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Wikipedia

French people

The French people (French: Français) are an ethnic group and nation primarily located in Western Europe that share a common French culture, history, and language, identified with the country of France.

French people
Français
Total population
c. 100 million

France: 67,413,000[1]
French diaspora and ancestry: c. 30 million[2]

Regions with significant populations
France 67,413,000
(including overseas departments)
[1]
United States (2020)9,373,000 (includes ancestry)[3]
Canada (2016)4,995,000 (includes ancestry)[4][5]
Argentina6,000,000 (includes ancestry)[6]
Brazil1,000,000 (includes ancestry)[7]
Chile800,000 (includes ancestry)[8]
United Kingdom300,000[9]
Switzerland159,000[10][11]
Madagascar124,000[12]
Belgium123,000[13]
Spain122,000[14]
Australia118,000[15][16]
Languages
Primarily French and
other Romance languages
Regional languages
Religion
Mainly Christianity (mostly Catholic[32]
and Protestant minorities)
Islam (mostly Sunni Islam) and other religions[33]
Irreligion[34]
Related ethnic groups

The French people, especially the native speakers of langues d'oïl from northern and central France, are primarily the descendants of Gauls (including the Belgae) and Romans (or Gallo-Romans, western European Celtic and Italic peoples), as well as Germanic peoples such as the Franks, the Visigoths, the Suebi and the Burgundians who settled in Gaul from east of the Rhine after the fall of the Roman Empire, as well as various later waves of lower-level irregular migration that have continued to the present day. The Norse also settled in Normandy in the 10th century and contributed significantly to the ancestry of the Normans. Furthermore, regional ethnic minorities also exist within France that have distinct lineages, languages and cultures such as Bretons in Brittany, Occitans in Occitania, Basques in the French Basque Country, Catalans in northern Catalonia, Germans in Alsace, Corsicans in Corsica and Flemings in French Flanders.[35]

France has long been a patchwork of local customs and regional differences, and while most French people still speak the French language as their mother tongue, languages like Picard, Poitevin-Saintongeais, Franco-Provencal, Occitan, Catalan, Auvergnat, Corsican, Basque, French Flemish, Lorraine Franconian, Alsatian, Norman, and Breton remain spoken in their respective regions. Arabic is also widely spoken, arguably the largest minority language in France as of the 21st century (a spot previously held by Breton and Occitan).[36]

Modern French society is a melting pot.[37] From the middle of the 19th century, it experienced a high rate of inward migration, mainly consisting of Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Arab-Berbers, Jews, Sub-Saharan Africans, Chinese, and other peoples from Africa, the Middle East and East Asia, and the government, defining France as an inclusive nation with universal values, advocated assimilation through which immigrants were expected to adhere to French values and cultural norms. Nowadays, while the government has let newcomers retain their distinctive cultures since the mid-1980s and requires from them a mere integration,[38] French citizens still equate their nationality with citizenship as does French law.[39]

In addition to mainland France, French people and people of French descent can be found internationally, in overseas departments and territories of France such as the French West Indies (French Caribbean), and in foreign countries with significant French-speaking population groups or not, such as the United States (French Americans), Canada (French Canadians), Argentina (French Argentines), Brazil (French Brazilians), Mexico (French Mexicans), Chile (French Chileans) and Uruguay (French Uruguayans).[40][41]

Citizenship and legal residence

To be French, according to the first article of the French Constitution, is to be a citizen of France, regardless of one's origin, race, or religion (sans distinction d'origine, de race ou de religion).[39] According to its principles, France has devoted itself to the destiny of a proposition nation, a generic territory where people are bounded only by the French language and the assumed willingness to live together, as defined by Ernest Renan's "plébiscite de tous les jours" ('everyday plebiscite') on the willingness to live together, in Renan's 1882 essay "Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?").

The debate concerning the integration of this view with the principles underlying the European Community remains open.[42]

France has been historically open to immigration, although this has changed in recent years.[43] Referring to this perceived openness, Gertrude Stein, wrote: "America is my country but Paris is my home".[44] Indeed, the country has long valued its openness, tolerance and the quality of services available.[45] Application for French citizenship is often interpreted as a renunciation of previous state allegiance unless a dual citizenship agreement exists between the two countries (for instance, this is the case with Switzerland: one can be both French and Swiss). The European treaties have formally permitted movement and European citizens enjoy formal rights to employment in the state sector (though not as trainees in reserved branches, e.g., as magistrates).

Seeing itself as an inclusive nation with universal values, France has always valued and strongly advocated assimilation. However, the success of such assimilation has recently been called into question. There is increasing dissatisfaction with, and within, growing ethno-cultural enclaves (communautarisme). The 2005 French riots in some troubled and impoverished suburbs (les quartiers sensibles) were an example of such tensions. However they should not be interpreted as ethnic conflicts (as appeared before in other countries like the US and the UK) but as social conflicts born out of socioeconomic problems endangering proper integration.[46]

History

Historically, the heritage of the French people is mostly of Celtic or Gallic, Latin (Romans) origin, descending from the ancient and medieval populations of Gauls or Celts from the Atlantic to the Rhone Alps, Germanic tribes that settled France from east of the Rhine and Belgium after the fall of the Roman Empire such as the Franks, Burgundians, Allemanni, Visigoths, and Suebi, Latin and Roman tribes such as Ligurians and Gallo-Romans, Basques, and Norse populations largely settling in Normandy at the beginning of the 10th century as well as "Bretons" (Celtic Britons) settling in Brittany in Western France.[47]

The name "France" etymologically derives from the word Francia, the territory of the Franks. The Franks were a Germanic tribe that overran Roman Gaul at the end of the Roman Empire.

Celtic and Roman Gaul

 
Map of Gaul before complete Roman conquest (circa 58 BCE) and its five main regions : Celtica, Belgica, Cisalpina, Narbonensis and Aquitania.

In the pre-Roman era, Gaul (an area of Western Europe that encompassed all of what is known today as France, Belgium, part of Germany and Switzerland, and Northern Italy) was inhabited by a variety of peoples who were known collectively as the Gaulish tribes. Their ancestors were Celts who came from Central Europe in the 7th century BCE or earlier,[48] and non-Celtic peoples including the Ligures, Aquitanians and Basques in Aquitaine. The Belgae, who lived in the northern and eastern areas, may have had Germanic admixture; many of these peoples had already spoken Gaulish by the time of the Roman conquest.

Gaul was militarily conquered in 58–51 BCE by the Roman legions under the command of General Julius Caesar, except for the south-east which had already been conquered about one century earlier. Over the next six centuries, the two cultures intermingled, creating a hybridized Gallo-Roman culture. In the late Roman era, in addition to colonists from elsewhere in the Empire and Gaulish natives, Gallia also became home to some immigrant populations of Germanic and Scythian origin, such as the Alans.

The Gaulish language is thought to have survived into the 6th century in France, despite considerable Romanization of the local material culture.[49] Coexisting with Latin, Gaulish helped shape the Vulgar Latin dialects that developed into French, with effects including loanwords and calques (including oui,[50] the word for "yes"),[51][50] sound changes,[52][53] and influences in conjugation and word order.[51][50][54] Today, the last redoubt of Celtic language in France can be found in the northwestern region of Brittany, although this is not the result of a survival of Gaulish language but of a 5th-century AD migration of Brythonic speaking Celts from Britain.

The Vulgar Latin in the region of Gallia took on a distinctly local character, some of which is attested in graffiti,[54] which evolved into the Gallo-Romance dialects which include French and its closest relatives.

Frankish Kingdom

With the decline of the Roman Empire in Western Europe, a federation of Germanic peoples entered the picture: the Franks, from which the word "French" derives. The Franks were Germanic pagans who began to settle in northern Gaul as laeti during the Roman era. They continued to filter across the Rhine River from present-day Netherlands and Germany between the 3rd and 7th centuries. Initially, they served in the Roman army and obtained important commands. Their language is still spoken as a kind of Dutch (French Flemish) in northern France (French Flanders). The Alamans, another Germanic people immigrated to Alsace, hence the Alemannic German now spoken there. The Alamans were competitors of the Franks, and their name is the origin of the French word for "German": Allemand.

By the early 6th century the Franks, led by the Merovingian king Clovis I and his sons, had consolidated their hold on much of modern-day France. The other major Germanic people to arrive in France, after the Burgundians and the Visigoths, were the Norsemen or Northmen. Known by the shortened name "Norman" in France, these were Viking raiders from modern Denmark and Norway. They settled with Anglo-Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons from the Danelaw in the region known today as Normandy in the 9th and 10th centuries. This later became a fiefdom of the Kingdom of France under King Charles III. The Vikings eventually intermarried with the local people, converting to Christianity in the process. It was the Normans who, two centuries later, would go on to conquer England and Southern Italy.

Eventually, though, the largely autonomous Duchy of Normandy was incorporated back into the royal domain (i. e. the territory under direct control of the French king) in the Middle Ages. In the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, founded in 1099, at most 120,000 Franks, who were predominantly French-speaking Western Christians, ruled over 350,000 Muslims, Jews, and native Eastern Christians.[55]

Kingdom of France

 
Louis XIV of France "The Sun-King"

Unlike elsewhere in Europe, France experienced relatively low levels of emigration to the Americas, with the exception of the Huguenots, due to a lower birthrate than in the rest of Europe. However, significant emigration of mainly Roman Catholic French populations led to the settlement of the Province of Acadia, Canada (New France) and Louisiana, all (at the time) French possessions, as well as colonies in the West Indies, Mascarene islands and Africa.

On 30 December 1687, a community of French Huguenots settled in South Africa. Most of these originally settled in the Cape Colony, but have since been quickly absorbed into the Afrikaner population. After Champlain's founding of Quebec City in 1608, it became the capital of New France. Encouraging settlement was difficult, and while some immigration did occur, by 1763 New France only had a population of some 65,000.[56] From 1713 to 1787, 30,000 colonists immigrated from France to the Saint-Domingue. In 1805, when the French were forced out of Saint-Domingue (Haiti), 35,000 French settlers were given lands in Cuba.[57]

By the beginning of the 17th century, some 20% of the total male population of Catalonia was made up of French immigrants.[58] In the 18th century and early 19th century, a small migration of French emigrated by official invitation of the Habsburgs to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now the nations of Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Serbia and Romania.[59] Some of them, coming from French-speaking communes in Lorraine or being French Swiss Walsers from the Valais canton in Switzerland, maintained for some generations the French language and a specific ethnic identity, later labelled as Banat (French: Français du Banat). By 1788 there were 8 villages populated by French colonists.[60]

French Republic

 
Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix

The French First Republic appeared following the 1789 French Revolution. It replaced the ancient kingdom of France, ruled by the divine right of kings.

Hobsbawm highlighted the role of conscription, invented by Napoleon, and of the 1880s public instruction laws, which allowed mixing of the various groups of France into a nationalist mold which created the French citizen and his consciousness of membership to a common nation, while the various regional languages of France were progressively eradicated.

The 1870 Franco-Prussian War, which led to the short-lived Paris Commune of 1871, was instrumental in bolstering patriotic feelings; until World War I (1914–1918), French politicians never completely lost sight of the disputed Alsace-Lorraine region which played a major role in the definition of the French nation and therefore of the French people.

The decrees of 24 October 1870 by Adolphe Crémieux granted automatic and massive French citizenship to all Jewish people of Algeria.

20th century

Successive waves of immigrants during the 19th and 20th centuries were rapidly assimilated into French culture. France's population dynamics began to change in the middle of the 19th century, as France joined the Industrial Revolution. The pace of industrial growth attracted millions of European immigrants over the next century, with especially large numbers arriving from Poland, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, and Spain.[61]

In the period from 1915 to 1950, many immigrants came from Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Russia, Scandinavia and Yugoslavia. Small but significant numbers of Frenchmen in the North and Northeast regions have relatives in Germany and Great Britain.

Between 1956 and 1967, about 235,000 North African Jews from Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco also immigrated to France due to the decline of the French empire and following the Six-Day War. Hence, by 1968, Jews of North African origin comprised the majority of the Jewish population of France. As these new immigrants were already culturally French they needed little time to adjust to French society.[62]

French law made it easy for thousands of settlers (colons in French), national French from former colonies of North and East Africa, India and Indochina to live in mainland France. It is estimated that 20,000 settlers were living in Saigon in 1945, and there were 68,430 European settlers living in Madagascar in 1958.[63] 1.6 million European pieds noirs settlers migrated from Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.[64] In just a few months in 1962, 900,000 pied noir settlers left Algeria in the most massive relocation of population in Europe since the World War II.[65] In the 1970s, over 30,000 French settlers left Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime as the Pol Pot government confiscated their farms and land properties.

In the 1960s, a second wave of immigration came to France, which was needed for reconstruction purposes and for cheaper labour after the devastation brought on by World War II. French entrepreneurs went to Maghreb countries looking for cheap labour, thus encouraging work-immigration to France. Their settlement was officialized with Jacques Chirac's family regrouping act of 1976 (regroupement familial). Since then, immigration has become more varied, although France stopped being a major immigration country compared to other European countries. The large impact of North African and Arab immigration is the greatest and has brought racial, socio-cultural and religious questions to a country seen as homogenously European, French and Christian for thousands of years. Nevertherless, according to Justin Vaïsse, professor at Sciences Po Paris, integration of Muslim immigrants is happening as part of a background evolution[66] and recent studies confirmed the results of their assimilation, showing that "North Africans seem to be characterized by a high degree of cultural integration reflected in a relatively high propensity to exogamy" with rates ranging from 20% to 50%.[67] According to Emmanuel Todd the relatively high exogamy among French Algerians can be explained by the colonial link between France and Algeria.[68]

A small French descent group also subsequently arrived from Latin America (Argentina, Chile and Uruguay) in the 1970s.

Languages

In France

 
A map showing the (historical) linguistic groups in Metropolitan France:
  Arpitan speakers
  Occitan speakers
  Langues d'oil speakers

Most French people speak the French language as their mother tongue, but certain languages like Norman, Occitan languages, Corsican, Euskara, French Flemish and Breton remain spoken in certain regions (see Language policy in France). There have also been periods of history when a majority of French people had other first languages (local languages such as Occitan, Catalan, Alsatian, West Flemish, Lorraine Franconian, Gallo, Picard or Ch'timi and Arpitan). Today, many immigrants speak another tongue at home.

According to historian Eric Hobsbawm, "the French language has been essential to the concept of 'France'," although in 1789, 50 percent of the French people did not speak it at all, and only 12 to 13 percent spoke it fairly well; even in oïl languages zones, it was not usually used except in cities, and even there not always in the outlying districts.[69]

Abroad

Abroad, the French language is spoken in many different countries – in particular the former French colonies. Nevertheless, speaking French is distinct from being a French citizen. Thus, francophonie, or the speaking of French, must not be confused with French citizenship or ethnicity. For example, French speakers in Switzerland are not "French citizens".

Native English-speaking Blacks on the island of Saint-Martin hold French nationality even though they do not speak French as a first language, while their neighbouring French-speaking Haitian immigrants (who also speak a French-creole) remain foreigners. Large numbers of people of French ancestry outside Europe speak other first languages, particularly English, throughout most of North America (with Quebec and Acadians in the Canadian Maritimes being notable, not the only, exceptions), Spanish or Portuguese in southern South America, and Afrikaans in South Africa.

The adjective "French" can be used to mean either "French citizen" or "French-speaker", and usage varies depending on the context, with the former being common in France. The latter meaning is often used in Canada, when discussing matters internal to Canada.

