France: definitions & methodology

Birthplace is not citizenship

Foreign-born means born outside the reporting country, using current borders. This includes citizens born abroad and does not identify legal status. France’s national immigrant category excludes those born French. Germany’s migration-background category includes some descendants born in Germany.

Stocks and flows

Population stocks are measured on 1 January. Immigration, emigration, permits, asylum and citizenship acquisitions cover calendar years. Immigration and emigration use a usual-residence duration of at least 12 months. A permit is not a person crossing a border.

Calculations

Foreign-born share = foreign-born population ÷ total resident population × 100. Net migration = immigration − emigration for the same country and calendar year. Growth = (later foreign-born count − earlier count) ÷ earlier count × 100. No annualisation or interpolation is used.

Uncertainty and breaks

Eurostat flags are preserved: b means a break in series; e estimated; p provisional; d a differing definition; u low reliability. Growth is suppressed across flagged breaks, and historical charts do not connect those segments. Unavailable values stay missing. Unreported uncertainty is not zero.

Asylum and residence permits

First-time asylum applications are first applications in the reporting country, including accompanying family members. Counts are rounded to five. They are not decisions or grants. Residence permits cover third-country nationals and at least three months of validity, with the official six-month gap rule for previous permits. Citizenship acquisitions cover all reported routes under national law.

Revisions and coverage

Original JSON responses are retained with retrieval dates and SHA-256 hashes. Downloads retain source IDs, definitions, revision fields and source flags. This edition includes national time series from 2014 where reported, and the latest available detailed birthplace snapshot. National statistics are never used as regional proxies.