Despite being the only French settler colony featuring a nearly homogenously white population in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the islands of Saint Pierre and Miquelon have been under-studied in the context of imperial identities. Successive plans to evacuate the islands in the first half of the twentieth century shed light on significant ambiguities: the islanders received special attention, in Québec as well as in France, largely due to their blood; but at the same time, their possible transformation into farmers was debated at length, and their Frenchness was even called into question in certain contexts. These migrations, which for some called to mind the Acadian diaspora, reveal debates, fault-lines and tensions around immigration and identity in two different settings: France and Canada – and this at a critical point for their respective immigration policies.