Is being undocumented in France a common situation? Recent research shows that 21% of immigrants living in France have been undocumented at some point in their lives. For more than a third of them, this state of administrative precariousness has lasted more than five years.

While the French senators are currently reviewing an immigration bill that includes plans to simplify the regularization of undocumented workers, the results of the Trajectoires et Origines 2 survey conducted by the French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED), published in October, show that the amount of "migrants in an irregular situation has been common and relatively significant for a very long time in France," said research director Cris Beauchemin, a co-author of the study with Julia Descamps and Pascale Dietrich-Ragon.

23% of immigrants who arrived before 1989 have been undocumented, compared with 22% of those who arrived between 1989 and 1998 and 26% of those who arrived between 1999 and 2008. While the right and the center have narrowed the rules for regularizing undocumented workers, which the draft bill relaxed, the study shows that the far-right theory according to which migrants would choose their country of arrival based on the quality of social benefits, cannot be empirically proven. "Irregularity is a structural fact in the administrative management of immigrant residency, and there has been no major change, whatever the regularization measures decided by the various governments," insisted Beauchemin.

The INED study also reveals that, of the 21% of immigrants who have been undocumented, less than half arrived in France illegally. These results invalidate the idea of a "migratory submersion" spread by the right and far-right. "While the issue of illegal entries has been increasingly prominent in public discourse since the 2000s, the data shows no significant change," noted INED. The proportion of migrants entering France without a visa has fluctuated between 9% and 10% since 1989.

Today, undocumented status is the result of a multitude of administrative processes. "Irregularity doesn't just occur on arrival in France. Some people entered with a visa, but remain on the territory after it has expired, some people have been refused asylum, and some are unable to renew their residence permit because they are unable to access administrative services, the criteria for granting it have changed, or their situation has changed," said Beauchemin.

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