The French statistical office (INSEE) has published the 2010 immigrant figures for France, and if you know how to extract data from the figures, they reveal something frankly shocking: France has now become an emigration country for its own population (its youth in particular), just like Ireland in the 19th century.
Some words of explanations are needed here. As crazy as it may sound, France is the only country in Western Europe which does not estimate the yearly inflows and outflows of people from its territory. All the West European nations, the UK, Spain, Italy, Germany, estimate their inflows and outflows every year, and therefore calculate their net migration every year (inflows minus outflows). Most of them also refine the figures by distinguishing inflows and outflows of foreigners and of nationals.
For reasons that remain a mystery to me, the French statistical office does not and has never estimated the yearly inflows and outflows from France. Or, to be more precise, they publish an estimate that is little more than a guesstimate without any real value (contrary to say, a country like the UK where they have a passenger survey that asks people in airports and seaports whether they are in/outmigrating or just traveling; even land countries like Germany or Spain have those surveys, but France doesn't).
In the old days, we could know the net migration of France only when a new census took place. By comparing the population from the previous census (say the 1990 census) and the next census (the 1999 census), and subtracting the total number of deaths between the two censuses from the total number of births, we could deduct the net migration over the period between the two censuses.
France now conducts yearly censuses. It's a very original method which is somewhat similar to the American Community Survey in the US. It's a real and rolling census, that is updated every year. So we can now know with certainty the net migration for each year, since the rolling census takes place each year, but since the results of the census are published only 3 years after the census takes place, we know the net migration only after 4 years (for example with the figures published by INSEE last week we can calculate the net migration in 2009, by comparing the Jan. 2009 and Jan. 2010 censuses)
The net migration is a raw figure. It does not distinguish between foreigners and nationals. I'm not going to go too much into detail, but basically, I found a way to calculate the net migration for just French nationals, because INSEE publishes the number of immigrants living in France at each census, so by comparing the number of immigrants living in France at each census, and checking the number of immigrants who die on French soil on each given year, we can arrive at a figure that is the net migration of French nationals.
The net migration of France is low compared to other European countries. The UK routinely has a net migration of +200,000 or more per year. Germany and Italy had more than +300,000 last year. Spain used to have insane net migrations of +600,000 per year. France, on the best years, has a net migration of only +100,000, and in the past few years (up to 2009, last year for which we can make calculations), the net migration has declined to less than +50,000, which is ridiculously low compared to the neighboring countries.
I had long suspected that this low net migration was due to huge outflows of French people (because pretty much as many immigrants want to move to France as to Italy or the UK), and it turns out I was unfortunately quite right, and the situation is even worse than I had imagined.
Here are the figures. These figures are totally unknown in France, because INSEE does not publish them, and it takes a bit of "cleverness" and number crunching to arrive at them.
Net migration of French nationals:
2006: -43,605
2007: -56,741
2008: -76,585
2009: -90,088
Net migration of foreign immigrants:
2006: +155,746
2007: +130,367
2008: +133,397
2009: +122,427
Net migration of France (it's the sum of the two, basically):
2006: +112,141
2007: +73,626
2008: +56,812
2009: +32,339
For comparison, this is the net migration of British nationals in the UK, a country reputed for the emigration of its population:
2006: -119,000 to -124,000
2007: -88,000 to -97,000
2008: -84,000 to -87,000
2009: -29,000 to -44,000
We can see that the net outflows of British nationals has been reduced, due to the crash of the sterling pound in 2008 and the crash of the Spanish economy, which led to the return of many British pensioners to the UK (because their £ pensions have now less purchasing power abroad), and also to the return of many British workers who simply could not find jobs anymore in Southern European countries, Spain in particular.
At the same time, the net outflows of French nationals have increased, and are now worse than the net outflows of British nationals. In 2009, the last year for which calculations are possible, the net migration of French nationals was about -90,000. This means that much more than 90,000 French people left France that year. Since there exist no inflow and outflow statistics, we can't know how many French people left France that year, but for example that net figure could be the result of 150,000 French people leaving France and 60,000 French people returning to France.
Like I said, these figures are totally unknown to the French public, and nobody has any idea that more than 100,000 French people leave France for good every year now, which is the largest bleeding the country has experienced in peacetime since the flight of the Huguenots in the 17th century.
And the time series ends in 2009. We can only surmise that it's even worse now (especially since the Socialists came back to power last year). I wouldn't be surprised if 200,000 French people left France yearly now.
European newspapers are full of articles about the flight of young Spaniards from Spain (when in fact only a few tens of thousands of Spaniards left Spain last year), but the real hot story should be the flight of French people from their home country.
One reason why this pretty significant phenomenon is completely overlooked is because (beyond the fact that INSEE does not have a survey of inflows and outflows) France is a fertile and temperate country which people have rarely left to migrate to foreign lands (France was one of the least contributors to the population of the Americas). Most French people (at least in the elites) still live with this belief that France is this country of milk and honey where everybody wants to come to live (hence the strong Far Right which imagines that billions of immigrants are about to invade France if the country doesn't erect walls) and which no one can possibly in their right mind desire to leave. One renowned and very knowledgeable French demographer even wrote a few years ago in an otherwise very enlightening book called 'Le temps des immigrés' that the net migration of French nationals was assumed to be +0 (!!).
As you can see from the figures I've calculated, there is a serious need in France to reassess the situation about migration of French nationals.