One in 10 in France born overseas

One person in every 10 living in France was born overseas, according to the nation's main statistics agency, the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, or INSEE.

In its first close look at immigration for 10 years, the agency said that around 7 million people living in France in 2021 had been born in another country.

INSEE said the foreign-born population equated to 10.3 percent of the country's total population. Fifty-three years earlier, in 1968, the percentage had been 6.5 percent.

INSEE said most of the immigrants living in France in 1968 had been born in southern European countries, but the immigrant population in 2021 was mainly from Africa and Asia — with 14 percent from the continent of Asia and 12 percent from the African nation of Algeria, 12 percent from Morocco, 4 percent from Tunisia, and 8 percent from Portugal.

INSEE said the number of immigrants in France was typical of the average across Europe, while Germany and Spain saw far larger influxes.

The French daily newspaper Le Monde quoted Sylvie Le Minez, a spokesperson for INSEE as saying France has a long history of immigration and a rich experience of new arrivals settling in and becoming important ingredients in the wider society.

"A third of France's population has a link to immigration over three generations," she said. The Agence France-Presse news agency said INSEE noted that more than a third of foreign-born residents in 2021 had acquired French citizenship.

INSEE's report, titled Immigrants and Descendants of Immigrants in France, found most immigrants settled in major cities, with many favoring the capital, Paris, where one person in five in 2021 was born outside France.

Additionally, France, which was staunchly Catholic in the past, has become much more diverse in terms of religion. INSEE said 29 percent of France's population today identifies as Catholic, while 10 percent is Muslim, and 10 percent follows another religion. Some 51 percent declared no religious affiliation at all.

Across the wider continent of Europe, Eurostat, the European Union's official statistics agency, reported EU nations attracted around 2.3 million people during 2021 who had been born outside the bloc. At the same time, around 1.1 million people who had been born in the EU left the bloc.

Eurostat said its latest numbers show there had been "an important increase in 2021 compared to 2020, when an estimated 1.9 million immigrants (arrived in) the EU from non-EU countries and about 956,000 people emigrated from the EU to a country outside the EU". Germany saw most of the arrivals in 2021, with around 874,400 people moving there from outside the EU. Spain was second, with around 528,900 arrivals.