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Immigrant Population in France

Wednesday 15 December 2010

The French government have recently published latest figures on the number of immigrants in France, including those from the UK and other EU countries.

According to Insee, the French national statistical office, there are over 5 million immigrants living in France, accounting for 8% of the population.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given the history of France, the largest group of immigrants comes from Algeria.

The analysis shows that there were 142,949 British nationals living in France in 2007, up from 125,000 in 1999, a 14% increase in eight years. The figures exclude second homes, of which there are believed to be around 200,000, a figure difficult to confirm.

If press reports are to be believed, there has been a net migration of Brits from France in the last few years, but we will need to await the publication of later figures to find out if this is indeed the case.

The composition of the over 1 million 'other' nationalities are not provided by Insee.

The following table gives the number of immigrants in France by country of birth.

Immigrants According to Country of Origin
Country 1999 2007
Algeria 576,000 702,324
Morocco 521,000 645,246
Portugal 570,000 575,745
Italy 381,000 323,305
Spain 176,000 262,512
Turkey 202,000 234,512
Tunisia 317,000 230,821
United Kingdom
125,000 142,949
Germany 75,000 127,933
Belgium 93,000 104,254
Poland 54,000 90,970
Vietnam 99,000 74,245
China 30,000 73,492
Senegal 72,000 73,209
Serbia N/A 66,051
Mali N/A 57,490
Côte d'Ivoire N/A 57,200
Cameroon N/A 55,414
Switzerland N/A 52,645
Cambodia N/A 51,614
Other Countries N/A 1,146,204
Total N/A 5,147,723

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