At the crossroads of art, history, and social dynamics, the mobile exhibition Banlieues chéries offers a nuanced and immersive exploration at the heart of the suburbs, distinctive territories too often viewed through reductive lenses.
The mobile exhibition Sillages (Trails) looks back at the long-standing presence in France of Romani, Manouches, Sinti, Gitans, Yenish, and Travellers, as well as the development of control measures and discrimination against them since the beginning of the 20th century. It examines how stereotypes, still widely present in our contemporary societies, were created and disseminated
The exhibition Immigration in France, a shared history is the mobile version of the Museum’s permanent exhibition. Through 12 major milestone dates, it traces the history of immigration in France from 1685 to the present day.
France is the European country that opened nationality up to foreigners the earliest, from the second half of the 19 th century. At the time, nationality was governed by jus sanguinis, introduced by the Civil Code civil of 1804 and founded on birth right. For demographic reasons, France extended the right to nationality to jus soli from 1851, followed by the reforms of 1889, 1927, 1945 and 1973.
Whereas the number of foreigners acquiring French nationality had been consistently growing from the 90s up until 2004, naturalisations have been dropping for around fifteen years. There were over 92,000 in 1995, 168,826 in 2004, then a little over 150,000 in 2005. 113,608 in 2015, 110,014 in 2018, 109,821 in 2019 and 84,864 in 2020, the first year of the health crisis. Since the late 1990s, the majority of these new French citizens acquired nationality through naturalisation, but acquisitions of nationality by marriage with a French national fluctuated between 16,213 (in 2008) and 34,439 (in 2004). Between 2016 and 2020, the number of acquisitions of French nationality by marriage was respectively 20,702, 17,476, 21,000, 25,262 and 18,223. The distribution between men and women among those who become French has been relatively stable, women have been catching up a little and, today, are a slight majority (50.7 % in 2005, and 51.2% in 2014).
Whereas emigration has been common within Portuguese society for several centuries, the massive arrival of Portuguese people in France only dates from the late 1950s. Until this time, Portuguese migrants preferred the distant coasts of America, Africa or even the Pacific. From representing a residual share of foreigners in France during the first five decades of the 20 th century, in the space of a few years, the Portuguese became the largest foreign "community". In seventeen years, the number of Portuguese living in France went from 20,000 (1958) to 750,000 (1975).
The French also emigrate and become immigrants in the countries where they settle. On January 1 st 2022, according to consulate and embassy records, the number of French “expatriates” was 1,614, 772. A 4.2% drop compared to the previous year (1,685,638 as of January 1 st 2021) and this was the case for the fourth consecutive year, after several years of increasing by 3 to 4% on average per year. Since being registered with consuls is optional, for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, " the total French population abroad is estimated at over 2.5 million ”.
Although it is difficult to quantify it exactly, illegal immigration has been constantly developing and concerns all western countries. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2017 Europe counted between 3.9 and 4.8 million illegal foreigners. With each having 1.2 million illegals in the high range, Germany and the United Kingdom welcome half of all illegal immigrants. When Italy and France are added, 70% of illegals are living in these four countries, which represent half of the total European population. France is said to count 400,000 illegal foreigners on its soil, including 38,000 waiting for a decision on their asylum-seeker status.