Nationality, citizenship, ethnicity

Generations of settlers have migrated over the centuries to France, creating a variegated grouping of peoples. Thus the historian John F. Drinkwater states, "The French are, paradoxically, strongly conscious of belonging to a single nation, but they hardly constitute a unified ethnic group by any scientific gauge."[70]

The modern French are the descendants of mixtures including Romans, Celts, Iberians, Ligurians and Greeks in southern France,[71][72] Germanic peoples arriving at the end of the Roman Empire such as the Franks and the Burgundians,[47][73][74] and some Vikings who mixed with the Normans and settled mostly in Normandy in the 9th century.[75]

According to Dominique Schnapper, "The classical conception of the nation is that of an entity which, opposed to the ethnic group, affirms itself as an open community, the will to live together expressing itself by the acceptation of the rules of a unified public domain which transcends all particularisms".[76] This conception of the nation as being composed by a "will to live together," supported by the classic lecture of Ernest Renan in 1882, has been opposed by the French far-right, in particular the nationalist Front National ("National Front" – FN / now Rassemblement National - "National Rally" - RN) party which claims that there is such a thing as a "French ethnic group". The discourse of ethno-nationalist groups such as the Front National (FN), however, advances the concept of Français de souche or "indigenous" French.

 
French people in Paris, August 1944

The conventional conception of French history starts with Ancient Gaul, and French national identity often views the Gauls as national precursors, either as biological ancestors (hence the refrain nos ancêtres les Gaulois), as emotional/spiritual ancestors, or both.[77] Vercingetorix, the Gaulish chieftain who tried to unite the various Gallic tribes of the land against Roman encroachment but was ultimately vanquished by Julius Caesar, is often revered as a "first national hero".[78] In the famously popular French comic Asterix, the main characters are patriotic Gauls who fight against Roman invaders[77] while in modern days the term Gaulois is used in French to distinguish the "native" French from French of immigrant origins. However, despite its occasional nativist usage, the Gaulish identity has also been embraced by French of non-native origins as well: notably, Napoleon III, whose family was ultimately of Corsican and Italian roots, identified France with Gaul and Vercingetorix,[79] and declared that "New France, ancient France, Gaul are one and the same moral person."

It has been noted that the French view of having Gallic origins has evolved over history. Before the French Revolution, it divided social classes, with the peasants identifying with the native Gauls while the aristocracy identified with the Franks. During the early nineteenth century, intellectuals began using the identification with Gaul instead as a unifying force to bridge divisions within French society with a common national origin myth. Myriam Krepps of the University of Nebraska-Omaha argues that the view of "a unified territory (one land since the beginning of civilization) and a unified people" which de-emphasized "all disparities and the succession of waves of invaders" was first imprinted on the masses by the unified history curriculum of French textbooks in the late 1870s.[78]

Since the beginning of the Third Republic (1871–1940), the state has not categorized people according to their alleged ethnic origins. Hence, in contrast to the United States Census, French people are not asked to define their ethnic appartenance, whichever it may be. The usage of ethnic and racial categorization is avoided to prevent any case of discrimination; the same regulations apply to religious membership data that cannot be compiled under the French Census. This classic French republican non-essentialist conception of nationality is officialized by the French Constitution, according to which "French" is a nationality, and not a specific ethnicity.

Genetics

France sits at the edge of the European peninsula and has seen waves of migration of groups that often settled owing to the presence of physical barriers preventing onward migration.[70] This has led to language and regional cultural variegation, but the extent to which this pattern of migrations showed up in population genetics studies was unclear until the publication of a study in 2019 that used genome wide data. The study identified six different genetic clusters that could be distinguished across populations. The study concluded that the population genetic clusters correlate with linguistic and historical divisions in France and with the presence of geographic barriers such as mountains and major rivers. A population bottleneck was also identified in the fourteenth century, consistent with the timing for the Black Death in Europe.[35]

Nationality and citizenship

French nationality has not meant automatic citizenship. Some categories of French people have been excluded, throughout the years, from full citizenship:

  • Women: until the Liberation, they were deprived of the right to vote. The provisional government of General de Gaulle accorded them this right by 21 April 1944 prescription. However, women are still under-represented in the political class. The 6 June 2000 law on parity attempted to address this question by imposing a de facto quota system for women in French politics.[80]
  • Military: for a long time, it was called "la grande muette" ("the great mute") in reference to its prohibition from interfering in political life. During a large part of the Third Republic (1871–1940), the Army was in its majority anti-republican (and thus counterrevolutionary). The Dreyfus Affair and the 16 May 1877 crisis, which almost led to a monarchist coup d'état by MacMahon, are examples of this anti-republican spirit. Therefore, they would only gain the right to vote with the 17 August 1945 prescription: the contribution of De Gaulle to the interior French Resistance reconciled the Army with the Republic. Nevertheless, militaries do not benefit from the whole of public liberties, as the 13 July 1972 law on the general statute of militaries specify.
  • Young people: the July 1974 law, voted at the instigation of president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, reduced from 21 to 18 the age of majority.
  • Naturalized foreigners: since the 9 January 1973 law, foreigners who have acquired French nationality do not have to wait five years after their naturalization to be able to vote anymore.
  • Inhabitants of the colonies: the 7 May 1946 law meant that soldiers from the "Empire" (such as the tirailleurs) killed during World War I and World War II were not citizens.[81]
  • The special case of foreign citizens of an EU member state who, even if not French, are allowed to vote in French local elections if living in France, and may turn to any French consular or diplomatic mission if there is no such representations of their own country.
  • Some French people convicted by a court may be deprived of their civil rights, up to 10 years.[82]

France was one of the first countries to implement denaturalization laws. Philosopher Giorgio Agamben has pointed out this fact that the 1915 French law which permitted denaturalization with regard to naturalized citizens of "enemy" origins was one of the first example of such legislation, which Nazi Germany later implemented with the 1935 Nuremberg Laws.[83]

Furthermore, some authors who have insisted on the "crisis of the nation-state" allege that nationality and citizenship are becoming separate concepts. They show as example "international", "supranational citizenship" or "world citizenship" (membership to international nongovernmental organizations such as Amnesty International or Greenpeace). This would indicate a path toward a "postnational citizenship".[81]

Beside this, modern citizenship is linked to civic participation (also called positive freedom), which implies voting, demonstrations, petitions, activism, etc. Therefore, social exclusion may lead to deprivation of citizenship. This has led various authors (Philippe Van Parijs, Jean-Marc Ferry, Alain Caillé, André Gorz) to theorize a guaranteed minimum income which would impede exclusion from citizenship.[84]

Multiculturalism versus universalism

 
Alfred-Amédée Dodds, a mixed-race French general and colonial administrator born in Senegal

In France, the conception of citizenship teeters between universalism and multiculturalism. French citizenship has been defined for a long time by three factors: integration, individual adherence, and the primacy of the soil (jus soli). Political integration (which includes but is not limited to racial integration) is based on voluntary policies which aims at creating a common identity, and the interiorization by each individual of a common cultural and historic legacy. Since in France, the state preceded the nation, voluntary policies have taken an important place in the creation of this common cultural identity.[85]

On the other hand, the interiorization of a common legacy is a slow process, which B. Villalba compares to acculturation. According to him, "integration is therefore the result of a double will: the nation's will to create a common culture for all members of the nation, and the communities' will living in the nation to recognize the legitimacy of this common culture".[81] Villalba warns against confusing recent processes of integration (related to the so-called "second generation immigrants", who are subject to discrimination), with older processes which have made modern France. Villalba thus shows that any democratic nation characterize itself by its project of transcending all forms of particular memberships (whether biological – or seen as such,[86] ethnic, historic, economic, social, religious or cultural). The citizen thus emancipates himself from the particularisms of identity which characterize himself to attain a more "universal" dimension. He is a citizen, before being a member of a community or of a social class[87]

Therefore, according to Villalba, "a democratic nation is, by definition, multicultural as it gathers various populations, which differs by their regional origins (Auvergnats, Bretons, Corsicans or Lorrainers...), their national origins (immigrant, son or grandson of an immigrant), or religious origins (Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, Agnostics or Atheists...)."[81]

Ernest Renan's What is a Nation? (1882)

Ernest Renan described this republican conception in his famous 11 March 1882 conference at the Sorbonne, Qu'est-ce qu'une nation? ("What is a Nation?").[88] According to him, to belong to a nation is a subjective act which always has to be repeated, as it is not assured by objective criteria. A nation-state is not composed of a single homogeneous ethnic group (a community), but of a variety of individuals willing to live together.

Renan's non-essentialist definition, which forms the basis of the French Republic, is diametrically opposed to the German ethnic conception of a nation, first formulated by Fichte. The German conception is usually qualified in France as an "exclusive" view of nationality, as it includes only the members of the corresponding ethnic group, while the Republican conception thinks itself as universalist, following the Enlightenment's ideals officialized by the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. While Ernest Renan's arguments were also concerned by the debate about the disputed Alsace-Lorraine region, he said that not only one referendum had to be made in order to ask the opinions of the Alsatian people, but also a "daily referendum" should be made concerning all those citizens wanting to live in the French nation-state. This plébiscite de tous les jours ('everyday plebiscite') might be compared to a social contract or even to the classic definition of consciousness as an act which repeats itself endlessly.[89]

Henceforth, contrary to the German definition of a nation based on objective criteria, such as race or ethnic group, which may be defined by the existence of a common language, among other criteria, the people of France is defined as all the people living in the French nation-state and willing to do so, i.e. by its citizenship. This definition of the French nation-state contradicts the common opinion, which holds that the concept of the French people identifies with one particular ethnic group. This contradiction explains the seeming paradox encountered when attempting to identify a "French ethnic group": the French conception of the nation is radically opposed to (and was thought in opposition to) the German conception of the Volk ("ethnic group").

This universalist conception of citizenship and of the nation has influenced the French model of colonization. While the British empire preferred an indirect rule system, which did not mix the colonized people with the colonists, the French Republic theoretically chose an integration system and considered parts of its colonial empire as France itself and its population as French people.[90] The ruthless conquest of Algeria thus led to the integration of the territory as a Département of the French territory.

This ideal also led to the ironic sentence which opened up history textbooks in France as in its colonies: "Our ancestors the Gauls...". However, this universal ideal, rooted in the 1789 French Revolution ("bringing liberty to the people"), suffered from the racism that impregnated colonialism. Thus, in Algeria, the Crémieux decrees at the end of the 19th century gave French citizenship to north African Jews, while Muslims were regulated by the 1881 Indigenous Code. Liberal author Tocqueville himself considered that the British model was better adapted than the French one and did not balk before the cruelties of General Bugeaud's conquest. He went as far as advocating racial segregation there.[91]

This paradoxical tension between the universalist conception of the French nation and the racist attitudes intermingled into colonization is most obvious in Ernest Renan himself, who went as far as advocating a kind of eugenics. In a 26 June 1856 letter to Arthur de Gobineau, author of An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853–55) and one of the first theoreticians of "scientific racism", he wrote:

You have written a remarkable book here, full of vigour and originality of mind, only it's written to be little understood in France or rather it's written to be misunderstood here. The French mind turns little to ethnographic considerations: France has little belief in race, [...] The fact of race is huge originally; but it's been continually losing its importance, and sometimes, as in France, it happens to disappear completely. Does that mean total decadence? Yes, certainly from the standpoint of the stability of institutions, the originality of character, a certain nobility that I hold to be the most important factor in the conjunction of human affairs. But also what compensations! No doubt if the noble elements mixed in the blood of a people happened to disappear completely, then there would be a demeaning equality, like that of some Eastern states and in some respects China. But it is in fact a very small amount of noble blood put into the circulation of a people that is enough to ennoble them, at least as to historical effects; this is how France, a nation so completely fallen into commonness, in practice plays on the world stage the role of a gentleman. Setting aside the quite inferior races whose intermingling with the great races would only poison the human species, I see in the future a homogeneous humanity.[92]

Jus soli and jus sanguinis

During the Ancien Régime (before the 1789 French revolution), jus soli (or "right of territory") was predominant. Feudal law recognized personal allegiance to the sovereign, but the subjects of the sovereign were defined by their birthland. According to the 3 September 1791 Constitution, those who are born in France from a foreign father and have fixed their residency in France, or those who, after being born in a foreign country from a French father, have come to France and have sworn their civil oath, become French citizens. Because of the war, distrust toward foreigners led to the obligation on the part of this last category to swear a civil oath in order to gain French nationality.

However, the Napoleonic Code would insist on jus sanguinis ("right of blood"). Paternity, against Napoléon Bonaparte's wish, became the principal criterion of nationality, and therefore broke for the first time with the ancient tradition of jus soli, by breaking any residency condition toward children born abroad from French parents. However, according to Patrick Weil, it was not "ethnically motivated" but "only meant that family links transmitted by the pater familias had become more important than subjecthood".[93]

With the 7 February 1851 law, voted during the Second Republic (1848–1852), "double jus soli" was introduced in French legislation, combining birth origin with paternity. Thus, it gave French nationality to the child of a foreigner, if both are born in France, except if the year following his coming of age he reclaims a foreign nationality (thus prohibiting dual nationality). This 1851 law was in part passed because of conscription concerns. This system more or less remained the same until the 1993 reform of the Nationality Code, created by 9 January 1973 law.

The 1993 reform, which defines the Nationality law, is deemed controversial by some. It commits young people born in France to foreign parents to solicit French nationality between the ages of 16 and 21. This has been criticized, some arguing that the principle of equality before the law was not complied with, since French nationality was no longer given automatically at birth, as in the classic "double jus soli" law, but was to be requested when approaching adulthood. Henceforth, children born in France from French parents were differentiated from children born in France from foreign parents, creating a hiatus between these two categories.

The 1993 reform was prepared by the Pasqua laws. The first Pasqua law, in 1986, restricts residence conditions in France and facilitates expulsions. With this 1986 law, a child born in France from foreign parents can only acquire French nationality if he or she demonstrates his or her will to do so, at age 16, by proving that he or she has been schooled in France and has a sufficient command of the French language. This new policy is symbolized by the expulsion of 101 Malians by charter.[81]

The second Pasqua law on "immigration control" makes regularisation of illegal aliens more difficult and, in general, residence conditions for foreigners much harder. Charles Pasqua, who said on 11 May 1987: "Some have reproached me of having used a plane, but, if necessary, I will use trains", declared to Le Monde on 2 June 1993: "France has been a country of immigration, it doesn't want to be one anymore. Our aim, taking into account the difficulties of the economic situation, is to tend toward 'zero immigration' ("immigration zéro")".[81]

Therefore, modern French nationality law combines four factors: paternality or 'right of blood', birth origin, residency and the will expressed by a foreigner, or a person born in France to foreign parents, to become French.

European citizenship

The 1992 Maastricht Treaty introduced the concept of European citizenship, which comes in addition to national citizenships.

Citizenship of foreigners

By definition, a "foreigner" is someone who does not have French nationality. Therefore, it is not a synonym of "immigrant", as a foreigner may be born in France. On the other hand, a Frenchman born abroad may be considered an immigrant (e.g. former prime minister Dominique de Villepin who lived the majority of his life abroad). In most of the cases, however, a foreigner is an immigrant, and vice versa. They either benefit from legal sojourn in France, which, after a residency of ten years, makes it possible to ask for naturalisation.[94] If they do not, they are considered "illegal aliens". Some argue that this privation of nationality and citizenship does not square with their contribution to the national economic efforts, and thus to economic growth.

In any cases, rights of foreigners in France have improved over the last half-century:

  • 1946: right to elect trade union representative (but not to be elected as a representative)
  • 1968: right to become a trade-union delegate
  • 1972: right to sit in works council and to be a delegate of the workers at the condition of "knowing how to read and write French"
  • 1975: additional condition: "to be able to express oneself in French"; they may vote at prud'hommes elections ("industrial tribunal elections") but may not be elected; foreigners may also have administrative or leadership positions in tradeunions but under various conditions
  • 1982: those conditions are suppressed, only the function of conseiller prud'hommal is reserved to those who have acquired French nationality. They may be elected in workers' representation functions (Auroux laws). They also may become administrators in public structures such as Social security banks (caisses de sécurité sociale), OPAC (which administers HLMs), Ophlm...
  • 1992: for European Union citizens, right to vote at the European elections, first exercised during the 1994 European elections, and at municipal elections (first exercised during the 2001 municipal elections).

