Where France's foreign-born residents actually cluster
A ranking of France's most foreign-born communes ought to read like a relocation brochure. Across the 2,173 communes above 5,000 residents it does not: eleven of the top twenty are Paris suburbs, and the Dordogne's strongest entry sits 744th.
A ranking of the French communes with the most foreign-born residents ought to read like a relocation brochure: Dordogne villages, Provençal hill towns, the odd Breton harbour. It reads nothing like that. The top of the list is a Paris suburb, a Swiss border town and a stretch of the Luxembourg frontier.
We took every metropolitan commune carrying an INSEE foreign-born share — 34,823 of them — kept the 2,173 with at least 5,000 residents, and ranked those. The floor matters: below it, a village of 200 moves ten points on a single family arriving.
The top of the list
Eleven of the top twenty communes are in Île-de-France, and thirty-two of the top fifty. Most of the rest sit on a working border — Luxembourg, Geneva — where the foreign-born share measures a commute rather than a move. Ninth is Beausoleil, which shares a pavement with Monaco.
It is not a price signal
Cross the layer with transaction prices and it goes flat. Sort the 31,091 metropolitan communes carrying both into four equal groups by foreign-born share, and the median price per square metre runs 1,500, 1,642, 1,650 and finally 1,602 euros. The quarter with the most foreign-born residents is no dearer than the quarter below it — it is cheaper.
That is the opposite of what the postcard version implies. Where foreign residents concentrate, the price is being set by Paris, Geneva or Monaco — not by the arrivals.
What this figure cannot tell you
The layer counts every resident born abroad. A Portuguese bricklayer in Villerupt, a physicist commuting to CERN from Ferney-Voltaire and a British retiree in the Dordogne are one number here. It cannot tell you which kind of newcomer a commune is getting, and expat is a word this data does not use.
It is also a single census round, so nothing here supports a claim about who is arriving fastest. And the departments that draw British and Dutch buyers sit mid-table: the Dordogne's strongest commune above 5,000 residents is Terrasson-Lavilledieu at 7.8 per cent, 744th of 2,173.
Open the expat layer, add property price on top, and the concentration shows for what it is — a border and a suburb effect, not a relocation map.