‘One in 10 people in France an immigrant’

PARIS: A tenth of people living in France in 2021 were born foreigners, national statistics agency INSEE said on Thursday, in its first study on immigration in a decade.

Almost seven million people, or 10.3 percent of all people in France that year were immigrants, meaning “born a foreigner in a foreign country”, it said. In comparison, 6.5 percent of French residents hailed from abroad in 1968, it added.

More than a third of immigrants in France in 2021 had acquired French citizenship, it said. Immigrants and their descendants had largely blended into society, many having children born in France, the study showed. By the third generation, nine out of ten only had one or two grandparents who had immigrated to France.