Statistics

The INSEE does not collect data about language, religion, or ethnicity – on the principle of the secular and unitary nature of the French Republic.[95]

Nevertheless, there are some sources dealing with just such distinctions:

  • The CIA World Factbook defines the ethnic groups of France as being "Celtic and Latin with Teutonic, Slavic, North African, Sub-Saharan African, Indochinese, and Basque minorities. Overseas departments: black, white, mulatto, East Indian, Chinese, Amerindian".[96] Its definition is reproduced on several Web sites collecting or reporting demographic data.[97]
  • The U.S. Department of State goes into further detail: "Since prehistoric times, France has been a crossroads of trade, travel, and invasion. Three basic European ethnic stocks – Celtic, Latin, and Teutonic (Frankish) – have blended over the centuries to make up its present population. . . . Traditionally, France has had a high level of immigration. . . . In 2004, there were over 6 million Muslims, largely of North African descent, living in France. France is home to both the largest Muslim and Jewish populations in Europe."[98]
  • The Encyclopædia Britannica says that "the French are strongly conscious of belonging to a single nation, but they hardly constitute a unified ethnic group by any scientific gauge", and it mentions as part of the population of France the Basques, the Celts (called Gauls by Romans), and the Germanic (Teutonic) peoples (including the Norsemen or Vikings). France also became "in the 19th and especially in the 20th century, the prime recipient of foreign immigration into Europe. . . ."[70]

It is said by some[who?] that France adheres to the ideal of a single, homogeneous national culture, supported by the absence of hyphenated identities and by avoidance of the very term "ethnicity" in French discourse.[99]

Immigration

As of 2008, the French national institute of statistics INSEE estimated that 5.3 million foreign-born immigrants and 6.5 million direct descendants of immigrants (born in France with at least one immigrant parent) lived in France representing a total of 11.8 million and 19% of the total population in metropolitan France (62.1 million in 2008). Among them, about 5.5 million are of European origin and 4 million of North African origin.[100][101]

Populations with French ancestry

Between 1848 and 1939, 1 million people with French passports emigrated to other countries.[102] The main communities of French ancestry in the New World are found in the United States, Canada and Argentina while sizeable groups are also found in Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Australia.

Canada

 
Acadians celebrating the Tintamarre and National Acadian Day in Caraquet, New Brunswick.

There are nearly seven million French speakers out of nine to ten million people of French and partial French ancestry in Canada.[103] The Canadian province of Quebec (2006 census population of 7,546,131), where more than 95 percent of the people speak French as either their first, second or even third language, is the center of French life on the Western side of the Atlantic; however, French settlement began further east, in Acadia. Quebec is home to vibrant French-language arts, media, and learning. There are sizable French-Canadian communities scattered throughout the other provinces of Canada, particularly in Ontario, which has about 1 million people with French ancestry (400 000 who have French as their mother tongue), Manitoba, and New Brunswick, which is the only fully bilingual province and is 33 percent Acadian.

United States

The United States is home to an estimated 13 to 16 million people of French descent, or 4 to 5 percent of the US population, particularly in Louisiana, New England, Northern New York, and parts of the Midwest. The French community in Louisiana consists of the Creoles, the descendants of the French settlers who arrived when Louisiana was a French colony, and the Cajuns, the descendants of Acadian refugees from the Great Upheaval. Very few creoles remain in New Orleans in present times. In New England, the vast majority of French immigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries came not from France, but from over the border in Quebec, the Quebec diaspora. These French Canadians arrived to work in the timber mills and textile plants that appeared throughout the region as it industrialized. Today, nearly 25 percent of the population of New Hampshire is of French ancestry, the highest of any state.

English and Dutch colonies of pre-Revolutionary America attracted large numbers of French Huguenots fleeing religious persecution in France. In the Dutch colony of New Netherland that later became New York, northern New Jersey, and western Connecticut, these French Huguenots, nearly identical in religion to the Dutch Reformed Church, assimilated almost completely into the Dutch community. However, large it may have been at one time, it has lost all identity of its French origin, often with the translation of names (examples: de la Montagne > Vandenberg by translation; de Vaux > DeVos or Devoe by phonetic respelling). Huguenots appeared in all of the English colonies and likewise assimilated. Even though this mass settlement approached the size of the settlement of the French settlement of Quebec, it has assimilated into the English-speaking mainstream to a much greater extent than other French colonial groups and has left few traces of cultural influence. New Rochelle, New York is named after La Rochelle, France, one of the sources of Huguenot emigration to the Dutch colony; and New Paltz, New York, is one of the few non-urban settlements of Huguenots that did not undergo massive recycling of buildings in the usual redevelopment of such older, larger cities as New York City or New Rochelle.

Argentina

French Argentines form the third largest ancestry group in Argentina, after Italian and Spanish Argentines. French immigration to Argentina peaked between 1871 and 1890, though considerable immigration continued until the late 1940s. At least half of these immigrants came from Southwestern France, especially from the Basque Country, Béarn (Basses-Pyrénées accounted for more than 20% of immigrants), Bigorre and Rouergue, but significant numbers also from Savoy and the Paris region. Today around 6.8 million Argentines have some degree of French ancestry or are of partial or wholly of French descent (up to 17% of the total population).[104] French Argentines had a considerable influence over the country, particularly on its architectural styles and literary traditions, as well as on the scientific field. Some notable Argentines of French descent include writer Julio Cortázar, physiologist and Nobel Prize winner Bernardo Houssay or activist Alicia Moreau de Justo. With something akin to Hispanic culture, the French immigrants quickly assimilated into mainstream Argentine society.

Uruguay

French Uruguayans form the third largest ancestry group in Uruguay, after Italian and Spanish Uruguayans. During the first half of the 19th century, Uruguay received the most French immigrants of any South American country. It constituted back then the second receptor of French immigrants in the New World after the United States. While the United States received 195,971 French immigrants between 1820 and 1855, 13,922 Frenchmen, most of them from the Basque Country and Béarn, left for Uruguay between 1833 and 1842.[105]

The majority of immigrants were coming from the Basque Country, Béarn and Bigorre. Today, there are an estimated at 300,000 French descendants in Uruguay.[106]

United Kingdom

French migration to the United Kingdom is a phenomenon that has occurred at various points in history. Many British people have French ancestry, and French remains the foreign language most learned by British people. Much of the UK's mediaeval aristocracy was descended from Franco-Norman migrants at the time of the Norman Conquest of England, and also during the Angevin Empire of the Plantagenet dynasty.

According to a study by Ancestry.co.uk, 3 million British people are of French descent.[107] Among those are television presenters Davina McCall and Louis Theroux. There are currently an estimated 400,000 French people in the United Kingdom, most of them in London.[108][109]

Costa Rica

The first French emigration in Costa Rica was a very small number to Cartago in the mid-nineteenth century. Due to World War II, a group of exiled French (mostly soldiers and families orphaned) migrated to the country.[110]

Mexico

In Mexico, a sizeable population can trace its ancestry to France. After Spain, this makes France the second largest European ethnicity in the country. The bulk of French immigrants arrived in Mexico during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

From 1814 to 1955, inhabitants of Barcelonnette and the surrounding Ubaye Valley emigrated to Mexico by the dozens. Many established textile businesses between Mexico and France. At the turn of the 20th century, there were 5,000 French families from the Barcelonnette region registered with the French Consulate in Mexico. While 90% stayed in Mexico, some returned, and from 1880 to 1930, built grand mansions called Maisons Mexicaines and left a mark upon the city. Today the descendants of the Barcelonettes account for 80,000 descendants distributed around Mexico.

In the 1860s, during the Second Mexican Empire ruled by Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico—in collaboration with Mexican conservatives and part of Napoleon III's plan to create a Latin empire in the New World (indeed responsible for coining the term of "Amérique latine", "Latin America" in English)-- many French soldiers, merchants, and families set foot upon Mexican soil. Emperor Maximilian's consort, Carlota of Mexico, a princess of Belgium, was a granddaughter of Louis-Philippe of France.

Many Mexicans of French descent live in cities or states such as Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí, Sinaloa, Monterrey, Puebla, Guadalajara, and the capital, Mexico City, where French surnames such as Chairez/Chaires, Renaux, Pierres, Michel, Betancourt, Alaniz, Blanc, Ney, Jurado (Jure), Colo (Coleau), Dumas, or Moussier can be found. Today, Mexico has more than 3 million people of full and partial French descent. mainly living in the capital, Puebla, Guadalajara, Veracruz and Querétaro.

Chile

The French came to Chile in the 18th century, arriving at Concepción as merchants, and in the mid-19th century to cultivate vines in the haciendas of the Central Valley, the homebase of world-famous Chilean wine. The Araucanía Region also has an important number of people of French ancestry, as the area hosted settlers arrived by the second half of the 19th century as farmers and shopkeepers. With something akin to Hispanic culture, the French immigrants quickly assimilated into mainstream Chilean society.

From 1840 to 1940, around 25,000 Frenchmen immigrated to Chile. 80% of them were coming from Southwestern France, especially from Basses-Pyrénées (Basque country and Béarn), Gironde, Charente-Inférieure and Charente and regions situated between Gers and Dordogne.[111]

Most of French immigrants settled in the country between 1875 and 1895. Between October 1882 and December 1897, 8,413 Frenchmen settled in Chile, making up 23% of immigrants (second only after Spaniards) from this period. In 1863, 1,650 French citizens were registered in Chile. At the end of the century they were almost 30,000.[112] According to the census of 1865, out of 23,220 foreigners established in Chile, 2,483 were French, the third largest European community in the country after Germans and Englishmen.[113] In 1875, the community reached 3,000 members,[114] 12% of the almost 25,000 foreigners established in the country. It was estimated that 10,000 Frenchmen were living in Chile in 1912, 7% of the 149,400 Frenchmen living in Latin America.[115]

Today it is estimated that 500,000 Chileans are of French descent.

Former president of Chile Michelle Bachelet is of French origin, as was Augusto Pinochet. A large percentage of politicians, businessmen, professionals and entertainers in the country are of French ancestry.

Brazil

French immigrants to Brazil from 1913 to 1924
Year French immigrants
1913 1,532
1914 696
1915 410
1916 292
1917 273
1918 226
1919 690
1920 838
1921 633
1922 725
1923 609
1924 634
Total 7,558

It is estimated that there are 1 million to 2 million or more Brazilians of French descent today. This gives Brazil the second largest French community in South America.[116]

From 1819 to 1940, 40,383 Frenchmen immigrated to Brazil. Most of them settled in the country between 1884 and 1925 (8,008 from 1819 to 1883, 25,727 from 1884 to 1925, 6,648 from 1926 to 1940). Another source estimates that around 100,000 French people immigrated to Brazil between 1850 and 1965.

The French community in Brazil numbered 592 in 1888 and 5,000 in 1915.[117] It was estimated that 14,000 Frenchmen were living in Brazil in 1912, 9% of the 149,400 Frenchmen living in Latin America, the second largest community after Argentina (100,000).[118]

The Brazilian Imperial Family originates from the Portuguese House of Braganza and the last emperor's heir and daughter, Isabella, married Prince Gaston d'Orleans, Comte d'Eu, a member of the House of Orléans, a cadet branch of the Bourbons, the French Royal Family.

Guatemala

The first French immigrants were politicians such as Nicolas Raoul and Isidore Saget, Henri Terralonge and officers Aluard, Courbal, Duplessis, Gibourdel and Goudot. Later, when the Central American Federation was divided in 7 countries, Some of them settled to Costa Rica, others to Nicaragua, although the majority still remained in Guatemala. The relationships start to 1827, politicians, scientists, painters, builders, singers and some families emigrated to Guatemala. Later in a Conservative government, annihilated nearly all the relations between France and Guatemala, and most of French immigrants went to Costa Rica, but these relationships were again return to the late of the nineteenth century.[119]

Latin America

Elsewhere in the Americas, French settlement took place in the 16th to 20th centuries. They can be found in Haiti, Cuba (refugees from the Haitian Revolution) and Uruguay. The Betancourt political families who influenced Peru,[120] Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Puerto Rico, Bolivia and Panama have some French ancestry.[121]

Huguenots

Large numbers of Huguenots are known to have settled in the United Kingdom (ab 50 000), Ireland (10,000), in Protestant areas of Germany (especially the city of Berlin) (ab 40 000), in the Netherlands (ab 50 000), in South Africa and in North America. Many people in these countries still bear French names.

Asia

In Asia, a proportion of people with mixed French and Vietnamese descent can be found in Vietnam. Including the number of persons of pure French descent. Many are descendants of French settlers who intermarried with local Vietnamese people. Approximately 5,000 in Vietnam are of pure French descent, however, this number is disputed.[122] A small proportion of people with mixed French and Khmer descent can be found in Cambodia. These people number approximately 16,000 in Cambodia, among this number, approximately 3,000 are of pure French descent.[123] An unknown number with mixed French and Lao ancestry can be found throughout Laos.[124] A few thousand French citizens of Indian, European or creole ethnic origins live in the former French possessions in India (mostly Pondicherry). In addition to these Countries, small minorities can be found elsewhere in Asia; the majority of these living as expatriates.[124]

 
French people born in New Caledonia

Scandinavia

During the great power era, about 100 French families came to Sweden. They had mainly emigrated to Sweden as a result of religious oppression. These include the Bedoire, De Laval and De Flon families. Several of whom worked as merchants and craftsmen. In Stockholm, the French Lutheran congregation was formed in 1687, later dissolved in 1791, which was not really an actual congregation but rather a series of private gatherings of religious practice.

Elsewhere

Apart from Québécois, Acadians, Cajuns, and Métis, other populations with some French ancestry outside metropolitan France include the Caldoches of New Caledonia, Louisiana Creole people of the United States, the so-called Zoreilles and Petits-blancs of various Indian Ocean islands, as well as populations of the former French colonial empire in Africa and the West Indies.

