Facing Immigration : The Scholar and the Politician

We are entering an election period, particularly in my two countries, France and Sweden. Immigration ranks fourth among voters' concerns in France (INSEE, June 2026), while climate change only appears in seventh place in both France and Sweden. Both countries have experienced, or are still experiencing, difficulties related to immigration, although the situations are very different. Sweden experienced a wave of immigration in 2015, welcoming 175,000 migrants during the large-scale Syrian and Afghan exodus to Europe, representing nearly 1.8% of its population in a single year. The integration of these migrants presented a considerable challenge, compounded by gang-related violence, unrelated to the new arrivals, but which contributed to the rise of the far-right vote. France, for its part, only took in 40,000 Syrians between 2015 and 2024, and although it faces illegal immigration, this remains relatively marginal compared to its population and that of other European countries facing the same situation.

In any case, the elections are approaching, and I thought it would be a good time to publish my summary of François Héran's closing lecture on May 15, 2025. In June 2017, the professors of the Collège de France, a prestigious public research and higher education institution in Paris, entrusted him with a chair entitled "Migrations and Societies." He wanted to demonstrate his "desire to address the issue of migration from multiple perspectives." Over eight years, he invited no fewer than one hundred specialists to the seminar associated with his course, which consistently drew full houses. Their presentations were filmed, and the resulting collection constitutes an encyclopedia on migration, totaling approximately 250 hours. François Héran also served for ten years as director of INED, the French National Institute for Demographic Studies.

Quantifying immigration data using reliable statistical sources, as François Héran does, could allow for a more reasoned debate on the subject. Unfortunately, as is often the case, politics and demagoguery have turned it into a battleground for emotions and votes, always based on highly subjective grounds. Nevertheless, the statistics remain factual and deserve greater prominence.

Below are the passages I found most relevant. Alternatively, for a more complete reading, I recommend ordering the booklet via the following link (in French only so far, unfortunately):

https://www.lcdpu.fr/books/3ABC5BBD-9379-46B6-A1D9-2A315FA8A275

FACING IMMIGRATION, THE SCHOLAR AND THE POLITICIAN

Crossed perspectives on migration: a personal and collective journey

Migration is a multidimensional phenomenon, encompassing geographical, economic, social, legal, and geopolitical aspects. (…) Today, analyzing the discourse and arguments surrounding the issue, supplemented by observing social networks, is crucial for measuring the growing gap between rhetoric and reality, between fake news and facts.

Ideally, the social science researcher working on migrations should not only acquire a statistical, legal, economic, historical, geographical, philosophical, religious culture, but should also "know society," as they said in the 17th century, that is, rub shoulders with social life, diversify their experiences, and interact with people from all walks of life, starting with exiles and migrants.

Divided into nations, people feel little connection to universal migration; they generally think in terms of a generation, within the confines of a single country. Many of our contemporaries are alarmed by the rise in migration and the progress of globalization, perceived as forces of disorder and decline, a general entropy that must be resisted by safeguarding the last bastions of order: national identities. Others, on the contrary, heed the lessons of history and prefer to focus on the shared values of Europe and beyond.

The crowds that throng to National Rally rallies have a slogan they chant for long minutes: "This is our home! This is our home!" They wouldn't proclaim it with such fervor if it were merely obvious or a truism. What they demand, with the energy of despair, is a return to the past, to a world where everyone had their place, a world without immigrants, where natives (or those perceived as such) reigned supreme. "This is our home" is not a statement of fact; it's a demand.

Is the uprooting of populations arriving today from the East or the South so different from the formidable upheaval that was the rural exodus between regions which, it is often forgotten, felt very foreign to one another? It is only with the benefit of hindsight that we can imagine the rural exodus as a migration that was "truly our own." In the first half of the 19th century, it was still perceived as a foreign and barbaric intrusion.

In Western countries, at least half, if not two-thirds, of the population agrees with statements such as "there are too many foreigners," "they aren't making enough effort to integrate," and "we no longer feel at home," regardless of the actual local level of immigration. The backdrop of our societies reflects this initial verdict: others are superfluous. We find it difficult to accept that foreigners who are too obviously foreign can feel at home in our country. While public opinion is largely prejudiced against immigration, it also sees it as a useful compromise. Two-thirds of the American population acknowledge that legal immigrants fill jobs left vacant by native-born citizens; the proportion rises to three-quarters for undocumented immigrants. Two-thirds of the French are somewhat or very much in favor of "regularizing undocumented immigrants if they are already working in professions where recruitment is difficult." (1)

Many Europeans discovered during the 2020 pandemic that society cannot function without immigration. Thus, at first glance, 60% of Britons believe there are too many immigrants. But when asked in which sectors they are considered excessive, the rate of rejection drops to a tiny minority. Undesirable overall, immigration is desirable in detail.

