Six in ten adults in France believe that their country is facing a “great replacement” with the mass importation of non-European immigrants.
A survey conducted by the Institut français d’opinion publique (Ifop) research firm has found that 60 per cent of French people believe that their country is experiencing a “profound demographic transformation” and that the French are being “progressively replaced by non-European populations, primarily from the African continent.”
Of those who agreed with the statement, 66 per cent said the development was entirely bad, compared with 21 per cent who felt it was neither good nor bad, and 9 per cent who felt it was a positive development.
Opinions on the matter were divided largely along party lines, with supporters of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally being the most concerned about demographic displacement at 81 per cent, compared to 76 per cent of Les Républicains voters, 37 per cent of Macron supporters, and just 30 per cent of far-left La France Insoumise voters.
Intriguingly, 64 per cent of Socialist Party voters expressed concerns about the country’s transformation through mass migration. Conversely, just 4 per cent — a Lizardman’s Constant — of National Rally voters felt it was entirely a good thing, compared to 39 per cent of Green Party voters and 32 per cent of LFI supporters.
LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon has begun to frequently invoke the phrase “great replacement”, originally coined by French philosopher Renaud Camus to describe the attitude of Western liberal elites who view their populations as mere economic units which can be exchanged with no consequence.
While the far-left former presidential candidate appeared to initially make reference to the phenomenon in ironic jest, he and his cohort of radicals have increasingly cast the political battle between “new” and “old” France, comparing their multicultural support base with “ugly” white France.
Perhaps giving the game away, Mélenchon was quoted earlier this month as saying that the far-left cannot rely on the white Catholic working class of rural France to usher in socialism.
This may explain his party’s focus on courting urban ethnic minority voting blocs, particularly the Muslim vote, with LFI having increasingly focused on issues like Palestine. This has coincided with the leftist party facing accusations of cosying up to Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.
According to the French government’s National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE), there were approximately six million foreign nationals living in France in 2024, or around 8.8 per cent of the population. This does not include migrants who obtained citizenship or people who were born to migrant parents.
INSEE noted that there has been a significant change in the backgrounds of foreigners living in France, with three-quarters of migrants in 1968 coming from other European nations, compared to around half of migrants currently hailing from Africa.
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