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This article proposes a sociology of intermediaries in autochtony-related mobilisations. It invites us to look beyond the apparent contradiction between a “top-down” and a “bottom-up” approach, by focusing on the trajectories of those who stand on the margins of these heterogeneous social spaces. These brokers of autochtony are presented here as essential figures in the mobilisation of identity. They are referred to as “boundary-entrepreneurs”, who take advantage not only of their interstitial position in the social order, but also of the projections and manipulations to which they are subjected on both sides of their enterprise. The role of these secondary elites in autochtony-related movements is examined from the Fouta-Jallon in Guinea. Between 2010 and 2015, a major identity campaign, known as the Manden-Jallon campaign, sought to promote a new autochtonous community in the region. In a highly ethnicised context, marked by the perpetuation of slave hierarchies, Manden-Jallon supporters claimed to unite all descendants of the region’s former subalterns by reclaiming their legitimacy as original inhabitants. The controversy is presented “from the middle” (rather than “from above” or “from below”), through the trajectories of four of these brokers of autochtony, situated at the intersection of the local and the (trans)national, the moral and the instrumental.