The scholar and politics

Can we fault an academic for speaking out in the public debate on immigration for breaking their silence?

The author believes there are two phases in answering the question, one of which conditions the other: scientific observation of reality, followed by public action, by engagement. How can these be linked? The primary imperative, according to him, is to take stock of things, in this case, the migratory phenomenon—a measurement that is both quantitative and qualitative, based on a recognized method, always open to criticism, certainly, but always improvable. However, in seeking to establish the facts, the scholar is inevitably led to re-establish them , even if it means challenging the prevailing migratory narrative perpetuated by opinion polls and flattered by a growing segment of the political and media establishment.

In matters of migration, it is not the scientist who unduly meddles in politics, but the politician who regularly meddles in science by casually throwing around figures supposedly meant to reveal the truth to the public and frame the debate. If these figures turn out to distort or misrepresent reality, the scientist is then obliged to verify them and, if necessary, respond. In other words, the politician who inappropriately assumes the role of scientist should not be surprised to find the scientist standing in their way.

We might welcome the fact that public decisions are based on numerical arguments if the goal were truly to base an action program on objective data. The Obama administration, for example, touted the merits of a data-driven or evidence-based policy , that is, a policy guided by data from reliable sources: censuses, experiments, surveys, etc. That era ended when Donald Trump summarily dismissed the director of the Bureau of Employment Statistics on the grounds that she wasn't delivering the expected figures.

Public decision-making in France is largely based on objective data. In the field of migration, however, this is no longer the case. While the quality of data has steadily improved thanks to the combined efforts of INSEE, Eurostat, the OECD, and the United Nations Population Division, politicians seem to consult it less and less, or with increasing inaccuracy. When they brandish figures, it is not to adhere to scientifically established facts, but to "present themselves as scientific" to the public and to cloak themselves in a semblance of objectivity.

The Facts: France in its rightful place

What exactly do national and international statistical agencies tell us? They converge on one unequivocal result: compared to the rest of the Western world, France is not among the leading countries of immigration, and it never has been since the beginning of the 21st century. It lies somewhere between the middle and the bottom of the rankings. It is less attractive than most European countries. The migratory influx is nothing but a myth. Under these circumstances, what is the point of a policy that would push France back into the bottom third of the European rankings when it is already there?

• Number of undocumented immigrants

On average, in major European countries, half the population believes that most foreigners are undocumented; a third even think that this is the case for the vast majority. This is well above the highest estimates. In the United Kingdom, it is around 12%. In France, with 6 million foreigners, the proportion of undocumented immigrants is close to 15% if we consider the most optimistic scenario of doubling the number of beneficiaries of state medical aid (466,000 in 2024). The same is true in Germany, where the maximum estimated number of undocumented immigrants is 1.5 million out of 14 million foreigners, representing 11%.

The primary source of the gap between public opinion and reality is the persistent shaping of information by politicians and the media, which creates a magnifying effect. Public opinion, in this specific area, lacks the quantification tools necessary to produce a reliable result. Social media and newspaper posts constantly tout the supposed obviousness of spontaneous statistics: "no need for INSEE figures, I just have to look out the window," "just go on the subway," and other similar statements.

"Public statistics are a common good that must be accessible to all."

It is not only the general public who should have access to the insights of statistics, but also the elites. They should be the first to take advantage of the available data, starting with the authorities responsible for the complex issues of immigration. This hope, unfortunately, is in vain.

Following the example of Bruno Retailleau, then Minister of the Interior, first described the country (France) as a train station in Le Figaro in September 2024 and cited the figure of 470,000 "additional foreigners," the equivalent of the city of Toulouse, not counting illegal entries, and then, in January 2025, replaced Toulouse with Lyon, citing new figures of 550,000 foreigners who had arrived in 2023, including both legal and illegal immigration. The Minister's strategy was thus announced: to position the country within the average—the lower average—of European countries.

Three months later, Prime Minister François Bayrou extended what he had described as a "migratory submersion" in Mayotte to the whole of France.

Few media outlets have questioned the veracity of the facts, which the author has done in his capacity as a researcher:

In 2025, 384,200 new residence permits of at least one year were issued by prefectures to non-EU citizens (plus Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein) for a total population of 68,852,000, representing a population increase of 0.56%. In 2023 and 2024, this increase was 0.5%. These figures only concern entries, as the annual influx of migrants is reduced by departures and deaths. This rate of 0.5% to 0.6% places France not at the top of the OECD rankings, but rather at the bottom, lagging behind other Western countries. France is therefore by no means the leader in immigration in Europe.