See also

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  67. ^ "Compared with the Europeans, the Tunisians belong to a much more recent wave of migration and occupy a much less favourable socioeconomic position, yet their pattern of marriage behaviour is nonetheless similar (...). Algerian and Moroccan immigrants have a higher propensity to exogamy than Asians or Portuguese but a much weaker labour market position. (...) Confirming the results from other analyses of immigrant assimilation in France, this study shows that North Africans seem to be characterized by a high degree of cultural integration (reflected in a relatively high propensity to exogamy, notably for Tunisians) that contrasts with a persistent disadvantage in the labour market.", Intermarriage and assimilation: disparities in levels of exogamy among immigrants in France, Mirna Safi, Volume 63 2008/2
  68. ^ Emmanuel Todd, Le destin des immigrés: assimilation et ségrégation dans les démocraties occidentales, Paris, 1994, p.307
  69. ^ Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780 : programme, myth, reality (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1990; ISBN 0-521-43961-2) chapter II "The popular protonationalism", pp.80–81 French edition (Gallimard, 1992). According to Hobsbawm, the base source for this subject is Ferdinand Brunot (ed.), Histoire de la langue française, Paris, 1927–1943, 13 volumes, in particular the tome IX. He also refers to Michel de Certeau, Dominique Julia, Judith Revel, Une politique de la langue: la Révolution française et les patois: l'enquête de l'abbé Grégoire, Paris, 1975. For the problem of the transformation of a minority official language into a mass national language during and after the French Revolution, see Renée Balibar, L'Institution du français: essai sur le co-linguisme des Carolingiens à la République, Paris, 1985 (also Le co-linguisme, PUF, Que sais-je?, 1994, but out of print) ("The Institution of the French language: essay on colinguism from the Carolingian to the Republic"). Finally, Hobsbawm refers to Renée Balibar and Dominique Laporte, Le Français national: politique et pratique de la langue nationale sous la Révolution, Paris, 1974.
  70. ^ a b c Drinkwater, John F. (2013). "People". In Ray, Michael (ed.). France (Britannica Guide to Countries of the European Union). Rosen Educational Services. p. 21. ISBN 978-1615309641. Retrieved 29 January 2020.
  71. ^ Éric Gailledrat, Les Ibères de l'Èbre à l'Hérault (VIe-IVe s. avant J.-C.), Lattes, Sociétés de la Protohistoire et de l'Antiquité en France Méditerranéenne, Monographies d'Archéologie Méditerranéenne – 1, 1997
  72. ^ Dominique Garcia: Entre Ibères et Ligures. Lodévois et moyenne vallée de l'Hérault protohistoriques. Paris, CNRS éd., 1993; Les Ibères dans le midi de la France. L'Archéologue, n°32, 1997, pp. 38–40
  73. ^ "Notre Midi a sa pinte de sang sarrasin", Fernand Braudel, L'identité de la France – Les Hommes et les Choses (1986), Flammarion, 1990, p. 215
  74. ^ "Les premiers musulmans arrivèrent en France à la suite de l'occupation de l'Espagne par les Maures, il y a plus d'un millénaire, et s'installèrent dans les environs de Toulouse – et jusqu'en Bourgogne. À Narbonne, les traces d'une mosquée datant du VIIIe siècle sont le témoignage de l'ancienneté de ce passé. Lors de la célèbre, et en partie mythologique, bataille de Poitiers en 732, dont les historiens reconsidèrent aujourd'hui l'importance, Charles Martel aurait stoppé la progression des envahisseurs arabes. Des réfugiés musulmans qui fuyaient la Reconquista espagnole, et plus tard l'Inquisition, firent souche en Languedoc-Roussillon et dans le Pays basque français, ainsi que dans le Béarn", Justin Vaïsse, Intégrer l'Islam, Odile Jacob, 2007, pp. 32–33
  75. ^ The normans 26 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine Jersey heritage trust
  76. ^ Dominique Schnapper, "La conception de la nation", "Citoyenneté et société", Cahiers Francais, n° 281, mai-juin 1997
  77. ^ a b . Archived from the original on 20 July 2011. Retrieved 15 May 2010.
  78. ^ a b Dr. Myriam Krepps (7–9 October 2011). (PDF). Pittsburg State University, Pittsburg, Kansas. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 July 2013.
  79. ^ Hugh Schofield (26 August 2012). "France's ancient Alesia dispute rumbles on". BBC News.
  80. ^ Loi no 2000-493 du 6 juin 2000 tendant à favoriser l'égal accès des femmes et des hommes aux mandats électoraux et fonctions électives (in French)
  81. ^ a b c d e f B. Villalba. (in French). Catholic University of Lille, Law Department. Archived from the original on 16 November 2006. Retrieved 3 May 2006.
  82. ^ "Code pénal – Article 131-26" (in French). LégiFrance. Retrieved 22 July 2022.
  83. ^ See Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, Stanford University Press (1998), ISBN 0-8047-3218-3.
  84. ^ (in French) P. Hassenteufel, "Exclusion sociale et citoyenneté", "Citoyenneté et société", Cahiers Francais, n° 281, mai-juin 1997), quoted by B. Villalba of the Catholic University of Lille, op.cit.
  85. ^ See Eric Hobsbawm, op.cit.
  86. ^ Even the biological conception of sex may be questioned: see gender theory
  87. ^ It may be interesting to refer to Michel Foucault's description of the discourse of "race struggle", as he shows that this medieval discourse – held by such people as Edward Coke or John Lilburne in Great Britain, and, in France, by Nicolas Fréret, Boulainvilliers, and then Sieyès, Augustin Thierry and Cournot -, tended to identify the French noble classes to a Northern and foreign race, while the "people" was considered as an aborigine – and "inferior" races. This historical discourse of "race struggle", as isolated by Foucault, was not based on a biological conception of race, as would be latter racialism (aka "scientific racism")
  88. ^ [2] 16 February 2008 at the Wayback Machine
  89. ^ See John Locke's definition of consciousness and of identity. Consciousness is an act accompanying all thoughts (I am conscious that I am thinking this or that...), and which therefore doubles all thoughts. Personal identity is composed by the repeated consciousness, and thus extends so far in time (both in the past and in the future) as I am conscious of it (An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), Chapter XXVII "Of Identity and Diversity", available here [3])
  90. ^ See e.g. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), second part on "Imperialism"
  91. ^ Olivier LeCour Grandmaison (June 2001). "Torture in Algeria: Past Acts That Haunt France – Liberty, Equality and Colony". Le Monde diplomatique.
  92. ^ Ernest Renan's 26 June 1856 letter to Arthur de Gobineau, quoted by Jacques Morel in Calendrier des crimes de la France outre-mer, L'esprit frappeur, 2001 (Morel gives as source: Ernest Renan, Qu'est-ce qu'une nation? et autres textes politiques, chosen and presented by Joël Roman, Presses Pocket, 1992, p 221.)
  93. ^ "In eighteenth-century Europe, jus soli was the dominant criterion of nationality law in the two most powerful kingdoms : France and United Kingdom. It was the transfer of a feudal tradition to the state level : human beings were linked to the lord who held the land where they were born. The French Revolution broke from this feudal tradition. Because jus soli connoted feudal allegiance, it was decided, against Napoléon Bonaparte's wish, that the new Civil Code of 1804 would grant French nationality at birth only to a child born to a French father, either in France or abroad . It was not ethnically motivated; it only meant that family links transmitted by the pater familias had become more important than subjecthood", Patrick Weil, Access to citizenship : A comparison of twenty five nationality laws 1 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine, dans T. Alexander Aleinikoff and Douglas Klusmeyer (ed.), Citizenship Today: Global Perspectives and Practices, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC, 2001, p.17-35.
  94. ^ This ten-year clause is threatened by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy's law proposition on immigration.
  95. ^ Ethnic, Religious and Language Groups: Towards a Set of Rules for Data Collection and Statistical Analysis, Werner Haug
  96. ^ "CIA Factbook – France". Cia.gov. Retrieved 12 November 2011.
  97. ^ France Population – Nation by Nation
  98. ^ Background Notes: France – U.S. Department of State
  99. ^ Race, Ethnicity, and National Identity in France and the United States: A Comparative Historical Overview 8 December 2003 at the Wayback Machine George M. Fredrickson, Stanford University, 2003. Retrieved 17 March 2008
  100. ^ Être né en France d'un parent immigré, Insee Première, n°1287, mars 2010, Catherine Borrel et Bertrand Lhommeau, Insee
  101. ^ Répartition des immigrés par pays de naissance 2008, Insee, October 2011
  102. ^ Pastor, José Manuel Azcona (2004). Possible paradises: Basque emigration to Latin America. University of Nevada Press. ISBN 978-0-87417-444-1. In any event, between 1848 and 1939, one million people with French passports headed definitively abroad (page 296).
  103. ^ Statistics Canada. "Census Profile, 2016 Census". Retrieved 2 December 2014.
  104. ^ "Canal Académie: Les merveilleux francophiles argentins". from the original on 5 June 2009.
  105. ^ L'immigration française en Argentine, 1850–1930. L'Uruguay capta seulement 13.922 [immigrants français] entre 1833 et 1842, la plupart d'entre eux originaires du Pays Basque et du Béarn.
  106. ^ "Migration – Uruguay". Nationsencyclopedia.com. Retrieved 12 December 2017.
  107. ^ Wardrop, Murray (12 April 2010). "Britons can trace French ancestry after millions of records go online". The Daily Telegraph. London. The documents disclose that despite our rivalry with our continental counterparts, 3 million Britons – one in 20 – can trace their ancestry back to France.
  108. ^ "London, France's sixth biggest city". BBC News. 30 May 2012. Retrieved 23 February 2013. The French consulate in London estimates between 300,000 and 400,000 French citizens live in the British capital
  109. ^ . Baltimoresun.com. 19 October 2011. Archived from the original on 30 September 2007. Retrieved 12 November 2011.
  110. ^ Los franco-ticos la genealogía y la paz 24 May 2015 at the Wayback Machine October 2008, ISSN 1659-3529.
  111. ^ Domingo, Enrique Fernández (10 November 2006). "La emigración francesa en Chile, 1875–1914". Amérique Latine Histoire et Mémoire. Les Cahiers Alhim. Les Cahiers Alhim (12). doi:10.4000/alhim.1252. El 80% de los colonos que llegan a Chile provienen del País Vasco, del Bordelais, de Charentes y de las regiones situadas entre Gers y Périgord.
  112. ^ (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 February 2004. Retrieved 17 March 2009. Los datos que poseía el Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Francia ya en 1863, cuando aúno se abría Agencia General de Colonización del Gobierno de Chile en Europa, con sede en París, daban cuenta de 1.650 ciudadanos franceses residentes. Esta cifra fue aumentando paulatinamente hasta llegar, tal como lo consignaba el Ministerio Plenipotenciario Francés en Chile, a un número cercano a los 30.000 franceses residentes a fines del siglo.
  113. ^ Paris, Société d'éConomie Politique of; Paris, Société de Statistique de (1867). Journal des économistes. Presses universitaires de France. Le recensement de la population du Chili a constaté la présence de 23,220 étrangers. (...) Nous trouvons les étrangers établis au Chili répartis par nationalité de la manière suivante : Allemands (3,876), Anglais (2,818), Français (2,483), Espagnols (1,247), Italiens (1,037), Nord-Américains (831), Portugais (313) (page 281).
  114. ^ Collier, Simon; Sater, William F (2004). A history of Chile, 1808–2002. ISBN 978-0-521-53484-0. p. 29. The census of twenty-one years later put the total at around 25,000 – including 3,000 French.
  115. ^ Eeuwen, Daniel van (2002). L'Amérique latine et l'Europe à l'heure de la mondialisation. ISBN 978-2-84586-281-4. p. 194. Chili : 10 000 (7%).
  116. ^ "Vivre à l'étranger". 25 January 2016. Ils ont été 100 000 à émigrer dans ce pays entre 1850 et 1965 et auraient entre 500 000 et 1 million de descendants.
  117. ^ Pastor, José Manuel Azcona (2004). Possible paradises: Basque emigration to Latin America. ISBN 9780874174441. The French colony in this country numbered 592 in 1888 and 5,000 in 1915 (page 226).
  118. ^ L'Amérique latine et l'Europe à l'heure de la mondialisation. January 2002. ISBN 9782845862814. p. 194. Brésil : 14 000 (9%).
  119. ^ Asociación para el Fomento de los Estudios Históricos en Centroamérica (AFEHC) Relaciones entre Francia y Guatemala (1823–1954) 11 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine Guatemala, 2007. Retrieved 4 December 2014.
  120. ^ Erwin Dopf. "Inmigración francesa al Perú". Espejodelperu.com.pe. Retrieved 6 June 2012.
  121. ^ "The Population of Bolivia. People and Culture. Demographics. Bolivia Population". Boliviabella.com. Retrieved 12 November 2011.
  122. ^ Naissances selon le pays de naissance des parents 2010, Insee, septembre 2011
  123. ^ "Ethnic People Groups of Cambodia". Joshua Project. Retrieved 12 November 2011.
  124. ^ a b "Afghani, Tajik of Afghanistan Ethnic People Profile". Joshuaproject.net. Retrieved 12 November 2011.

