France Stratégie, a group affiliated with the French Prime Minister’s Office, has released data showing the growth in numbers of non-European migrant children in French urban areas. In one notable example, greater Paris saw a rise of 6.5 per cent in 1968 to 36.6 per cent in 2015.
The group released the figures in an interactive form on its website which shows a variety of factors, including the percentage of children from birth to 18 who are either foreign-born or have at least one non-European parent. The release is extraordinary as the French government does not normally publish — or even officially collect — much in the way of statistics that relate to race or demographics, in line with French law.
The website defines the category as a “person aged 0 to 18, immigrant of non-European origin or identified as a child in a household in which the reference person and/or his spouse is immigrant of non-European origin. If both parents are immigrants, the household reference persons are immigrants from outside Europe.”
The figures cover several different years, starting in 1968 and ending in 2015. They show that the percentage of immigrant non-European children has increased in various cities, such as greater Paris where the average was 6.5 per cent in 1968 but has risen to 36.6 per cent in 2015.