Reasoning based on equal population and comparing proportions is an imperative that politicians disregard. Statistical illiteracy and political agendas work in the same direction. But the minister in question doesn't just manipulate absolute figures; he resorts to two methods designed to capture the public imagination.

• To begin with, there's the double counting: the first 360,000 residence permits issued in 2023 aren't enough for him; he adds new asylum applications, as well as an estimate of illegal entries drawn from border apprehension statistics (which he doesn't specify), resulting, according to him, in 550,000 entries for the year. This overlooks the fact that approximately 40% of asylum seekers obtain a permit in the months or years that follow (the proportion will even exceed 50% in 2025). Adding them to the year's residence permits is therefore counting them twice. The annual residence permit figures thus include some entries from previous years that have been regularized.

• The minister's second tactic is to compare the supposed 550,000 entries this year to a familiar reality: "that's the equivalent of the city of Lyon." But the only figures that matter in demography are proportions. Proportionally, this figure corresponds to 0.8% of the population, whereas, without double counting, the actual figure is 0.5%. Two figures, therefore, reflecting the same reality, but producing two opposing sensations: 550,000 is too many! But 0.8% is too little to be true… The minister's statement is, in fact, a sleight of hand: it replaces the objective weight of immigration with a subjective one.

In another example, in 2015, Marine Le Pen referred to the influx of Syrian refugees into Europe, accusing the UN and the European Commission of deliberately orchestrating the migratory submersion of Europe. "Need we remind everyone that UN technocrats are calling for the acceptance of 120 million non-European immigrants on our continent…"

This allusion to a UN report was incongruous in the circumstances of 2015. In fact, far from being overwhelmed, France will host a cumulative total of just over 40,000 Syrians on its soil between 2015 and 2024, representing less than 5% of the externally displaced Syrians who will manage to apply for asylum in Europe, while France accounts for 15% of the EU's population. (For comparison, Sweden took in 175,000 Syrians and Afghans in 2015, or 1.8% of its population) . 40,000 Syrian refugees is one hundred times fewer than the 4 million taken in by Turkey over the same period (80 times fewer, considering the population size).

Citizens have a right to ask: how is it that a party which has consistently placed migration at the top of its priorities for forty years still hasn't acquired the basic knowledge about the scale of the flows it claims to control? The answer is simple: truth doesn't matter when the only guiding principle is political self-interest. In politics, demagoguery pays off, while the truth of the figures doesn't.

• The proportion of immigrants in the population: France ranks 17th in Western Europe

The total number of immigrants present at any given time is the result of all movements over decades: arrivals, departures, and deaths. The proportion of immigrants in a population is therefore the best available summary of the role of immigration in a society, without the need to precisely measure each of its components.

The result is striking.

It turns out that within Western Europe, France ranks 17th , with 14% of its population being immigrants . However, this figure corresponds to the broad definition of an immigrant adopted by the United Nations: any person whose permanent residence is in a country other than their country of birth. The INSEE (French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies) definition is more restrictive: it excludes individuals who already held the nationality of the destination country before migrating (including repatriated citizens); it therefore includes people born "abroad" with foreign nationality, which reduces the immigrant rate from 13.6% to 11.3% for the year 2024.

The increase in the number of immigrants over the last few decades, between 2000 and 2025, is approximately 50% in France compared to 74% across the whole of the planet and 105% across all of Western Europe.

François Héran's argument is neither alarmist nor reassuring. He simply seeks to assess the situation. He believes that scientists must remain neutral and impartial in the production of data. In public debate, however, if it turns out that the political or media establishment is concealing or distorting data, they must defend it vigorously and, in that sense, take a stand.

The fable of migratory chaos

The evolution of residence permits issued each year also holds some surprises. The trend that has increased the most in absolute terms is student migration . Family migration, by contrast, has remained relatively stable, both for French and foreign nationals. Labor migration increased, primarily for skilled professions, before leveling off. Overall, the trends do not show exponential growth, with one exception: the sharp increase in subsidiary protection in 2025, which primarily benefits Afghan and Ukrainian women.

If chaos exists, it lies within the state services, starting with the organization of the prefectures. The shift to online appointments has proven disastrous, and we know the extent to which prefects exercise discretionary power over regularization cases, resulting in unequal treatment between prefectures. It is no exaggeration to say that a large part of the "migration chaos" and "lack of control" lies with the state, and not with some supposed "overwhelm."