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Frenchman redirects here For other uses see Frenchman disambiguation The French people French Francais are an ethnic group and nation primarily located in Western Europe that share a common French culture history and language identified with the country of France French peopleFrancaisFlag of FranceTotal populationc 100 millionFrance 67 413 000 1 French diaspora and ancestry c 30 million 2 Regions with significant populationsFrance67 413 000 including overseas departments 1 United States 2020 9 373 000 includes ancestry 3 Canada 2016 4 995 000 includes ancestry 4 5 Argentina6 000 000 includes ancestry 6 Brazil1 000 000 includes ancestry 7 Chile800 000 includes ancestry 8 United Kingdom300 000 9 Switzerland159 000 10 11 Madagascar124 000 12 Belgium123 000 13 Spain122 000 14 Australia118 000 15 16 Other countriesPortugal92 000 17 Israel41 000 17 Thailand40 000 18 19 Italy33 368 20 Algeria32 000 10 China31 000 10 Luxembourg31 000 10 21 Mexico30 000 22 Poland27 000 17 Hong Kong25 000 23 Netherlands23 000 10 Senegal20 000 10 Mauritius15 000 24 Ireland12 000 17 Monaco10 000 25 Sweden9 000 26 Austria8 000 27 Denmark8 000 17 Romania5 000 17 New Zealand5 000 17 28 Malaysia4 000 29 Turkey3 152 30 Hungary2 000 31 LanguagesPrimarily French andother Romance languages Langues d oilOccitanCorsicanCatalanFranco Provencal Regional languages AllemanicFrench FlemishBretonBasque ReligionMainly Christianity mostly Catholic 32 and Protestant minorities Islam mostly Sunni Islam and other religions 33 Irreligion 34 Related ethnic groupsRomance peoplesCeltic peoplesGermanic peoplesAcadiansCatalansNorthern ItaliansQuebecoisRomandsRomanshWalloonsThe French people especially the native speakers of langues d oil from northern and central France are primarily the descendants of Gauls including the Belgae and Romans or Gallo Romans western European Celtic and Italic peoples as well as Germanic peoples such as the Franks the Visigoths the Suebi and the Burgundians who settled in Gaul from east of the Rhine after the fall of the Roman Empire as well as various later waves of lower level irregular migration that have continued to the present day The Norse also settled in Normandy in the 10th century and contributed significantly to the ancestry of the Normans Furthermore regional ethnic minorities also exist within France that have distinct lineages languages and cultures such as Bretons in Brittany Occitans in Occitania Basques in the French Basque Country Catalans in northern Catalonia Germans in Alsace Corsicans in Corsica and Flemings in French Flanders 35 France has long been a patchwork of local customs and regional differences and while most French people still speak the French language as their mother tongue languages like Picard Poitevin Saintongeais Franco Provencal Occitan Catalan Auvergnat Corsican Basque French Flemish Lorraine Franconian Alsatian Norman and Breton remain spoken in their respective regions Arabic is also widely spoken arguably the largest minority language in France as of the 21st century a spot previously held by Breton and Occitan 36 Modern French society is a melting pot 37 From the middle of the 19th century it experienced a high rate of inward migration mainly consisting of Spaniards Portuguese Italians Arab Berbers Jews Sub Saharan Africans Chinese and other peoples from Africa the Middle East and East Asia and the government defining France as an inclusive nation with universal values advocated assimilation through which immigrants were expected to adhere to French values and cultural norms Nowadays while the government has let newcomers retain their distinctive cultures since the mid 1980s and requires from them a mere integration 38 French citizens still equate their nationality with citizenship as does French law 39 In addition to mainland France French people and people of French descent can be found internationally in overseas departments and territories of France such as the French West Indies French Caribbean and in foreign countries with significant French speaking population groups or not such as the United States French Americans Canada French Canadians Argentina French Argentines Brazil French Brazilians Mexico French Mexicans Chile French Chileans and Uruguay French Uruguayans 40 41 Contents 1 Citizenship and legal residence 2 History 2 1 Celtic and Roman Gaul 2 2 Frankish Kingdom 2 3 Kingdom of France 2 4 French Republic 2 5 20th century 3 Languages 3 1 In France 3 2 Abroad 4 Nationality citizenship ethnicity 4 1 Genetics 4 2 Nationality and citizenship 4 3 Multiculturalism versus universalism 4 4 Ernest Renan s What is a Nation 1882 4 5 Jus soli and jus sanguinis 4 6 European citizenship 4 7 Citizenship of foreigners 4 8 Statistics 4 9 Immigration 5 Populations with French ancestry 5 1 Canada 5 2 United States 5 3 Argentina 5 4 Uruguay 5 5 United Kingdom 5 6 Costa Rica 5 7 Mexico 5 8 Chile 5 9 Brazil 5 10 Guatemala 5 11 Latin America 5 12 Huguenots 5 13 Asia 5 14 Scandinavia 5 15 Elsewhere 6 See also 7 References 8 External linksCitizenship and legal residenceTo be French according to the first article of the French Constitution is to be a citizen of France regardless of one s origin race or religion sans distinction d origine de race ou de religion 39 According to its principles France has devoted itself to the destiny of a proposition nation a generic territory where people are bounded only by the French language and the assumed willingness to live together as defined by Ernest Renan s plebiscite de tous les jours everyday plebiscite on the willingness to live together in Renan s 1882 essay Qu est ce qu une nation The debate concerning the integration of this view with the principles underlying the European Community remains open 42 France has been historically open to immigration although this has changed in recent years 43 Referring to this perceived openness Gertrude Stein wrote America is my country but Paris is my home 44 Indeed the country has long valued its openness tolerance and the quality of services available 45 Application for French citizenship is often interpreted as a renunciation of previous state allegiance unless a dual citizenship agreement exists between the two countries for instance this is the case with Switzerland one can be both French and Swiss The European treaties have formally permitted movement and European citizens enjoy formal rights to employment in the state sector though not as trainees in reserved branches e g as magistrates Seeing itself as an inclusive nation with universal values France has always valued and strongly advocated assimilation However the success of such assimilation has recently been called into question There is increasing dissatisfaction with and within growing ethno cultural enclaves communautarisme The 2005 French riots in some troubled and impoverished suburbs les quartiers sensibles were an example of such tensions However they should not be interpreted as ethnic conflicts as appeared before in other countries like the US and the UK but as social conflicts born out of socioeconomic problems endangering proper integration 46 HistoryMain article History of France Historically the heritage of the French people is mostly of Celtic or Gallic Latin Romans origin descending from the ancient and medieval populations of Gauls or Celts from the Atlantic to the Rhone Alps Germanic tribes that settled France from east of the Rhine and Belgium after the fall of the Roman Empire such as the Franks Burgundians Allemanni Visigoths and Suebi Latin and Roman tribes such as Ligurians and Gallo Romans Basques and Norse populations largely settling in Normandy at the beginning of the 10th century as well as Bretons Celtic Britons settling in Brittany in Western France 47 The name France etymologically derives from the word Francia the territory of the Franks The Franks were a Germanic tribe that overran Roman Gaul at the end of the Roman Empire Celtic and Roman Gaul Map of Gaul before complete Roman conquest circa 58 BCE and its five main regions Celtica Belgica Cisalpina Narbonensis and Aquitania Main articles Celts Gaul Gauls and Roman Empire In the pre Roman era Gaul an area of Western Europe that encompassed all of what is known today as France Belgium part of Germany and Switzerland and Northern Italy was inhabited by a variety of peoples who were known collectively as the Gaulish tribes Their ancestors were Celts who came from Central Europe in the 7th century BCE or earlier 48 and non Celtic peoples including the Ligures Aquitanians and Basques in Aquitaine The Belgae who lived in the northern and eastern areas may have had Germanic admixture many of these peoples had already spoken Gaulish by the time of the Roman conquest Gaul was militarily conquered in 58 51 BCE by the Roman legions under the command of General Julius Caesar except for the south east which had already been conquered about one century earlier Over the next six centuries the two cultures intermingled creating a hybridized Gallo Roman culture In the late Roman era in addition to colonists from elsewhere in the Empire and Gaulish natives Gallia also became home to some immigrant populations of Germanic and Scythian origin such as the Alans The Gaulish language is thought to have survived into the 6th century in France despite considerable Romanization of the local material culture 49 Coexisting with Latin Gaulish helped shape the Vulgar Latin dialects that developed into French with effects including loanwords and calques including oui 50 the word for yes 51 50 sound changes 52 53 and influences in conjugation and word order 51 50 54 Today the last redoubt of Celtic language in France can be found in the northwestern region of Brittany although this is not the result of a survival of Gaulish language but of a 5th century AD migration of Brythonic speaking Celts from Britain The Vulgar Latin in the region of Gallia took on a distinctly local character some of which is attested in graffiti 54 which evolved into the Gallo Romance dialects which include French and its closest relatives Frankish Kingdom Main articles Franks and Frankish Kingdom With the decline of the Roman Empire in Western Europe a federation of Germanic peoples entered the picture the Franks from which the word French derives The Franks were Germanic pagans who began to settle in northern Gaul as laeti during the Roman era They continued to filter across the Rhine River from present day Netherlands and Germany between the 3rd and 7th centuries Initially they served in the Roman army and obtained important commands Their language is still spoken as a kind of Dutch French Flemish in northern France French Flanders The Alamans another Germanic people immigrated to Alsace hence the Alemannic German now spoken there The Alamans were competitors of the Franks and their name is the origin of the French word for German Allemand By the early 6th century the Franks led by the Merovingian king Clovis I and his sons had consolidated their hold on much of modern day France The other major Germanic people to arrive in France after the Burgundians and the Visigoths were the Norsemen or Northmen Known by the shortened name Norman in France these were Viking raiders from modern Denmark and Norway They settled with Anglo Scandinavians and Anglo Saxons from the Danelaw in the region known today as Normandy in the 9th and 10th centuries This later became a fiefdom of the Kingdom of France under King Charles III The Vikings eventually intermarried with the local people converting to Christianity in the process It was the Normans who two centuries later would go on to conquer England and Southern Italy Eventually though the largely autonomous Duchy of Normandy was incorporated back into the royal domain i e the territory under direct control of the French king in the Middle Ages In the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem founded in 1099 at most 120 000 Franks who were predominantly French speaking Western Christians ruled over 350 000 Muslims Jews and native Eastern Christians 55 Kingdom of France See also Medieval demography Louis XIV of France The Sun King Unlike elsewhere in Europe France experienced relatively low levels of emigration to the Americas with the exception of the Huguenots due to a lower birthrate than in the rest of Europe However significant emigration of mainly Roman Catholic French populations led to the settlement of the Province of Acadia Canada New France and Louisiana all at the time French possessions as well as colonies in the West Indies Mascarene islands and Africa On 30 December 1687 a community of French Huguenots settled in South Africa Most of these originally settled in the Cape Colony but have since been quickly absorbed into the Afrikaner population After Champlain s founding of Quebec City in 1608 it became the capital of New France Encouraging settlement was difficult and while some immigration did occur by 1763 New France only had a population of some 65 000 56 From 1713 to 1787 30 000 colonists immigrated from France to the Saint Domingue In 1805 when the French were forced out of Saint Domingue Haiti 35 000 French settlers were given lands in Cuba 57 By the beginning of the 17th century some 20 of the total male population of Catalonia was made up of French immigrants 58 In the 18th century and early 19th century a small migration of French emigrated by official invitation of the Habsburgs to the Austro Hungarian Empire now the nations of Austria Czech Republic Hungary Slovakia Serbia and Romania 59 Some of them coming from French speaking communes in Lorraine or being French Swiss Walsers from the Valais canton in Switzerland maintained for some generations the French language and a specific ethnic identity later labelled as Banat French Francais du Banat By 1788 there were 8 villages populated by French colonists 60 French Republic Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacroix The French First Republic appeared following the 1789 French Revolution It replaced the ancient kingdom of France ruled by the divine right of kings Hobsbawm highlighted the role of conscription invented by Napoleon and of the 1880s public instruction laws which allowed mixing of the various groups of France into a nationalist mold which created the French citizen and his consciousness of membership to a common nation while the various regional languages of France were progressively eradicated The 1870 Franco Prussian War which led to the short lived Paris Commune of 1871 was instrumental in bolstering patriotic feelings until World War I 1914 1918 French politicians never completely lost sight of the disputed Alsace Lorraine region which played a major role in the definition of the French nation and therefore of the French people The decrees of 24 October 1870 by Adolphe Cremieux granted automatic and massive French citizenship to all Jewish people of Algeria 20th century Successive waves of immigrants during the 19th and 20th centuries were rapidly assimilated into French culture France s population dynamics began to change in the middle of the 19th century as France joined the Industrial Revolution The pace of industrial growth attracted millions of European immigrants over the next century with especially large numbers arriving from Poland Belgium Portugal Italy and Spain 61 In the period from 1915 to 1950 many immigrants came from Czechoslovakia Hungary Russia Scandinavia and Yugoslavia Small but significant numbers of Frenchmen in the North and Northeast regions have relatives in Germany and Great Britain Between 1956 and 1967 about 235 000 North African Jews from Algeria Tunisia and Morocco also immigrated to France due to the decline of the French empire and following the Six Day War Hence by 1968 Jews of North African origin comprised the majority of the Jewish population of France As these new immigrants were already culturally French they needed little time to adjust to French society 62 French law made it easy for thousands of settlers colons in French national French from former colonies of North and East Africa India and Indochina to live in mainland France It is estimated that 20 000 settlers were living in Saigon in 1945 and there were 68 430 European settlers living in Madagascar in 1958 63 1 6 million European pieds noirs settlers migrated from Algeria Tunisia and Morocco 64 In just a few months in 1962 900 000 pied noir settlers left Algeria in the most massive relocation of population in Europe since the World War II 65 In the 1970s over 30 000 French settlers left Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime as the Pol Pot government confiscated their farms and land properties In the 1960s a second wave of immigration came to France which was needed for reconstruction purposes and for cheaper labour after the devastation brought on by World War II French entrepreneurs went to Maghreb countries looking for cheap labour thus encouraging work immigration to France Their settlement was officialized with Jacques Chirac s family regrouping act of 1976 regroupement familial Since then immigration has become more varied although France stopped being a major immigration country compared to other European countries The large impact of North African and Arab immigration is the greatest and has brought racial socio cultural and religious questions to a country seen as homogenously European French and Christian for thousands of years Nevertherless according to Justin Vaisse professor at Sciences Po Paris integration of Muslim immigrants is happening as part of a background evolution 66 and recent studies confirmed the results of their assimilation showing that North Africans seem to be characterized by a high degree of cultural integration reflected in a relatively high propensity to exogamy with rates ranging from 20 to 50 67 According to Emmanuel Todd the relatively high exogamy among French Algerians can be explained by the colonial link between France and Algeria 68 A small French descent group also subsequently arrived from Latin America Argentina Chile and Uruguay in the 1970s LanguagesIn France Main articles French language and Languages of France A map showing the historical linguistic groups in Metropolitan France Alsatians Arpitan speakers Basques Bretons Catalans Corsicans Dutch speakers Occitan speakers Langues d oil speakers Most French people speak the French language as their mother tongue but certain languages like Norman Occitan languages Corsican Euskara French Flemish and Breton remain spoken in certain regions see Language policy in France There have also been periods of history when a majority of French people had other first languages local languages such as Occitan Catalan Alsatian West Flemish Lorraine Franconian Gallo Picard or Ch timi and Arpitan Today many immigrants speak another tongue at home According to historian Eric Hobsbawm the French language has been essential to the concept of France although in 1789 50 percent of the French people did not speak it at all and only 12 to 13 percent spoke it fairly well even in oil languages zones it was not usually used except in cities and even there not always in the outlying districts 69 Abroad This section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed July 2008 Learn how and when to remove this template message The Royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom has two French mottos Dieu et mon droit and Honi soit qui mal y pense Abroad the French language is spoken in many different countries in particular the former French colonies Nevertheless speaking French is distinct from being a French citizen Thus francophonie or the speaking of French must not be confused with French citizenship or ethnicity For example French speakers in Switzerland are not French citizens Native English speaking Blacks on the island of Saint Martin hold French nationality even though they do not speak French as a first language while their neighbouring French speaking Haitian immigrants who also speak a French creole remain foreigners Large numbers of people of French ancestry outside Europe speak other first languages particularly English throughout most of North America with Quebec and Acadians in the Canadian Maritimes being notable not the only exceptions Spanish or Portuguese in southern South America and Afrikaans