France is in the midst of a profound demographic transformation, and the fault line runs not through its borders, but through its families. The children of immigrants, the so-called second generation, are no longer a marginal statistical category. They are a growing, French-born, French-speaking presence in the country’s schools, workplaces, and public life. Yet a paradox sits at the heart of their experience: they are simultaneously more integrated into French society than their parents and more likely to report discrimination than the generation that actually migrated.
This deep dive moves beyond headline immigration totals to examine who the second generation actually are, how they are faring in education and employment, and why their experience of citizenship, identity, and belonging is reshaping the very meaning of “being French.”
Who are the second generation in France?
The statistical definition of descendants of immigrants
French statistics draw a sharp line between an immigrant and a descendant of an immigrant. An immigrant is a person born abroad and living in France who did not have French nationality at birth. A descendant of an immigrant, the second generation, is a person born in France with at least one parent who is an immigrant. This definition, used by the national statistics institute INSEE and the demographic research institute INED, excludes people who themselves migrated as children, and it does not classify a French-born person as an immigrant simply because of their parents’ birthplace.
The data source underpinning much of the most recent analysis is the Trajectoires et Origines 2 (TeO2) survey, conducted by INED and INSEE in 2019-2020 with a sample of 27,000 people aged 18 to 59, representative of the diversity of metropolitan France. Its findings, published in a major 600-page volume in May 2026, provide the most detailed picture yet of the second generation’s trajectories.
How many descendants of immigrants live in France?
As of 2025, France counted approximately 8.0 million descendants of immigrants, representing roughly 12% of the total population. This is a larger group than the immigrant population itself (8.0 million immigrants, or 11.6% of the population in 2025). When immigrants, descendants, and grandchildren are counted together, about one in three people in France has a direct family link to immigration across three generations, a share that rises to 41% when mixed unions are included.
The age structure tells a story of generational replacement. While descendants of immigrants make up just 7% of people over 50, they account for 11% of those aged 18 to 49 and 20% of minors. This is a young population reshaping the demographic profile of the country’s future workforce.
Immigrants, descendants of immigrants, and French citizens
A critical legal and conceptual distinction is often lost in public debate. Birthplace, parental birthplace, nationality, and citizenship are four separate dimensions.
| Group | Definition | Born in France? | Legal status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Immigrant | Born abroad, lives in France, not French at birth | No | May be foreign or naturalized French |
| Descendant of immigrant | Born in France, at least one immigrant parent | Yes | Usually French by birth or declaration |
| Person without migratory ancestry | No immigrant parent | Yes | French |
A child born in France to immigrant parents is not classified as an immigrant. They are French by birth under French nationality law, with nuances in certain cases such as Mayotte, and their statistical classification is entirely separate from their parents’. This distinction matters because public discourse frequently conflates the two, attributing characteristics of the first generation, such as language proficiency or legal precarity, to the second, which is overwhelmingly French-speaking and French-national.
Descendants of immigrants by origin (2025)
| Origin | Number (thousands) | % of descendants | % with one immigrant parent |
|---|---|---|---|
| Africa | 3,879 | 48.3 | 49 |
| Maghreb | 2,538 | 31.6 | 48 |
| Other Africa | 1,341 | 16.7 | 51 |
| Europe | 2,938 | 36.6 | 65 |
| Asia | 840 | 10.5 | 43 |
| Americas/Oceania | 367 | 4.6 | 71 |
| Total | 8,030 | 100 | 55 |
How has the second generation changed France’s population?
Generational change and family composition
The geographic origins of the second generation reflect France’s colonial and post-colonial migration history. In 2025, 48.3% of descendants of immigrants (3.9 million people) were of African origin, with the Maghreb (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia) alone accounting for 31.6%. A further 36.6% were of European origin, 10.5% of Asian origin, and 4.6% from the Americas and Oceania. Among the African-origin descendants, nearly half have only one immigrant parent, a marker of mixed parentage that is transforming family structures.
The role of mixed parentage
Mixed unions are the quiet engine of demographic change. Among the second generation, 59% are in a relationship with a partner of a different origin, and 45% have a partner with no immigrant ancestry at all. This is not a marginal phenomenon: it is the dominant pattern. As demographer Patrick Simon told Le Monde, “It’s diversity that prevails, not insular communities.”
This mixing is even visible in social circles. More than half of the majority population say almost all their friends share their origins, compared with just one in five immigrants and one in ten descendants of immigrants. On this measure, it is the majority population, not the second generation, that appears more socially closed.
