Demographics of France - Ethnic Groups

Ethnic Groups

The modern ethnic French are the descendants of Celts, Iberians, Ligurians, Italic tribes (including Romans) and Greeks in southern France, later mixed with large group of Germanic peoples arriving at the end of the Roman Empire such as the Franks the Burgundians, Alamanni and Goths, very small portions of Moors and Saracens in the south, and Scandinavians, Vikings who became, by mixing with the local population, the Normans and settled mostly in Normandy in the 9th century.

Due to a law dating from 1872, the French Republic prohibits performing census by making distinction between its citizens regarding their race or their beliefs.

Some organizations, such as the Representative Council of Black Associations (French: Conseil représentatif des associations noires de France, CRAN), have argued in favour of the introduction of data collection on minority groups but this has been resisted by other organizations and ruling politicians, often on the grounds that collecting such statistics goes against France's secular principles and harks back to Vichy-era identity documents. During the 2007 presidential election, however, Nicolas Sarkozy was polled on the issue and stated that he favoured the collection of data on ethnicity. Part of a parliamentary bill which would have permitted the collection of data for the purpose of measuring discrimination was rejected by the Conseil Constitutionnel in November 2007.

However, that law does not concern surveys and polls, which are free to ask those questions if they wish. The law also allows for an exception for public institutions such as the INED or the INSEE whose job it is to collect data on demographics, social trends and other related subjects, on condition that the collection of such data has been authorized by the National Commission for Computer-stocked data and Freedom (CNIL) and the National Council of Statistical Information (CNIS).

Of European ethnic groups not indigenous to France, the most numerous are people of Italian family origin and it is estimated that about 5 million citizens (8% of the population) are at least partly of Italian origin if their parentage is retraced over three generations. This is due to waves of Italian immigration, notably during the late 19th century and early 20th century. Other large European groups of non-native origin are Spaniards, Portuguese, Polish, and Greeks. Also, due to more recent immigration, between five and six million people of Maghrebi origin and approximately 200,000 Turks inhabit France. An influx of North African Jews immigrated to France in the 1950s and after the Algerian War due to the decline of the French empire. Subsequent waves of immigration followed the Six-Day War, when some Moroccan and Tunisian Jews settled in France. Hence, by 1968, North African Jews were about 500,000 and the majority in France. As these new immigrants were already culturally French they needed little time to adjust to French society. Black people come from both the French overseas territories (French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion, and former colony Haiti) and Sub-Saharan Africa (especially Cote d'Ivoire, Mali, and Senegal). France has the largest black population in Europe.

Solis, a marketing company, recently estimated the numbers for ethnic minorities (immigrants and 2nd generation) in France in 2009 as 3.26 million Maghrebis (5.23%), 1.83 million Black people (2.94%, 1.08 million Sub-Saharan Africans and 757,000 French from French West Indies) and 250,000 Turkish (0.71%) .