in South Africa The adjective French can be used to mean either French citizen or French speaker and usage varies depending on the context with the former being common in France The latter meaning is often used in Canada when discussing matters internal to Canada Nationality citizenship ethnicityGenerations of settlers have migrated over the centuries to France creating a variegated grouping of peoples Thus the historian John F Drinkwater states The French are paradoxically strongly conscious of belonging to a single nation but they hardly constitute a unified ethnic group by any scientific gauge 70 The modern French are the descendants of mixtures including Romans Celts Iberians Ligurians and Greeks in southern France 71 72 Germanic peoples arriving at the end of the Roman Empire such as the Franks and the Burgundians 47 73 74 and some Vikings who mixed with the Normans and settled mostly in Normandy in the 9th century 75 According to Dominique Schnapper The classical conception of the nation is that of an entity which opposed to the ethnic group affirms itself as an open community the will to live together expressing itself by the acceptation of the rules of a unified public domain which transcends all particularisms 76 This conception of the nation as being composed by a will to live together supported by the classic lecture of Ernest Renan in 1882 has been opposed by the French far right in particular the nationalist Front National National Front FN now Rassemblement National National Rally RN party which claims that there is such a thing as a French ethnic group The discourse of ethno nationalist groups such as the Front National FN however advances the concept of Francais de souche or indigenous French French people in Paris August 1944 The conventional conception of French history starts with Ancient Gaul and French national identity often views the Gauls as national precursors either as biological ancestors hence the refrain nos ancetres les Gaulois as emotional spiritual ancestors or both 77 Vercingetorix the Gaulish chieftain who tried to unite the various Gallic tribes of the land against Roman encroachment but was ultimately vanquished by Julius Caesar is often revered as a first national hero 78 In the famously popular French comic Asterix the main characters are patriotic Gauls who fight against Roman invaders 77 while in modern days the term Gaulois is used in French to distinguish the native French from French of immigrant origins However despite its occasional nativist usage the Gaulish identity has also been embraced by French of non native origins as well notably Napoleon III whose family was ultimately of Corsican and Italian roots identified France with Gaul and Vercingetorix 79 and declared that New France ancient France Gaul are one and the same moral person It has been noted that the French view of having Gallic origins has evolved over history Before the French Revolution it divided social classes with the peasants identifying with the native Gauls while the aristocracy identified with the Franks During the early nineteenth century intellectuals began using the identification with Gaul instead as a unifying force to bridge divisions within French society with a common national origin myth Myriam Krepps of the University of Nebraska Omaha argues that the view of a unified territory one land since the beginning of civilization and a unified people which de emphasized all disparities and the succession of waves of invaders was first imprinted on the masses by the unified history curriculum of French textbooks in the late 1870s 78 Since the beginning of the Third Republic 1871 1940 the state has not categorized people according to their alleged ethnic origins Hence in contrast to the United States Census French people are not asked to define their ethnic appartenance whichever it may be The usage of ethnic and racial categorization is avoided to prevent any case of discrimination the same regulations apply to religious membership data that cannot be compiled under the French Census This classic French republican non essentialist conception of nationality is officialized by the French Constitution according to which French is a nationality and not a specific ethnicity Genetics See also Genetic history of Europe France sits at the edge of the European peninsula and has seen waves of migration of groups that often settled owing to the presence of physical barriers preventing onward migration 70 This has led to language and regional cultural variegation but the extent to which this pattern of migrations showed up in population genetics studies was unclear until the publication of a study in 2019 that used genome wide data The study identified six different genetic clusters that could be distinguished across populations The study concluded that the population genetic clusters correlate with linguistic and historical divisions in France and with the presence of geographic barriers such as mountains and major rivers A population bottleneck was also identified in the fourteenth century consistent with the timing for the Black Death in Europe 35 Nationality and citizenship Further information Nationality and Citizenship French nationality has not meant automatic citizenship Some categories of French people have been excluded throughout the years from full citizenship Women until the Liberation they were deprived of the right to vote The provisional government of General de Gaulle accorded them this right by 21 April 1944 prescription However women are still under represented in the political class The 6 June 2000 law on parity attempted to address this question by imposing a de facto quota system for women in French politics 80 Military for a long time it was called la grande muette the great mute in reference to its prohibition from interfering in political life During a large part of the Third Republic 1871 1940 the Army was in its majority anti republican and thus counterrevolutionary The Dreyfus Affair and the 16 May 1877 crisis which almost led to a monarchist coup d etat by MacMahon are examples of this anti republican spirit Therefore they would only gain the right to vote with the 17 August 1945 prescription the contribution of De Gaulle to the interior French Resistance reconciled the Army with the Republic Nevertheless militaries do not benefit from the whole of public liberties as the 13 July 1972 law on the general statute of militaries specify Young people the July 1974 law voted at the instigation of president Valery Giscard d Estaing reduced from 21 to 18 the age of majority Naturalized foreigners since the 9 January 1973 law foreigners who have acquired French nationality do not have to wait five years after their naturalization to be able to vote anymore Inhabitants of the colonies the 7 May 1946 law meant that soldiers from the Empire such as the tirailleurs killed during World War I and World War II were not citizens 81 The special case of foreign citizens of an EU member state who even if not French are allowed to vote in French local elections if living in France and may turn to any French consular or diplomatic mission if there is no such representations of their own country Some French people convicted by a court may be deprived of their civil rights up to 10 years 82 France was one of the first countries to implement denaturalization laws Philosopher Giorgio Agamben has pointed out this fact that the 1915 French law which permitted denaturalization with regard to naturalized citizens of enemy origins was one of the first example of such legislation which Nazi Germany later implemented with the 1935 Nuremberg Laws 83 Furthermore some authors who have insisted on the crisis of the nation state allege that nationality and citizenship are becoming separate concepts They show as example international supranational citizenship or world citizenship membership to international nongovernmental organizations such as Amnesty International or Greenpeace This would indicate a path toward a postnational citizenship 81 Beside this modern citizenship is linked to civic participation also called positive freedom which implies voting demonstrations petitions activism etc Therefore social exclusion may lead to deprivation of citizenship This has led various authors Philippe Van Parijs Jean Marc Ferry Alain Caille Andre Gorz to theorize a guaranteed minimum income which would impede exclusion from citizenship 84 Multiculturalism versus universalism Alfred Amedee Dodds a mixed race French general and colonial administrator born in Senegal In France the conception of citizenship teeters between universalism and multiculturalism French citizenship has been defined for a long time by three factors integration individual adherence and the primacy of the soil jus soli Political integration which includes but is not limited to racial integration is based on voluntary policies which aims at creating a common identity and the interiorization by each individual of a common cultural and historic legacy Since in France the state preceded the nation voluntary policies have taken an important place in the creation of this common cultural identity 85 On the other hand the interiorization of a common legacy is a slow process which B Villalba compares to acculturation According to him integration is therefore the result of a double will the nation s will to create a common culture for all members of the nation and the communities will living in the nation to recognize the legitimacy of this common culture 81 Villalba warns against confusing recent processes of integration related to the so called second generation immigrants who are subject to discrimination with older processes which have made modern France Villalba thus shows that any democratic nation characterize itself by its project of transcending all forms of particular memberships whether biological or seen as such 86 ethnic historic economic social religious or cultural The citizen thus emancipates himself from the particularisms of identity which characterize himself to attain a more universal dimension He is a citizen before being a member of a community or of a social class 87 Therefore according to Villalba a democratic nation is by definition multicultural as it gathers various populations which differs by their regional origins Auvergnats Bretons Corsicans or Lorrainers their national origins immigrant son or grandson of an immigrant or religious origins Catholics Protestants Jews Muslims Agnostics or Atheists 81 Ernest Renan s What is a Nation 1882 Ernest Renan described this republican conception in his famous 11 March 1882 conference at the Sorbonne Qu est ce qu une nation What is a Nation 88 According to him to belong to a nation is a subjective act which always has to be repeated as it is not assured by objective criteria A nation state is not composed of a single homogeneous ethnic group a community but of a variety of individuals willing to live together Renan s non essentialist definition which forms the basis of the French Republic is diametrically opposed to the German ethnic conception of a nation first formulated by Fichte The German conception is usually qualified in France as an exclusive view of nationality as it includes only the members of the corresponding ethnic group while the Republican conception thinks itself as universalist following the Enlightenment s ideals officialized by the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen While Ernest Renan s arguments were also concerned by the debate about the disputed Alsace Lorraine region he said that not only one referendum had to be made in order to ask the opinions of the Alsatian people but also a daily referendum should be made concerning all those citizens wanting to live in the French nation state This plebiscite de tous les jours everyday plebiscite might be compared to a social contract or even to the classic definition of consciousness as an act which repeats itself endlessly 89 Henceforth contrary to the German definition of a nation based on objective criteria such as race or ethnic group which may be defined by the existence of a common language among other criteria the people of France is defined as all the people living in the French nation state and willing to do so i e by its citizenship This definition of the French nation state contradicts the common opinion which holds that the concept of the French people identifies with one particular ethnic group This contradiction explains the seeming paradox encountered when attempting to identify a French ethnic group the French conception of the nation is radically opposed to and was thought in opposition to the German conception of the Volk ethnic group This universalist conception of citizenship and of the nation has influenced the French model of colonization While the British empire preferred an indirect rule system which did not mix the colonized people with the colonists the French Republic theoretically chose an integration system and considered parts of its colonial empire as France itself and its population as French people 90 The ruthless conquest of Algeria thus led to the integration of the territory as a Departement of the French territory This ideal also led to the ironic sentence which opened up history textbooks in France as in its colonies Our ancestors the Gauls However this universal ideal rooted in the 1789 French Revolution bringing liberty to the people suffered from the racism that impregnated colonialism Thus in Algeria the Cremieux decrees at the end of the 19th century gave French citizenship to north African Jews while Muslims were regulated by the 1881 Indigenous Code Liberal author Tocqueville himself considered that the British model was better adapted than the French one and did not balk before the cruelties of General Bugeaud s conquest He went as far as advocating racial segregation there 91 This paradoxical tension between the universalist conception of the French nation and the racist attitudes intermingled into colonization is most obvious in Ernest Renan himself who went as far as advocating a kind of eugenics In a 26 June 1856 letter to Arthur de Gobineau author of An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races 1853 55 and one of the first theoreticians of scientific racism he wrote You have written a remarkable book here full of vigour and originality of mind only it s written to be little understood in France or rather it s written to be misunderstood here The French mind turns little to ethnographic considerations France has little belief in race The fact of race is huge originally but it s been continually losing its importance and sometimes as in France it happens to disappear completely Does that mean total decadence Yes certainly from the standpoint of the stability of institutions the originality of character a certain nobility that I hold to be the most important factor in the conjunction of human affairs But also what compensations No doubt if the noble elements mixed in the blood of a people happened to disappear completely then there would be a demeaning equality like that of some Eastern states and in some respects China But it is in fact a very small amount of noble blood put into the circulation of a people that is enough to ennoble them at least as to historical effects this is how France a nation so completely fallen into commonness in practice plays on the world stage the role of a gentleman Setting aside the quite inferior races whose intermingling with the great races would only poison the human species I see in the future a homogeneous humanity 92 Jus soli and jus sanguinis Main article French nationality law During the Ancien Regime before the 1789 French revolution jus soli or right of territory was predominant Feudal law recognized personal allegiance to the sovereign but the subjects of the sovereign were defined by their birthland According to the 3 September 1791 Constitution those who are born in France from a foreign father and have fixed their residency in France or those who after being born in a foreign country from a French father have come to France and have sworn their civil oath become French citizens Because of the war distrust toward foreigners led to the obligation on the part of this last category to swear a civil oath in order to gain French nationality However the Napoleonic Code would insist on jus sanguinis right of blood Paternity against Napoleon Bonaparte s wish became the principal criterion of nationality and therefore broke for the first time with the ancient tradition of jus soli by breaking any residency condition toward children born abroad from French parents However according to Patrick Weil it was not ethnically motivated but only meant that family links transmitted by the pater familias had become more important than subjecthood 93 With the 7 February 1851 law voted during the Second Republic 1848 1852 double jus soli was introduced in French legislation combining birth origin with paternity Thus it gave French nationality to the child of a foreigner if both are born in France except if the year following his coming of age he reclaims a foreign nationality thus prohibiting dual nationality This 1851 law was in part passed because of conscription concerns This system more or less remained the same until the 1993 reform of the Nationality Code created by 9 January 1973 law The 1993 reform which defines the Nationality law is deemed controversial by some It commits young people born in France to foreign parents to solicit French nationality between the ages of 16 and 21 This has been criticized some arguing that the principle of equality before the law was not complied with since French nationality was no longer given automatically at birth as in the classic double jus soli law but was to be requested when approaching adulthood Henceforth children born in France from French parents were differentiated from children born in France from foreign parents creating a hiatus between these two categories The 1993 reform was prepared by the Pasqua laws The first Pasqua law in 1986 restricts residence conditions in France and facilitates expulsions With this 1986 law a child born in France from foreign parents can only acquire French nationality if he or she demonstrates his or her will to do so at age 16 by proving that he or she has been schooled in France and has a sufficient command of the French language This new policy is symbolized by the expulsion of 101 Malians by charter 81 The second Pasqua law on immigration control makes regularisation of illegal aliens more difficult and in general residence conditions for foreigners much harder Charles Pasqua who said on 11 May 1987 Some have reproached me of having used a plane but if necessary I will use trains declared to Le Monde on 2 June 1993 France has been a country of immigration it doesn t want to be one anymore Our aim taking into account the difficulties of the economic situation is to tend toward zero immigration immigration zero 81 Therefore modern French nationality law combines four factors paternality or right of blood birth origin residency and the will expressed by a foreigner or a person born in France to foreign parents to become French European citizenship Main article Citizenship of the European Union The 1992 Maastricht Treaty introduced the concept of European citizenship which comes in addition to national citizenships Citizenship of foreigners By definition a foreigner is someone who does not have French nationality Therefore it is not a synonym of immigrant as a foreigner may be born in France On the other hand a Frenchman born abroad may be considered an immigrant e g former prime minister Dominique de Villepin who lived the majority of his life abroad In most of the cases however a foreigner is an immigrant and vice versa They either benefit from legal sojourn in France which after a residency of ten years makes it possible to ask for naturalisation 94 If they do not they are considered illegal aliens Some argue that this privation of nationality and citizenship does not square with their contribution to the national economic efforts and thus to economic growth In any cases rights of foreigners in France have improved over the last half century 1946 right to elect trade union representative but not to be