Differences between generations and regions
The second generation is concentrated in France’s major urban areas, where jobs and housing are concentrated, and where rents are highest. 50% of immigrants live in major conurbations (and 59% of those from sub-Saharan Africa), compared with 22% of the majority population. This geographic concentration shapes access to schools, services, and employment networks, and it produces very different lived experiences of being “second generation” in a Paris banlieue, a provincial city, or a rural area.
Population definitions
| Group | Definition | Birthplace | Parental background |
|---|---|---|---|
| Immigrant | Born abroad, not French at birth, lives in France | Foreign country | Any |
| Descendant of immigrant | Born in France, at least one immigrant parent | France | At least one immigrant parent |
| Person without migratory ancestry | No immigrant parent | France | No immigrant parent |
How does educational attainment compare across generations?
School enrollment and educational outcomes
Education is the area where the second generation has made the most dramatic gains, and where the gap between potential and outcome is most revealing. The proportion of children of immigrants holding a higher-education degree has risen from about 1 in 20 among their parents to nearly one in three among the second generation (33%). This is one of the fastest intergenerational educational escalations recorded in a developed country.
Yet gaps remain. Immigrant youths generally obtain the baccalauréat, the gateway to higher education, less frequently than non-immigrants (61% vs 68%), and only one in five immigrant youths obtains at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with a quarter of non-immigrants. By the third generation, the picture is more nuanced: 46% of the grandchildren of North African immigrants have accessed higher education, compared with 52% of those of Southern European descent and 55% of native French families.
Access to higher education
Access to higher education varies sharply by both origin and gender. A 2026 study by France’s Défenseur des droits, the national human rights ombudsman, found that men of immigrant descent are less often graduates than the majority population, particularly descendants of Algerian immigrants. Women of all origins are more highly educated than men, but they remain less likely than women without immigrant ancestry to hold a higher-education degree. Women with one non-European parent report the highest levels of graduate education (20.1%), surpassing native-origin women (13.7%).
How parental education and household income matter
These gaps are not solely, or even primarily, a product of migration background. They are heavily mediated by family socioeconomic resources. Descendants of immigrants are more likely to come from families with lower parental education, single-earner households, and lower incomes, factors that depress educational outcomes independently of origin. When these variables are controlled for, the “immigrant penalty” in education narrows substantially, though it does not disappear entirely. The TeO2 research shows substantial catching-up in educational attainment across three generations, particularly given the very low educational starting point of many immigrant grandparents.
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What does the data show about employment and economic mobility?
Employment and unemployment among descendants of immigrants
The labour-market picture is the starkest evidence of the second generation’s paradoxical position. In 2025, the unemployment rate among descendants of immigrants was 11.7%, compared with 6.5% for people without migratory ancestry, a gap of more than five percentage points. Among immigrants themselves, the rate was 12.4%.
The gap is even more pronounced for specific origins. For descendants of Maghreb origin, the over-risk of unemployment persists at the same level as for their parents; for descendants of sub-Saharan Africa, it is even higher than for the first generation. One year after leaving the education system, the unemployment rate is 29% for descendants of non-French parents, compared with 11% for those with two French-native parents.
Employment indicators (2025)
| Group | Employment rate (%) | Unemployment rate (%) |
|---|---|---|
| Descendants of immigrants | 59.5 | 11.7 |
| Immigrants | 61.9 | 12.4 |
| No migratory ancestry | 71.9 | 6.5 |
Occupational distribution and qualifications
A damning finding emerges when qualifications are held constant. The Défenseur des droits study of 2026 found that one in two male graduates of sub-Saharan African descent occupies a job below their qualification level, compared with just over one in three of the majority population. Professional trajectories for women of sub-Saharan, Moroccan, and Tunisian origin are more frequently discontinuous, marked by unemployment spells and job changes, even at equivalent qualification levels.
Discrimination in recruitment and the workplace
The single most powerful piece of evidence comes from a large-scale correspondence test conducted for the French government across 40 major companies. The test involved 5,329 paired applications, identical in qualifications and experience, differing only in the supposedly Maghrebi or European consonance of the applicant’s name, for candidates who were all French nationals. The result: the success rate for the Maghrebi-name candidate was 9.3%, against 12.5% for the European-name candidate. This is not a perception gap. It is measured discrimination.