Immigration has been increasing in France for the past twenty-five years, but at a slower pace than the European average. Family migration is contained, and refugee migration is heavily regulated. It is reasonable to assume—though not proven—that the increase in immigration would have been greater in France, for all reasons combined, without the repeated tightening of legal requirements for obtaining a residence permit or refugee status. In the absence of these measures, France would likely have moved closer to the European average, instead of lagging behind it. This means that immigration in France is more regulated than is generally acknowledged.

• OECD data: a revealing picture of migration patterns

To illustrate his point, the author published, as an appendix to the text of his presentation, some very interesting graphs on the types of immigration by European country. Since the book is not available as a PDF, I haven't been able to reproduce them here. All the more reason to get a copy if you're interested!

A comparison between France and Germany, among other things, reveals the extent of the disparities between the two countries, even when comparing countries with similar populations. While both countries are similar in terms of economic and family migration, France offers very little humanitarian assistance; it largely shifted the burden onto its larger neighbor during the 2015-2016 crisis. Furthermore, France proves to be very unattractive to citizens of the European Union: it receives proportionally four times fewer than Germany.

Sweden presents the profile of a country that was long the most committed to humanitarian aid, even before the 2015 crisis. Tired of being the model student of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, it significantly reduced its involvement, well before the rise of the far right in elections. It curtailed family reunification and favored economic migration, including the immediate admission of spouses. The country continues to attract other Europeans.

The United Kingdom is taking inspiration from the Canadian model to recruit a rapidly growing pool of skilled workers, to the point of more than offsetting the losses of Brexit. But it's all for naught: nearly half of Britons (47%) believe that the majority of new arrivals crossed the Channel in small boats. The reality is quite different: legal arrivals are fifteen times more numerous.

Immigration in France is not controlled but regulated.

The image of France attracting migrants from all over the world through excessive generosity is deflating as statistics and comparisons unfold. State medical aid, healthcare for foreigners, birthright citizenship, access to social housing, and other benefits granted to migrants are not enough to attract applicants. This image, perpetuated by certain think tanks and amplified by Bruno Retailleau, is a myth. But it is a myth with real effects, one that significantly influenced the debates surrounding the Darmanin bill between the summer of 2023 and January 2024, and that guided the actions of the Ministry of the Interior.

Why such a discrepancy between facts and words? It recalls the paradox attributed to Talleyrand: "When I look at myself, I despair; when I compare myself, I find solace."

We do the same with immigration: the internal perspective focuses on an undeniable fact—the sustained growth in applications for residency and asylum—leading us to believe we are buckling under the pressure; but the external perspective reveals that this movement is affecting Western Europe in general with even greater intensity. Can these two perspectives be reconciled? The organizations responsible for initial reception, starting with the prefectures and the OFII (French Office for Immigration and Integration), are naturally preoccupied with the internal perspective. The OFII sees the level of demand rising, while the State is reluctant to allocate the resources it needs to cope, forcing it to improvise makeshift and costly emergency solutions to house asylum seekers. The office can hardly compare its resources to those of its counterparts in better-off and more attractive countries. Hence the temptation to attack the migrants themselves, their supporters, the decisions of judges, the liberal economic logic favorable to migration, which ensures a form of socio-economic integration that is not the vertical civic integration favored by the authorities.

The myth of migratory chaos amounts to denigrating the country's administrative capabilities. Certainly, immigration to France is not under control , but it is indeed regulated , whatever one's opinion of this action may be. The legislative inflation in France since the Pasqua and Méhaignerie laws of 1993-1994 is often mocked: a law every eighteen months! Yet these repeated laws, with their accompanying decrees and circulars, produce results: the material and legal conditions of reception are becoming increasingly stringent. Associations that assist those seeking regularization in their applications know this all too well. They have even more difficulty understanding the conspiracy theories that attribute disproportionate power to non-governmental organizations and portray them as the primary architects of immigration policy.

To create the myth of France as having built the most "permissive" state in the European Union, one must disregard the most basic data on the distribution of migration flows across the continent. After all, if France were the powerfully attractive country it is portrayed as, it should logically rank among the top countries in European migration statistics. But nothing could be further from the truth. Evidence to the contrary is an essential requirement for objective demonstration. Without it, we descend into irrationality.

In the final part of this concluding lecture, entitled "Hospitality on Trial," François Héran addresses related but broader topics, including ethical questions, wokism, and "migrants and the circulation of values," among others. These are subjects that could often each be the focus of a separate post. I will therefore simply conclude here, as the main point this time has been to present concrete figures on the much-debated topic of immigration in France.

Until next time!

(1) Sandra Hobian and Lucie Brice Mansencal, “Survey on representations towards labour immigration”. Crédoc/Terra Nova, 2025.