elected as a representative 1968 right to become a trade union delegate 1972 right to sit in works council and to be a delegate of the workers at the condition of knowing how to read and write French 1975 additional condition to be able to express oneself in French they may vote at prud hommes elections industrial tribunal elections but may not be elected foreigners may also have administrative or leadership positions in tradeunions but under various conditions 1982 those conditions are suppressed only the function of conseiller prud hommal is reserved to those who have acquired French nationality They may be elected in workers representation functions Auroux laws They also may become administrators in public structures such as Social security banks caisses de securite sociale OPAC which administers HLMs Ophlm 1992 for European Union citizens right to vote at the European elections first exercised during the 1994 European elections and at municipal elections first exercised during the 2001 municipal elections Statistics The INSEE does not collect data about language religion or ethnicity on the principle of the secular and unitary nature of the French Republic 95 Nevertheless there are some sources dealing with just such distinctions The CIA World Factbook defines the ethnic groups of France as being Celtic and Latin with Teutonic Slavic North African Sub Saharan African Indochinese and Basque minorities Overseas departments black white mulatto East Indian Chinese Amerindian 96 Its definition is reproduced on several Web sites collecting or reporting demographic data 97 The U S Department of State goes into further detail Since prehistoric times France has been a crossroads of trade travel and invasion Three basic European ethnic stocks Celtic Latin and Teutonic Frankish have blended over the centuries to make up its present population Traditionally France has had a high level of immigration In 2004 there were over 6 million Muslims largely of North African descent living in France France is home to both the largest Muslim and Jewish populations in Europe 98 The Encyclopaedia Britannica says that the French are strongly conscious of belonging to a single nation but they hardly constitute a unified ethnic group by any scientific gauge and it mentions as part of the population of France the Basques the Celts called Gauls by Romans and the Germanic Teutonic peoples including the Norsemen or Vikings France also became in the 19th and especially in the 20th century the prime recipient of foreign immigration into Europe 70 It is said by some who that France adheres to the ideal of a single homogeneous national culture supported by the absence of hyphenated identities and by avoidance of the very term ethnicity in French discourse 99 Immigration Main article Immigration to France As of 2008 the French national institute of statistics INSEE estimated that 5 3 million foreign born immigrants and 6 5 million direct descendants of immigrants born in France with at least one immigrant parent lived in France representing a total of 11 8 million and 19 of the total population in metropolitan France 62 1 million in 2008 Among them about 5 5 million are of European origin and 4 million of North African origin 100 101 Populations with French ancestrySee also French diaspora Between 1848 and 1939 1 million people with French passports emigrated to other countries 102 The main communities of French ancestry in the New World are found in the United States Canada and Argentina while sizeable groups are also found in Brazil Chile Uruguay and Australia Canada See also French Canadian Acadians celebrating the Tintamarre and National Acadian Day in Caraquet New Brunswick There are nearly seven million French speakers out of nine to ten million people of French and partial French ancestry in Canada 103 The Canadian province of Quebec 2006 census population of 7 546 131 where more than 95 percent of the people speak French as either their first second or even third language is the center of French life on the Western side of the Atlantic however French settlement began further east in Acadia Quebec is home to vibrant French language arts media and learning There are sizable French Canadian communities scattered throughout the other provinces of Canada particularly in Ontario which has about 1 million people with French ancestry 400 000 who have French as their mother tongue Manitoba and New Brunswick which is the only fully bilingual province and is 33 percent Acadian United States See also French American The United States is home to an estimated 13 to 16 million people of French descent or 4 to 5 percent of the US population particularly in Louisiana New England Northern New York and parts of the Midwest The French community in Louisiana consists of the Creoles the descendants of the French settlers who arrived when Louisiana was a French colony and the Cajuns the descendants of Acadian refugees from the Great Upheaval Very few creoles remain in New Orleans in present times In New England the vast majority of French immigration in the 19th and early 20th centuries came not from France but from over the border in Quebec the Quebec diaspora These French Canadians arrived to work in the timber mills and textile plants that appeared throughout the region as it industrialized Today nearly 25 percent of the population of New Hampshire is of French ancestry the highest of any state English and Dutch colonies of pre Revolutionary America attracted large numbers of French Huguenots fleeing religious persecution in France In the Dutch colony of New Netherland that later became New York northern New Jersey and western Connecticut these French Huguenots nearly identical in religion to the Dutch Reformed Church assimilated almost completely into the Dutch community However large it may have been at one time it has lost all identity of its French origin often with the translation of names examples de la Montagne gt Vandenberg by translation de Vaux gt DeVos or Devoe by phonetic respelling Huguenots appeared in all of the English colonies and likewise assimilated Even though this mass settlement approached the size of the settlement of the French settlement of Quebec it has assimilated into the English speaking mainstream to a much greater extent than other French colonial groups and has left few traces of cultural influence New Rochelle New York is named after La Rochelle France one of the sources of Huguenot emigration to the Dutch colony and New Paltz New York is one of the few non urban settlements of Huguenots that did not undergo massive recycling of buildings in the usual redevelopment of such older larger cities as New York City or New Rochelle Argentina See also French Argentine French Argentines form the third largest ancestry group in Argentina after Italian and Spanish Argentines French immigration to Argentina peaked between 1871 and 1890 though considerable immigration continued until the late 1940s At least half of these immigrants came from Southwestern France especially from the Basque Country Bearn Basses Pyrenees accounted for more than 20 of immigrants Bigorre and Rouergue but significant numbers also from Savoy and the Paris region Today around 6 8 million Argentines have some degree of French ancestry or are of partial or wholly of French descent up to 17 of the total population 104 French Argentines had a considerable influence over the country particularly on its architectural styles and literary traditions as well as on the scientific field Some notable Argentines of French descent include writer Julio Cortazar physiologist and Nobel Prize winner Bernardo Houssay or activist Alicia Moreau de Justo With something akin to Hispanic culture the French immigrants quickly assimilated into mainstream Argentine society Uruguay Main article French Uruguayan French Uruguayans form the third largest ancestry group in Uruguay after Italian and Spanish Uruguayans During the first half of the 19th century Uruguay received the most French immigrants of any South American country It constituted back then the second receptor of French immigrants in the New World after the United States While the United States received 195 971 French immigrants between 1820 and 1855 13 922 Frenchmen most of them from the Basque Country and Bearn left for Uruguay between 1833 and 1842 105 The majority of immigrants were coming from the Basque Country Bearn and Bigorre Today there are an estimated at 300 000 French descendants in Uruguay 106 United Kingdom Main article French British French migration to the United Kingdom is a phenomenon that has occurred at various points in history Many British people have French ancestry and French remains the foreign language most learned by British people Much of the UK s mediaeval aristocracy was descended from Franco Norman migrants at the time of the Norman Conquest of England and also during the Angevin Empire of the Plantagenet dynasty According to a study by Ancestry co uk 3 million British people are of French descent 107 Among those are television presenters Davina McCall and Louis Theroux There are currently an estimated 400 000 French people in the United Kingdom most of them in London 108 109 Costa Rica The first French emigration in Costa Rica was a very small number to Cartago in the mid nineteenth century Due to World War II a group of exiled French mostly soldiers and families orphaned migrated to the country 110 Mexico See also French immigration to Mexico In Mexico a sizeable population can trace its ancestry to France After Spain this makes France the second largest European ethnicity in the country The bulk of French immigrants arrived in Mexico during the 19th and early 20th centuries From 1814 to 1955 inhabitants of Barcelonnette and the surrounding Ubaye Valley emigrated to Mexico by the dozens Many established textile businesses between Mexico and France At the turn of the 20th century there were 5 000 French families from the Barcelonnette region registered with the French Consulate in Mexico While 90 stayed in Mexico some returned and from 1880 to 1930 built grand mansions called Maisons Mexicaines and left a mark upon the city Today the descendants of the Barcelonettes account for 80 000 descendants distributed around Mexico In the 1860s during the Second Mexican Empire ruled by Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico in collaboration with Mexican conservatives and part of Napoleon III s plan to create a Latin empire in the New World indeed responsible for coining the term of Amerique latine Latin America in English many French soldiers merchants and families set foot upon Mexican soil Emperor Maximilian s consort Carlota of Mexico a princess of Belgium was a granddaughter of Louis Philippe of France Many Mexicans of French descent live in cities or states such as Zacatecas San Luis Potosi Sinaloa Monterrey Puebla Guadalajara and the capital Mexico City where French surnames such as Chairez Chaires Renaux Pierres Michel Betancourt Alaniz Blanc Ney Jurado Jure Colo Coleau Dumas or Moussier can be found Today Mexico has more than 3 million people of full and partial French descent mainly living in the capital Puebla Guadalajara Veracruz and Queretaro Chile Main article French Chilean The French came to Chile in the 18th century arriving at Concepcion as merchants and in the mid 19th century to cultivate vines in the haciendas of the Central Valley the homebase of world famous Chilean wine The Araucania Region also has an important number of people of French ancestry as the area hosted settlers arrived by the second half of the 19th century as farmers and shopkeepers With something akin to Hispanic culture the French immigrants quickly assimilated into mainstream Chilean society From 1840 to 1940 around 25 000 Frenchmen immigrated to Chile 80 of them were coming from Southwestern France especially from Basses Pyrenees Basque country and Bearn Gironde Charente Inferieure and Charente and regions situated between Gers and Dordogne 111 Most of French immigrants settled in the country between 1875 and 1895 Between October 1882 and December 1897 8 413 Frenchmen settled in Chile making up 23 of immigrants second only after Spaniards from this period In 1863 1 650 French citizens were registered in Chile At the end of the century they were almost 30 000 112 According to the census of 1865 out of 23 220 foreigners established in Chile 2 483 were French the third largest European community in the country after Germans and Englishmen 113 In 1875 the community reached 3 000 members 114 12 of the almost 25 000 foreigners established in the country It was estimated that 10 000 Frenchmen were living in Chile in 1912 7 of the 149 400 Frenchmen living in Latin America 115 Today it is estimated that 500 000 Chileans are of French descent Former president of Chile Michelle Bachelet is of French origin as was Augusto Pinochet A large percentage of politicians businessmen professionals and entertainers in the country are of French ancestry Brazil Main article French Brazilian French immigrants to Brazil from 1913 to 1924Year French immigrants1913 1 5321914 6961915 4101916 2921917 2731918 2261919 6901920 8381921 6331922 7251923 6091924 634Total 7 558It is estimated that there are 1 million to 2 million or more Brazilians of French descent today This gives Brazil the second largest French community in South America 116 From 1819 to 1940 40 383 Frenchmen immigrated to Brazil Most of them settled in the country between 1884 and 1925 8 008 from 1819 to 1883 25 727 from 1884 to 1925 6 648 from 1926 to 1940 Another source estimates that around 100 000 French people immigrated to Brazil between 1850 and 1965 The French community in Brazil numbered 592 in 1888 and 5 000 in 1915 117 It was estimated that 14 000 Frenchmen were living in Brazil in 1912 9 of the 149 400 Frenchmen living in Latin America the second largest community after Argentina 100 000 118 The Brazilian Imperial Family originates from the Portuguese House of Braganza and the last emperor s heir and daughter Isabella married Prince Gaston d Orleans Comte d Eu a member of the House of Orleans a cadet branch of the Bourbons the French Royal Family Guatemala See also French Guatemalan The first French immigrants were politicians such as Nicolas Raoul and Isidore Saget Henri Terralonge and officers Aluard Courbal Duplessis Gibourdel and Goudot Later when the Central American Federation was divided in 7 countries Some of them settled to Costa Rica others to Nicaragua although the majority still remained in Guatemala The relationships start to 1827 politicians scientists painters builders singers and some families emigrated to Guatemala Later in a Conservative government annihilated nearly all the relations between France and Guatemala and most of French immigrants went to Costa Rica but these relationships were again return to the late of the nineteenth century 119 Latin America Further information Rubber boom Elsewhere in the Americas French settlement took place in the 16th to 20th centuries They can be found in Haiti Cuba refugees from the Haitian Revolution and Uruguay The Betancourt political families who influenced Peru 120 Colombia Venezuela Ecuador Puerto Rico Bolivia and Panama have some French ancestry 121 Huguenots Large numbers of Huguenots are known to have settled in the United Kingdom ab 50 000 Ireland 10 000 in Protestant areas of Germany especially the city of Berlin ab 40 000 in the Netherlands ab 50 000 in South Africa and in North America Many people in these countries still bear French names Asia Building of the Ecole francaise d Extreme Orient in Pondicherry In Asia a proportion of people with mixed French and Vietnamese descent can be found in Vietnam Including the number of persons of pure French descent Many are descendants of French settlers who intermarried with local Vietnamese people Approximately 5 000 in Vietnam are of pure French descent however this number is disputed 122 A small proportion of people with mixed French and Khmer descent can be found in Cambodia These people number approximately 16 000 in Cambodia among this number approximately 3 000 are of pure French descent 123 An unknown number with mixed French and Lao ancestry can be found throughout Laos 124 A few thousand French citizens of Indian European or creole ethnic origins live in the former French possessions in India mostly Pondicherry In addition to these Countries small minorities can be found elsewhere in Asia the majority of these living as expatriates 124 French people born in New Caledonia Scandinavia During the great power era about 100 French families came to Sweden They had mainly emigrated to Sweden as a result of religious oppression These include the Bedoire De Laval and De Flon families Several of whom worked as merchants and craftsmen In Stockholm the French Lutheran congregation was formed in 1687 later dissolved in 1791 which was not really an actual congregation but rather a series of private gatherings of religious practice Elsewhere Apart from Quebecois Acadians Cajuns and Metis other populations with some French ancestry outside metropolitan France include the Caldoches of New Caledonia Louisiana Creole people of the United States the so called Zoreilles and Petits blancs of various Indian Ocean islands as well as populations of the former French colonial empire in Africa and the West Indies See also France portalDemographics of France Armenians in France Cagot Ethnic groups in Europe Franco Mauritian French Americans French Australian French Canadians French Peruvian Peruvians in France French people in Madagascar Genetic history of Europe History of the Jews in France List of French people List of French people of immigrant origin Pied Noir French citizens in French AlgeriaReferences a b Demographie Population au debut du mois France Insee fr Institut national de la statistique et des etudes economiques Retrieved 28 February 2016 La diaspora francaise nouvel acteur de diplomatie Le Monde fr 17 March 2015 Certains specialistes avancent que la diaspora francaise serait composee de 30 millions de personnes Table B04006 People Reporting Ancestry 2020 American Community Survey 5 Year Estimates United States Census Bureau Retrieved 12 October 2022 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint url status link Government of Canada Statistics Canada 17 June 2019 Ethnic Origin 279 Single and Multiple Ethnic Origin Responses 3 Generation Status 4 Age 12 and Sex 3 for the Population in Private Households of Canada Provinces and Territories Census Metropolitan Areas and Census Agglomerations 2016 Census 25 Sample Data www12 statcan gc ca Retrieved 24 September 2022 includes Quebecois and Acadians Les merveilleux francophiles argentins 1 www canalacademie com Archived copy PDF Archived from the original PDF on 16 January 2014 Retrieved 11 February 2014 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint archived copy as title link Parvex R 2014 Le Chili et les mouvements migratoires Hommes amp migrations Nº 1305 2014 doi 10 4000 hommesmigrations 2720 Presence francaise in French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs a b c d e f Les Francais etablis hors de France Au 31 decembre 2012 1 611 054 de nos compatriotes etaient inscrits au registre mondial des Francais etablis hors de France Etat et structure de la population Donnees detaillees Population residante selon le sexe et la nationalite par pays su f 01 01 01 03 Office federal de la statistique OFS Bfs admin ch 29 January 2010 Archived from the original on 12 November 2011 Retrieved 12 November 2011 Kevin Shillington Encyclopedia of African History CRC Press 2005 pp 878 883 SPF Interieur Office des Etrangers Archived 7 February 2009 at the Wayback Machine Avance del Padron municipal a 1 de enero de 2011 Datos provisionales 2011 INE PDF Ine es Retrieved 12 November 2011 20680 Ancestry full classification list by Sex Australia 2006 Census Australian Bureau of Statistics Archived from the original Microsoft Excel download on 10 March 2008 Retrieved 19 May 2008 20680 Country of Birth of Person full classification list by Sex Australia Microsoft Excel download 2006 Census Australian Bureau of Statistics Retrieved 27 May 2008 a b c d e f g Immigrant and Emigrant Populations by Country of Origin and Destination 10 February 2014 France and