that is usually mobilised as part of participatory urban planning projects. The aim is to analyse the diverse, multiple and interacting spatial entities that make sense to a student.

The regions of the world represented vary in nature, scale and number within the same response, and mobilise varied and complex links between these traced spaces. Taking into account this spatial input format, the complexity of the responses and the constraints of the survey (in spatial, linguistic and temporal terms) meant setting up a chain of processing, filtering, cleaning and correcting the responses, as well as the mental maps and their geometries.

This extensive work also enabled the database to be enriched by the creation of new variables resulting from recoding, harmonisation and categorisation. This concerns the responses in the respondents database, but also the geometries database. In the latter case, a process of construction, control, correction, classification and weighted representation of the geometries produced in the responses was necessary. The semantic dimension is also central to this work, involving the processing of the names associated with the plotted geometries, firstly by cleaning them up and then by enriching them by labelling them. Over and above the objectives set out above, the work carried out as a whole makes it possible to respond to the challenges of collaboration and cross-referencing with other data collected as part of the research project (macro-regions in the media, discourse of political decision-makers).

The database also makes it possible to analyse more specifically the construction of plural, complex and vague imaginaries, which vary according to geographical, social or political contexts. It can also be cross-referenced with other databases to assess, for example, the performativity (or otherwise) of institutional and political discourse in students’ representations. This database can be used as a basis for further research, for example through interviews on imaginary worlds and their construction in different contexts and according to students’ socio-spatial trajectories.