Historical population

to the French Revolution.]]

Notes for the table:

• until the 1830s, urbanization was contained within the administrative borders of the City of Paris; urban area figures before 1835 are thus the same as the city proper figures
• the phenomenon of long commutes did not appear until the 1960s; metropolitan area figures before 1968 are thus essentially the same as the urban area figures
• time comparisons should be exercised with care, as statistical borders vary year after year. E.g., the metropolitan area figure for 1968 is within the 1968 borders of the metropolitan area, whereas the metropolitan area figure for 1975 is within the 1975 expanded borders of the metropolitan area.

Sources:

• City proper figures from 1801 on, urban area figures from 1954 on, and metropolitan area figures from 1990 on are official census figures.
• City proper figures before 1801 and urban area figures before 1954 are estimates from various sources.
• Metropolitan area figures before 1990 were reconstructed by Ph. Julien of INSEE by applying the current INSEE definition of metropolitan areas to past censuses.

Immigration

of high rise apartment buildings with a large Eastern Asian (mainly Vietnamese and Chinese) population.]]

Since the Middle Ages, at which time it was the largest city of the Western World, Paris has always attracted foreigners. From the Dutch and Swedish students of the Latin Quarter in the 14th century to the English, Scottish and Irish Jacobite refugees in the 17th century, from the Polish nationalist refugees in the early 19th century to the Belgian, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish workers in the late 19th century, from the Sephardic Jews of North Africa in the middle of the 20th century to the Africans and Eastern Asians of today, Paris has received waves after waves of immigrants. Today, like other world cities, Paris is largely a multicultural city.

French censuses are forbidden to ask questions regarding ethnicity or religion, and therefore it is not possible to know the ethnic composition of the metropolitan area of Paris. Still, some relevant data can be extracted from French censuses. At the 1999 census, there were 2,169,406 people living in the metropolitan area of Greater Paris who were born outside of Metropolitan France, which was 19.4% of the total population of the metropolitan area. As a comparison: at the 2001 UK census, 19.5% of the total population of the Greater London metropolitan area was born outside of the (metropolitan) United Kingdom^[2], while at the 2000 US census 27.5% of the total population of the New York-Newark-Bridgeport metropolitan area was born outside of the United States, and 31.9% of the total population of the Los Angeles-Riverside-Orange County metropolitan area was born outside of the United States.

At the 1999 French census, there were 474,768 people living in the metropolitan area of Greater Paris who were living outside of Metropolitan France in 1990, which was 4.2% of the total population of the metropolitan area in 1999.

Patterns of immigration to Paris have changed significantly in the 1990s. Portuguese immigration has significantly decreased, while immigration from other regions of the world has increased. The most important groups of immigrants today are the following:

• North and West Africans: the immigration of these two groups has been substantially reduced^{[citation needed]} by a tightening of the borders engineered by successive French governments. In the 1990s, immigrants from North Africa and West Africa came mostly through family reunification (women and children coming to live with their husband or father already living in France). An unknown number of North Africans and West Africans have also come illegally outside of these reunifications. Although some have been deported back to Africa, most of these illegal immigrants are still in France, without papers, living with the threat of deportation should they be discovered. However, thousands of illegal immigrants were given official papers under the center-left government of Lionel Jospin in the late 1990s, after pressure from French associations defending the rights of immigrants^{[citation needed]}).
• Chinese people: Although Paris has had a Chinese community for over a century, immigration has increased steadily in recent decades. Immigration is predominately from the regions of Manchuria and Wenzhou in Zhejiang province. Illegal immigration is also a concern.
• Eastern Europeans, a significant proportion from Romania, a group on the rise since the fall of the Berlin Wall
• Middle Easterners

Compared with the United Kingdom, South Asian immigrants are still not very numerous in Paris, although their presence significantly increased in the 1990s. Compared with the United States, Latin American and Filipino immigrants are extremely few in Paris; by contrast, the Paris region has a sizeable population of Argentine and Chilean exiles who escaped those nations' dictatorships in the 1970s). Middle Eastern immigrants are also relatively few (compared to those of the Maghreb), although there is a sizeable Lebanese community (mostly Christian and affluent), due to the old ties between France and Lebanon, as well as an important Turkish and Kurdish population. Russians are also extremely few in Paris, despite an old tradition of White Russian presence in Paris following the Communist revolution of 1917, and before of anarchist and socialist Russians.

Finally, it should be remembered that the figures given here are for people permanently living in the metropolitan area of Paris. However, Paris is the most visited city in the world, with a massive influx of tourists at any time in the year (over 75 million a year, which is more than the whole population of France). Most of these visitors are foreigners, so that on any day of the year the actual foreign population being present in the metropolitan area of Paris is probably higher than the 19.4% figure given above. This fact is most felt in the center of the city of Paris, where it is possible to walk in some streets where most people encountered are tourists.

See also

• Demographics of France
• List of metropolitan areas by population
• Larger Urban Zones in the European Union
• Largest urban areas of the European Union

References