The experience of discrimination is also rising. The TeO2 survey found that 41% of the population is linked to immigration through family, marriage, or generations, and that experiences of discrimination have increased since the previous survey. The second generation, “pourtant pleinement intégrés” (“yet fully integrated”), faces more acute discrimination than their immigrant parents, particularly those of Maghrebi or sub-Saharan African origin. Some 34% of descendants of Asian and African origin report having experienced discrimination, compared with 26% of the first generation.
How do citizenship, identity, and religious affiliation vary across generations?
Citizenship and participation in French society
French nationality law grants citizenship to children born in France to foreign parents, generally at birth, with a declaration procedure from age 13 and automatic acquisition at majority in most cases. The second generation is therefore overwhelmingly French by nationality. However, electoral registration rates among the second generation are lower than among French people without immigrant background of the same age, a gap that researchers attribute to a combination of administrative friction, lower political engagement, and a sense that voting does not change their circumstances.
Language, cultural identity, and social belonging
The linguistic integration of the second generation is near-total. Nine in ten descendants of immigrants aged 18 to 59 learned French with their parents in childhood, and for 40% it was the only language transmitted. Some 52% were raised in both French and at least one other language, and 59% name a foreign language as their family reference language, though true mastery of that language varies widely, with only 16% able to read, write, speak, and understand it very well.
This linguistic shift is accompanied by a powerful subjective identification with France. 94% of children of immigrants and 98% of children of mixed families say they feel “entirely French.” Yet this self-identification coexists with external questioning. As one recent report noted, “some immigrants who were born and raised in France and speak French as their mother tongue may still have their ‘Frenchness’ questioned because of their ethnic background.” During the 2022 World Cup, an Argentine official described the French team as an “African team,” and former Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said the team was “very good, but there are no French people in it,” remarks that crystallise the gap between how the second generation sees itself and how it is sometimes seen.
Religious identification across generations
Religious affiliation declines from the first to the second generation, but less so than for the population without migratory ancestry. In 2019-2020, 78% of immigrants declared a religion, compared with 60% of descendants of immigrants and 42% of people without migratory ancestry. Among descendants who declare a religion, 52% are Muslim. The descendants of immigrants from Africa, Turkey, and the Middle East remain particularly likely to declare a religion, more than two-thirds, even as overall affiliation falls.
Importantly, religion is not determined by parental origin. Descendants with only one immigrant parent have a much more distanced relationship to religion (46% declare one), close to the level of the majority population, than those with two immigrant parents (72%). A 2026 study found that a symbolic change to birthright citizenship rules, requiring second-generation immigrants to state their allegiance, reduced cultural integration as measured by religiosity and naming patterns, without affecting economic or political integration. This suggests that integration is not a one-way process but responds to how the state treats the second generation.
What barriers and opportunities affect integration?
Housing access and residential concentration
Housing is where cumulative disadvantage becomes spatially visible. While 58% of the majority population are homeowners, this is true for only 33% of immigrants and 48% of the second generation. 34% of immigrants live in social housing, compared with 23% of their descendants and 10% of the majority population; for immigrants from North and sub-Saharan Africa, the figures rise to 46% and 50%.
Residential segregation is pronounced. 36% of people of Maghrebi origin and 51% of those of sub-Saharan African origin live in the 20% of neighbourhoods with the highest concentration of non-European immigrants, compared with 6% of the majority population. Similarly, 31% of Maghrebi-origin and 33% of sub-Saharan-origin people live in the 20% of neighbourhoods with the highest unemployment rates, against 10% of the majority population. As the TeO2 researchers note, this segregation “translates into highly differentiated residential environments by origin, which in turn weighs on access to resources: schools, jobs, transport and services.”
Discrimination in housing access compounds the problem: 19% of immigrants from North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa report having been treated discriminatorily when searching for a place to live.
Access to employment and professional networks
Beyond recruitment discrimination, the second generation faces barriers in training and workplace advancement. The Défenseur des droits study documents discrimination “from the search for an internship, to hiring, to career progression (pay, promotion, dismissal) and in new forms of precarious work.” Professional networks, so often the informal channel through which jobs are found, are less accessible to those whose parents did not grow up in French professional circles.
Social mobility and inequality
The overall trajectory is one of real but incomplete social mobility. The second generation is far more educated than its parents, and many have entered professional and managerial occupations. Yet the persistence of unexplained employment gaps, with 80% of the unemployment gap for men of Maghrebi origin remaining unexplained by qualifications, experience, or other observable characteristics, points to structural barriers that education alone cannot overcome. Crucially, these differences between groups do not by themselves establish a causal effect of migration background; they reflect a complex interplay of family resources, discrimination, neighbourhood effects, and institutional practices. But the combination of large-scale correspondence testing and detailed survey data makes it increasingly difficult to attribute the gaps to anything other than discriminatory treatment.
