Official statistical data on the presence of migrants use three categories: immigrants, foreign nationals and native-born individuals with at least one parent who is a migrant. According to the most recent INSEE data, immigrant (i.e. individuals born foreign in a foreign country who might have obtained French nationality) represented on January 2014, 8.9% of the population in France (Brutel, 2016; OECD, 2017b). While there has been evolution in the countries of origin in the past 45 years, the main countries remain Italy, Spain, Portugal, Algeria and Morocco. France has a long history of international migration and the presence of migrants today results from several migration inflows from the 20th century. Between the two world wars, workers from Spain and Italy arrived in the country responding to the needs of the expanding industrial and agricultural sectors. After 1945, the reconstruction efforts particularly important in the most populated urban areas, called for workers from colonial Algeria, first, and other Maghreb areas after. They were followed from the 1960s by Portuguese and sub-Saharan Africa nationals, and by the end of the century arrivals of Asian migrants coming mainly from Turkey and China (Brutel, 2016). In 1968, there was a strong concentration of economic activity in the Île-de France region which accounted for, at that time, 40% of the industrial work and 30% of the French population. Consistently, 50% of immigrants settled in Île-de France. Yet, while industrial labour has been declining since the 1970s, especially in these areas, the immigrant population is still highly concentrated in these zones (Brutel, 2016).
Foreign-born represented in 2017 12.3% of France population. The rate of foreign-born over total population is lower in France compared to the OECD average (13.1%) and to other EU peers: in Germany foreign-born represent 15.4% of the population, in Belgium 16.7, in Austria 18.9% and in Switzerland 29.5% (OECD, 2018[1]).
While the population of foreign residents is smaller than in other European countries and France is close to the EU-27 average in terms of migrant population, the role of France as receiver of migrants throughout the 20th century means that France has a large second-generation migrant population, which is tracked by the INSEE through the “descendants of migrants” category (descendants d’immigrés). In 2008, France was the EU-27 country with the highest percentage of descendants of migrants (Bouvier, 2012). In 2015, 7.3 million people (11% of the population) born in France had at least one immigrant parent. Among them, 45% are of European origin, 31% from the Maghreb (i.e. Northern African), 11% Sub-Saharan Africa, 9% Asia, 4% America and Oceania (Brutel, 2017). Descendants of migrants are not as geographically clustered as immigrants: 30% of descendants of migrants live in the urban area of Paris (Brutel, 2017).