Thailand Bilateral relations diplomatie fr Our countries suffer from the same stereotypes French Ambassador to Thailand Khaosod English Khaosod 30 September 2019 Francais a l etranger Etat de la population x1000 1981 1991 2001 2007 Statistiques public lu Retrieved 12 November 2011 Mexique France Diplomatie Retrieved 17 January 2016 Message from Consul General of France in Hong Kong and Macau Scmp com 15 March 2016 Retrieved 12 December 2017 Presidentielle francaise 2012 A Maurice Sarkozy l emporte devant Hollande in French Le Defi Media Group 23 April 2012 Archived from the original on 14 July 2014 Retrieved 11 July 2014 General Population Census 2008 Population Recensee et Population Estimee PDF in French Government of the Principality of Monaco 2008 Archived from the original PDF on 14 June 2011 Retrieved 7 October 2011 Foreign born after country of birth and immigration year Statistics Sweden Bevolkerung nach Staatsangehorigkeit und Geburtsland Statistik Austria in German Retrieved 1 January 2016 Tessa Copland French Facts and figures Te Ara the Encyclopedia of New Zealand Retrieved 21 November 2010 Former Honorary Consul of France conferred French Legion of Honor The Star Retrieved 12 September 2020 Relation between Turkey and France Ministry of Foreign Affairs mfa Retrieved 6 November 2022 Census 2011 Hungarian Central Statistical Office KSH Demographic Data Cook Malcolm Davie Grace eds 2002 Modern France Society in Transition Routledge ISBN 9781134734757 Epstein Irving Limage Leslie eds 2008 The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Children s Issues Worldwide Volume 3 Greenwood Publishing Group ISBN 9780313336195 in French La carte de l atheisme dans le monde la France numero 4 L Obs 2015 a b Saint Pierre Aude Giemza Joanna Karakachoff Matilde Alves Isabel Amouyel Philippe Dartigues Jean Francois Tzourio Christophe Monteil Martial Galan Pilar Hercberg Serge Redon Richard Genin Emmanuelle Dina Christian 23 July 2019 The Genetic History of France bioRxiv 10 1101 712497 To count or not to count The Economist Retrieved 26 May 2018 French historian Gerard Noiriel uses the phrase creuset francais to express the idea in his pioneering work Le Creuset francais 1988 See Noiriel Gerard 1996 The French melting pot immigration citizenship and national identity Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press ISBN 0816624194 translated from French by Geoffroy de Laforcade French Government Revives Assimilation Policy Migrationpolicy org 1 October 2003 Archived from the original on 30 January 2015 Retrieved 12 December 2017 a b France shall be an indivisible secular democratic and social Republic It shall ensure the equality of all citizens before the law without distinction of origin race or religion Constitution of 4 October 1958 Archived 13 March 2013 at the Wayback Machine Alexandra Hughes Alex Hughes Keith A Reader 2002 Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture Taylor amp Francis p 232 ISBN 978 0 203 00330 5 Countries and Their Cultures French Canadians everyculture com Retrieved 12 April 2013 One point of friction can be the status of minority languages However though almost extinct such regional languages are preserved in France and one can learn them at school as a second language enseignement de langue regionale Drinkwater John F 2013 People In Ray Michael ed France Britannica Guide to Countries of the European Union Rosen Educational Services pp 28 29 ISBN 978 1615309641 Retrieved 29 January 2020 Stein Gertrude 1940 What are masterpieces p 63 For instance the World Health Organization found that France provided the best overall health care in the world World Health Organization Assesses the World s Health Systems Hughes LAGRANGES Emeutes renovation urbaine et alienation politique Observatoire sociologique du changement Paris 2007 1 Archived 26 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine a b Les Gaulois figurent seulement parmi d autres dans la multitude de couches de peuplement fort divers Ligures Iberes Latins Francs et Alamans Nordiques Sarrasins qui aboutissent a la population du pays a un moment donne Jean Louis Brunaux Nos ancetres les Gaulois ed Seuil 2008 p 261 Kruta Venceslas 2000 Les Celtes Histoire et dictionnaire in French Robert Laffont ISBN 978 2221056905 Laurence Helix 2011 Histoire de la langue francaise Ellipses Edition Marketing S A p 7 ISBN 978 2 7298 6470 5 Le declin du Gaulois et sa disparition ne s expliquent pas seulement par des pratiques culturelles specifiques Lorsque les Romains conduits par Cesar envahirent la Gaule au 1er siecle avant J C celle ci romanisa de maniere progressive et profonde Pendant pres de 500 ans la fameuse periode gallo romaine le gaulois et le latin parle coexisterent au VIe siecle encore le temoignage de Gregoire de Tours atteste la survivance de la langue gauloise a b c Matasovic Ranko 2007 Insular Celtic as a Language Area Papers from the Workship within the Framework of the XIII International Congress of Celtic Studies The Celtic Languages in Contact 106 a b Savignac Jean Paul 2004 Dictionnaire Francais Gaulois Paris La Difference p 26 Henri Guiter Sur le substrat gaulois dans la Romania in Munus amicitae Studia linguistica in honorem Witoldi Manczak septuagenarii eds Anna Bochnakowa amp Stanislan Widlak Krakow 1995 Eugeen Roegiest Vers les sources des langues romanes Un itineraire linguistique a travers la Romania Leuven Belgium Acco 2006 83 a b Adams J N 2007 Chapter V Regionalisms in provincial texts Gaul The Regional Diversification of Latin 200 BC AD 600 Cambridge pp 279 289 doi 10 1017 CBO9780511482977 ISBN 9780511482977 Benjamin Z Kedar The Subjected Muslims of the Frankish Levant in The Crusades The Essential Readings ed Thomas F Madden Blackwell 2002 pg 244 Originally published in Muslims Under Latin Rule 1100 1300 ed James M Powell Princeton University Press 1990 Kedar quotes his numbers from Joshua Prawer Histoire du royaume latin de Jerusalem tr G Nahon Paris 1969 vol 1 pp 498 568 72 British North America 1763 1841 Archived from the original on 31 October 2009 Hispanics in the American Revolution Archived 13 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine John Huxtable Elliott 1984 The revolt of the Catalans a study in the decline of Spain 1598 1640 Cambridge University Press p 26 ISBN 0 521 27890 2 Deschu Cath French villages in Banat RootsWeb com Smaranda Vultur De l Ouest a l Est et de l Est a l Ouest les avatars identitaires des Francais du Banat Texte presente a la conference d histoire orale Visibles mais pas nombreuses les circulations migratoires roumaines Paris 2001 Memoria ro Retrieved 12 November 2011 Transactions of the American Philosophical Society III French Government and the Refugees American Philosophical Society James E Hassell 1991 p 22 ISBN 0 87169 817 X Esther Benbassa The Jews of France A History from Antiquity to the Present Princeton University Press 1999 The educated African a country by country survey of educational development in Africa Helen A Kitchen 1962 p 256 Markham James M 6 April 1988 For Pieds Noirs the Anger Endures The New York Times Retrieved 12 November 2011 Raimondo Cagiano De Azevedo 1994 Migration and development co operation p 25 Vaisse Justin 10 12 January 2006 Unrest in France November 2005 Immigration Islam and the Challenge of Integration PDF Washington DC Brookings Institution Archived PDF from the original on 14 September 2018 Compared with the Europeans the Tunisians belong to a much more recent wave of migration and occupy a much less favourable socioeconomic position yet their pattern of marriage behaviour is nonetheless similar Algerian and Moroccan immigrants have a higher propensity to exogamy than Asians or Portuguese but a much weaker labour market position Confirming the results from other analyses of immigrant assimilation in France this study shows that North Africans seem to be characterized by a high degree of cultural integration reflected in a relatively high propensity to exogamy notably for Tunisians that contrasts with a persistent disadvantage in the labour market Intermarriage and assimilation disparities in levels of exogamy among immigrants in France Mirna Safi Volume 63 2008 2 Emmanuel Todd Le destin des immigres assimilation et segregation dans les democraties occidentales Paris 1994 p 307 Eric Hobsbawm Nations and Nationalism since 1780 programme myth reality Cambridge Univ Press 1990 ISBN 0 521 43961 2 chapter II The popular protonationalism pp 80 81 French edition Gallimard 1992 According to Hobsbawm the base source for this subject is Ferdinand Brunot ed Histoire de la langue francaise Paris 1927 1943 13 volumes in particular the tome IX He also refers to Michel de Certeau Dominique Julia Judith Revel Une politique de la langue la Revolution francaise et les patois l enquete de l abbe Gregoire Paris 1975 For the problem of the transformation of a minority official language into a mass national language during and after the French Revolution see Renee Balibar L Institution du francais essai sur le co linguisme des Carolingiens a la Republique Paris 1985 also Le co linguisme PUF Que sais je 1994 but out of print The Institution of the French language essay on colinguism from the Carolingian to the Republic Finally Hobsbawm refers to Renee Balibar and Dominique Laporte Le Francais national politique et pratique de la langue nationale sous la Revolution Paris 1974 a b c Drinkwater John F 2013 People In Ray Michael ed France Britannica Guide to Countries of the European Union Rosen Educational Services p 21 ISBN 978 1615309641 Retrieved 29 January 2020 Eric Gailledrat Les Iberes de l Ebre a l Herault VIe IVe s avant J C Lattes Societes de la Protohistoire et de l Antiquite en France Mediterraneenne Monographies d Archeologie Mediterraneenne 1 1997 Dominique Garcia Entre Iberes et Ligures Lodevois et moyenne vallee de l Herault protohistoriques Paris CNRS ed 1993 Les Iberes dans le midi de la France L Archeologue n 32 1997 pp 38 40 Notre Midi a sa pinte de sang sarrasin Fernand Braudel L identite de la France Les Hommes et les Choses 1986 Flammarion 1990 p 215 Les premiers musulmans arriverent en France a la suite de l occupation de l Espagne par les Maures il y a plus d un millenaire et s installerent dans les environs de Toulouse et jusqu en Bourgogne A Narbonne les traces d une mosquee datant du VIIIe siecle sont le temoignage de l anciennete de ce passe Lors de la celebre et en partie mythologique bataille de Poitiers en 732 dont les historiens reconsiderent aujourd hui l importance Charles Martel aurait stoppe la progression des envahisseurs arabes Des refugies musulmans qui fuyaient la Reconquista espagnole et plus tard l Inquisition firent souche en Languedoc Roussillon et dans le Pays basque francais ainsi que dans le Bearn Justin Vaisse Integrer l Islam Odile Jacob 2007 pp 32 33 The normans Archived 26 March 2009 at the Wayback Machine Jersey heritage trust Dominique Schnapper La conception de la nation Citoyennete et societe Cahiers Francais n 281 mai juin 1997 a b What Is France Who Are the French Archived from the original on 20 July 2011 Retrieved 15 May 2010 a b Dr Myriam Krepps 7 9 October 2011 French Identity French Heroes From Vercingetorix to Vatel PDF Pittsburg State University Pittsburg Kansas Archived from the original PDF on 28 July 2013 Hugh Schofield 26 August 2012 France s ancient Alesia dispute rumbles on BBC News Loi no 2000 493 du 6 juin 2000 tendant a favoriser l egal acces des femmes et des hommes aux mandats electoraux et fonctions electives in French a b c d e f B Villalba Chapitre 2 Les incertitudes de la citoyennete in French Catholic University of Lille Law Department Archived from the original on 16 November 2006 Retrieved 3 May 2006 Code penal Article 131 26 in French LegiFrance Retrieved 22 July 2022 See Giorgio Agamben Homo Sacer Sovereign Power and Bare Life Stanford University Press 1998 ISBN 0 8047 3218 3 in French P Hassenteufel Exclusion sociale et citoyennete Citoyennete et societe Cahiers Francais n 281 mai juin 1997 quoted by B Villalba of the Catholic University of Lille op cit See Eric Hobsbawm op cit Even the biological conception of sex may be questioned see gender theory It may be interesting to refer to Michel Foucault s description of the discourse of race struggle as he shows that this medieval discourse held by such people as Edward Coke or John Lilburne in Great Britain and in France by Nicolas Freret Boulainvilliers and then Sieyes Augustin Thierry and Cournot tended to identify the French noble classes to a Northern and foreign race while the people was considered as an aborigine and inferior races This historical discourse of race struggle as isolated by Foucault was not based on a biological conception of race as would be latter racialism aka scientific racism 2 Archived 16 February 2008 at the Wayback Machine See John Locke s definition of consciousness and of identity Consciousness is an act accompanying all thoughts I am conscious that I am thinking this or that and which therefore doubles all thoughts Personal identity is composed by the repeated consciousness and thus extends so far in time both in the past and in the future as I am conscious of it An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 1689 Chapter XXVII Of Identity and Diversity available here 3 See e g Hannah Arendt The Origins of Totalitarianism 1951 second part on Imperialism Olivier LeCour Grandmaison June 2001 Torture in Algeria Past Acts That Haunt France Liberty Equality and Colony Le Monde diplomatique Ernest Renan s 26 June 1856 letter to Arthur de Gobineau quoted by Jacques Morel in Calendrier des crimes de la France outre mer L esprit frappeur 2001 Morel gives as source Ernest Renan Qu est ce qu une nation et autres textes politiques chosen and presented by Joel Roman Presses Pocket 1992 p 221 In eighteenth century Europe jus soli was the dominant criterion of nationality law in the two most powerful kingdoms France and United Kingdom It was the transfer of a feudal tradition to the state level human beings were linked to the lord who held the land where they were born The French Revolution broke from this feudal tradition Because jus soli connoted feudal allegiance it was decided against Napoleon Bonaparte s wish that the new Civil Code of 1804 would grant French nationality at birth only to a child born to a French father either in France or abroad It was not ethnically motivated it only meant that family links transmitted by the pater familias had become more important than subjecthood Patrick Weil Access to citizenship A comparison of twenty five nationality laws Archived 1 May 2011 at the Wayback Machine dans T Alexander Aleinikoff and Douglas Klusmeyer ed Citizenship Today Global Perspectives and Practices Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Washington DC 2001 p 17 35 This ten year clause is threatened by Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy s law proposition on immigration Ethnic Religious and Language Groups Towards a Set of Rules for Data Collection and Statistical Analysis Werner Haug CIA Factbook France Cia gov Retrieved 12 November 2011 France Population Nation by Nation Background Notes France U S Department of State Race Ethnicity and National Identity in France and the United States A Comparative Historical Overview Archived 8 December 2003 at the Wayback Machine George M Fredrickson Stanford University 2003 Retrieved 17 March 2008 Etre ne en France d un parent immigre Insee Premiere n 1287 mars 2010 Catherine Borrel et Bertrand Lhommeau Insee Repartition des immigres par pays de naissance 2008 Insee October 2011 Pastor Jose Manuel Azcona 2004 Possible paradises Basque emigration to Latin America University of Nevada Press ISBN 978 0 87417 444 1 In any event between 1848 and 1939 one million people with French passports headed definitively abroad page 296 Statistics Canada Census Profile 2016 Census Retrieved 2 December 2014 Canal Academie Les merveilleux francophiles argentins Archived from the original on 5 June 2009 L immigration francaise en Argentine 1850 1930 L Uruguay capta seulement 13 922 immigrants francais entre 1833 et 1842 la plupart d entre eux originaires du Pays Basque et du Bearn Migration Uruguay Nationsencyclopedia com Retrieved 12 December 2017 Wardrop Murray 12 April 2010 Britons can trace French ancestry after millions of records go online The Daily Telegraph London The documents disclose that despite our rivalry with our continental counterparts 3 million Britons one in 20 can trace their ancestry back to France London France s sixth biggest city BBC News 30 May 2012 Retrieved 23 February 2013 The French consulate in London estimates between 300 000 and 400 000 French citizens live in the British capital Sarkozy raises hopes of expats Baltimoresun com 19 October 2011 Archived from the original on 30 September 2007 Retrieved 12 November 2011 Los franco ticos la genealogia y la paz Archived 24 May 2015 at the Wayback Machine October 2008 ISSN 1659 3529 Domingo Enrique Fernandez 10 November 2006 La emigracion francesa en Chile 1875 1914 Amerique Latine Histoire et Memoire Les Cahiers Alhim Les Cahiers Alhim 12 doi 10 4000 alhim 1252 El 80 de los colonos que llegan a Chile provienen del Pais Vasco del Bordelais de Charentes y de las regiones situadas entre Gers y Perigord La influencia francesa en la vida social de Chile de la segunda mitad del siglo XIX PDF Archived from the original PDF on 6 February 2004 Retrieved 17 March 2009 Los datos que poseia el Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Francia ya en 1863 cuando auno se abria Agencia General de Colonizacion del Gobierno de Chile en Europa con sede en Paris daban cuenta de 1 650 ciudadanos franceses residentes Esta cifra fue aumentando paulatinamente hasta llegar tal como lo consignaba el Ministerio Plenipotenciario Frances en Chile a un numero cercano a los 30 000 franceses residentes a fines del siglo Paris Societe d eConomie Politique of Paris Societe de Statistique de 1867 Journal des economistes Presses universitaires de France Le recensement de la population du Chili a constate la presence de 23 220 etrangers Nous trouvons les etrangers etablis au Chili repartis par nationalite de la maniere suivante Allemands 3 876 Anglais 2 818 Francais 2 483 Espagnols 1 247 Italiens 1 037 Nord Americains 831 Portugais 313 page 281 Collier Simon Sater William F 2004 A history of Chile 1808 2002 ISBN 978 0 521 53484 0 p 29 The census of twenty one years later put the total at around 25 000 including 3 000 French Eeuwen Daniel van 2002 L Amerique latine et l Europe a l heure de la mondialisation ISBN 978 2 84586 281 4 p 194 Chili 10 000 7 Vivre a l etranger 25 January 2016 Ils ont ete 100 000 a emigrer dans ce pays entre 1850 et 1965 et auraient entre 500 000 et 1 million de descendants Pastor Jose Manuel Azcona 2004 Possible paradises Basque emigration to Latin America ISBN 9780874174441 The French colony in this country numbered 592 in 1888 and 5 000 in 1915 page 226 L Amerique latine et l Europe a l heure de la mondialisation January 2002 ISBN 9782845862814 p 194 Bresil 14 000 9 Asociacion para el Fomento de los Estudios Historicos en Centroamerica AFEHC Relaciones entre Francia y Guatemala 1823 1954 Archived 11 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine Guatemala 2007 Retrieved 4 December 2014 Erwin Dopf Inmigracion francesa al Peru Espejodelperu com pe Retrieved 6 June 2012 The Population of Bolivia People and Culture Demographics Bolivia Population Boliviabella com Retrieved 12 November 2011 Naissances selon le pays de naissance des parents 2010 Insee septembre 2011 Ethnic People Groups of Cambodia Joshua Project Retrieved 12 November 2011 a b Afghani Tajik of Afghanistan Ethnic People Profile Joshuaproject net Retrieved 12 November 2011 Abeles Marc 1999 How the Anthropology of France Has Changed Anthropology in France Assessing New Directions in the Field Cultural Anthropology American Anthropological Association 14 3 404 8 doi 10 1525 can 1999 14 3 404 ISSN 1548 1360 JSTOR 656657 Wieviorka M L espace du racisme 1991 Editions du SeuilExternal links Wikiquote has quotations related to French people Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title French people amp oldid 1137173298, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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