What could France’s population look like across future generations?
France’s population future will be shaped by five interacting forces: fertility, migration, intermarriage, naturalisation, and identity change. Fertility among immigrant women has been converging toward the national average. Migration flows, while politically contested, remain a demographic reality. Intermarriage, already at 59% for the second generation, will progressively blur the boundaries of “immigrant origin” as a meaningful category. Naturalisation transforms legal status, and identity is increasingly self-defined rather than ascribed.
Any credible projection must be transparent about assumptions and avoid projecting ethnic or religious populations without a robust demographic model. What can be said with confidence is that the second generation is not a temporary phenomenon but a permanent structural feature of French society. The question is not whether France will be shaped by its descendants of immigrants, but how, and on what terms.
Recent shocks and the political context
The statistical trends above are the slow-moving geology beneath France’s political earthquakes. In June 2023, the police killing of Nahel Merzouk, a 17-year-old of North African descent, in Nanterre triggered three weeks of nationwide riots, reviving a pattern that stretches back to the 1983 March for Equality and Against Racism and the 2005 banlieue riots. As one analysis noted, “a significant part of the protesting youth are precisely the descendants of those who emigrated to France from the states of Africa and the Middle East.”
In October 2026, a new wave of protests over the cost of living escalated into widespread violence, arson, and looting, with 1,800 arrests and over 500 police officers, gendarmes, and firefighters injured. The town hall in Limoges, a building over 140 years old, was set on fire. President Macron vowed that those responsible “will be prosecuted and punished,” while opposition politicians called for the interior minister’s resignation. Analysts again pointed to the second generation’s sense of exclusion: “The descendants of migrants in the second and even third generation, who can essentially already be considered native French, feel like strangers.”
The TeO2 survey, published in May 2026, arrived as a corrective to stereotype-driven debate. It found that only 9% of immigrants entered France without a visa, that the proportion of undocumented immigrants has not increased over time, and that diversity, not communitarianism, is the dominant social pattern. Yet it also confirmed that discrimination has risen, and that the second generation bears its brunt.
Conclusion: The second generation and the redefinition of France
The story of France’s second generation is a story of extraordinary integration and stubborn exclusion occurring at the same time. In language, education, identity, and social mixing, the descendants of immigrants are more French than their parents ever were. In unemployment, housing, and experiences of discrimination, they are often treated as less French than their compatriots.
This paradox is the central fact of contemporary French society. The second generation is not a problem to be solved; it is the future that has already arrived. Whether France’s institutions, its labour market, its housing system, its police, and its political culture, can adapt to that future is the question that will define the next generation.
FAQs
1. How many second generation immigrants live in France?
Approximately 8.0 million descendants of immigrants lived in France in 2025, representing about 12% of the population. This includes people born in France with at least one immigrant parent.
2. What is the difference between immigrants and descendants of immigrants?
An immigrant was born abroad and did not have French nationality at birth. A descendant of an immigrant was born in France to at least one immigrant parent. The two groups have different legal statuses, demographic profiles, and social trajectories.
3. Are children born in France to immigrant parents considered French?
Yes. Under French nationality law, children born in France to foreign parents generally acquire French nationality, either by declaration from age 13 or automatically at majority. A French-born descendant of immigrants is not classified as an immigrant.
4. How do descendants of immigrants perform in education?
The second generation has made major educational gains: 33% hold a higher-education degree, compared with 5% of their parents. However, gaps remain at the baccalauréat level and in access to elite institutions, largely mediated by family socioeconomic background.
5. What does research show about employment discrimination in France?
A large-scale correspondence test across 40 major companies found that a candidate with a Maghrebi-sounding name had a 9.3% success rate, versus 12.5% for a European-sounding name, despite identical qualifications and French nationality. The second generation reports more discrimination than their parents, particularly those of North and sub-Saharan African origin.
6. How does religious identity change across generations?
Religious affiliation declines from 78% among immigrants to 60% among descendants, and to 42% among those without migratory ancestry. Among descendants who declare a religion, 52% are Muslim. Descendants with only one immigrant parent are much less religious than those with two.
7. Does France collect ethnicity data in its population census?
France does not collect ethnic or racial data in its census, in line with its republican principle of colour-blind citizenship. Statistical analysis of origins relies on birthplace and parental birthplace, and on large-scale surveys such as TeO2, rather than on ethnic self-identification.
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