Indian Migrants in France: Country report

CARIM-India is co-financed by the European University Institute and the European Union.Indian migration in France is remarkable for its diversity and social invisibility. Indian migrants belong to a wide spectrum of religious, ethnic, linguistic and social backgrounds and their migration routes to France are multiple: one can roughly distinguish between French speaking groups linked to France by the colonial past and more recent migrants from Panjab and Gujerat who ended in France because they could not migrated to the UK. