Immigration How the foreign-born population of Europe has evolved over the last 25 years.

[Maciamo]

The data is from Eurostat (Jan 2001 → Jan 2025). Unfortunately, they do not differentiate between European and non-European immigrants. So in some countries the change may be due in great part to increased mobility within the European Union. For example, 51% of the population of Luxembourg is foreign-born, but 85% of these foreigners come from other European countries.

Austria: 12.5% → 22.5%
Belgium: 10.7% → 20.2%
Denmark: 6.0% → 14.4%
France: 10.0% → 14.0%
Germany: 11.5% → 20.5%
Greece: 10.3% → 11.0%
Iceland: 4.0% → 21.8%
Ireland: 8.0% → 23.3%
Luxembourg: 37.5% → 51.5%
Netherlands: 10.1% → 16.8%
Norway: 7.3% → 18.7%
Slovenia: 2.5% → 15.5%
Spain: 4.3% → 19.3%
Sweden: 11.0% → 20.8%
United Kingdom: 8.3% → 20.0%

 

[Tomenable]

I'm surprised by a rather small increase in France.

In Slovenia most migrants are from former Yugoslavia.

 

[Maciamo]

I'm surprised by a rather small increase in France.

In Slovenia most migrants are from former Yugoslavia.

France already had a huge immigrant population before 2001. It has the largest Muslim population and the largest black population of any European country.

France was also one of the first countries to have a far-right anti-immigration political party (the National Front, founded in 1972, now called National Rally), which has been increasingly popular since the early 2000s, prompting the government to limit immigration from outside Europe.

Another factor is that since most of the Maghrebi immigrants in France came between the 1950s and 70s, the number of them born abroad is actually starting to decrease as the oldest are starting to die. The majority of the Maghrebi in France our second, third, or even fourth generation immigrants, therefore born in France and not part of the statistics above.

Economically France is not the most attractive country for other European workers. French people are more likely to go work in countries like Switzerland, Luxembourg, Belgium, etc. than the other way around.

 

[Vallicanus]

Where are Italy's figures?

 

[Maciamo]

Where are Italy's figures?

I didn't make the chart. It's from Eurostat. Apparently they only listed 14 countries, maybe those with the highest increase in foreign-born population.

This other chart from Eurostat shows the percentage of the population born abroad in all EU countries. They even separate those born in another EU member state and those born in non-EU countries. Italy has 11.8% of its population born abroad, including 9.1% born outside the EU.

 

[Maciamo]

This other chart is also interesting. It shows the 5 main nationalities among foreigners in 19 EU/EEA countries. On the left is the foreigners by citizenship. On the right is the people born abroad, including those who were later naturalised.

In many countries non-EU immigrants tend to get naturalised relatively quickly. For example, Belgium has 1.7 million foreigners, but 2.5 million people born abroad. It means that at least 800,000 people were naturalised. For example, there were 250,000 people born in Morocco, the largest group of people born abroad, but non-naturalised Moroccans are not even in the top five of foreign nationalities today. Most of them have acquired Belgian citizenship. The top 5 foreign nationalities in Belgium are all from the EU. They have no incentive of getting Belgian citizenship as they have the same rights with their current EU citizenship.

Then, statistics are not always what they seem. For example, it's not uncommon to find the Maghrebi people in Belgium who are actually French citizens. It's normal as about 10% of people in France have Maghrebi origins, and like in Belgium, most of them have been naturalised. So I would expect that about 10% of the French citizens in Belgium are people of Maghrebi descent.

 

[Tomenable]

^^^
Can you post a link to this Eurostat data for all EU countries?