Is it true that the number of mixed unions in France is higher now?

While the intimate partner of 73% of immigrants who have such a partner in France is either an immigrant themselves or the French-born child of immigrants, only 34% of the second generation are in a union with a person of immigrant origin. And only 61% of that 34% are in a union with someone from precisely the same country of origin as themselves.

Altogether, then, 79% of members of the second generation are in a union with someone of a different geographic origin; that is, in an ethnically mixed union. Even among people of African descent, the majority of unions are mixed (57% for those originally from the Maghreb or the Sahel). These mixed marriages or unions—the fact of intraunion mix or diversity—is what explains why the histories of so many families in France include the experience of immigration: in each generation, intraunion mix increases the presence of foreign origins in individuals’ ancestries. The increased magnitude of migration flows since the mid-1990s and the increased variety of the geographic locations those migrants come from are therefore not the sole causes of origin diversity in the population of France.   

Source: “La diversité des origines et la mixité des unions progressent au fil des generations [Origin diversity and union diversity increase over the generations] INSEE Première no. 1910, July 2022.

On line: 02/07/2023