While immigrants made up 6.5 per cent of the population half a century ago, their proportion has grown to more than 10 per cent by today. A third of the country's residents have some kind of migration background. Nearly half of the migrants are of African origin, with more and more migrants coming from Asia.

France’s National Institute of Statistics (INSEE) has published shocking new figures regarding migration. The bureau’s latest report suggests that migration affects around 20 million residents, which means that practically every third French person has some connection with migration.

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L’Insee Références – Immigrés et descendants d’immigrés en France – édition 2023 fait le point en 4 dossiers et 40 fiches sur les données concernant l’#immigration
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The latest data from 2021 shows that almost seven million people, or 10.3 per cent of all people in France that year were immigrants, INSEE reports, adding that 55 years ago, in 1968, their proportion was only 6.5 per cent. Between 1975 and 1990, the pace of migration – measured to be around 7.4 per cent – was not particularly dynamic. Since the early 2000s, however, the number of migrants has seen a steady rise, and they come from a growing number of countries.

As to the territorial distribution of migrants, half of them live in France’s 13 departments, but most reside in and around the capital. INSEE’s data suggest that 20 per cent, or one fifth, of Paris’s population are immigrants. Their proportion is even higher in Seine-Saint-Denis department, near the capital, where it stands at 33 per cent.

The region surrounding Paris is very popular with immigrants. 37 per cent of them live in the Ile-de-France region around the capital, which is also home to 18 per cent of the total population.

The immigrants’ territorial distribution also varies based on their countries of origin. Immigrants and their descendants from Portugal and Africa live in the Ile-de-France region around Paris, whereas many Italians and their descendants are residents of the Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region, near the Italian border. Spanish immigrants typically live in the Occitanie region near the Spanish border, while immigrants of North African origin and their descendants are concentrated in the Rhone Valley and Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region, which link the Paris Basin, Burgundy and the Mediterranean.

The document also mentions that more and more Africans migrate choose to settle down in France. In 2019, France saw the arrival of 272 thousand immigrants, who came to stay for a period of at least one year, and 41 per cent of them hailed from Africa, data by INSEE suggests. A decade earlier, in 2009, 33 per cent of foreigners staying in France were African nationals.