Seven million immigrants, or 10.3% of the population, will live in France in 2021, according to a demographic study published on Thursday, which for the first time in ten years examines the evolution of immigration across generations.
“10.3% of the population living in France are immigrants” in terms of a foreign-born person in 2021, compared to “6.5% in 1968”, writes the National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) in its document titled “Immigrants and Descendants of Immigrants in France”.
More than a third (36%) of these people have acquired French nationality since their arrival.
Among the descendants of immigrants, more than 50% of second-generation descendants have only one immigrant parent, and of third-generation descendants (with at least one immigrant grandparent), nine out of ten have only one or two immigrant grandparents.
The origin is diverse. Where immigrants came mainly from southern Europe fifty years ago, today they mainly come from the Maghreb, Africa or Asia.
Thus, immigrants from Spain and Italy have increased from 543,000 in 2011 to 531,000 in 2021, while North Africans now represent 2 million people (1.63 million in 2011). Overall, almost half of the immigrants in 2021 are from Africa (3.31 million out of 6.96).
Women make up half (52%) of this population today (44% in 1968).
Immigration is concentrated in big cities, according to the study, with 20% of Paris’s population being immigrants, 32% in Seine-Saint-Denis, a popular suburb north of the capital.