Mass migration accounted for 44 per cent of France’s population growth in 2017, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE).
The INSEE report published on Wednesday notes that the French population grew by 317,000 people between 2017 and 2018, and of those, 139,000 (44 per cent) were immigrants.
This brought the total migrant population as of January 2018 in France to approximately 6.6 million out of a population of 67 million people, according to the last population census.
Since 2006, the proportion of non-migrants adding to the country’s overall population saw a downward trend as population growth driven by mass migration saw an increasing trend, according to the French national statistics bureau.
In 2015 and 2016, immigrants made up the majority of the population growth, compared to in 2006, when immigrants made up less than a third of the growth.
“Since 2006, the annual contribution of immigrants to population growth has been increasing. This is due in part to lower growth in the non-immigrant population,” the report states.
While France has one of the highest birth rates in the European Union, it has seen a steady decline in recent years, with 2020 seeing one of the lowest birth rates the country has seen since the end of the Second World War.
The issue has become so prominent, that at least two parties say they are looking to make it a major topic of discussion ahead of next year’s French presidential elections.
From 2006 to 2019, France has also seen an increase in migrants from non-European countries, with African migrants increasing from 62,000 in 2006 to 112,000 in 2019. European migration to France has largely declined since 2006.
Other European countries have seen higher rates of population growth driven by migration in recent years, such as neighbouring Belgium, where nearly 90 per cent of population growth was due to mass migration in 2019.
In the UK, a study released in 2018 claimed that mass migration accounted for 82 per cent of the population growth in the 15 years between 2001 and 2016.
Sweden, which took in the highest number of migrants per capita in Europe during the height of the 2015 migrant crisis, had the second-highest population growth in the EU in 2016, driven by mass migration.
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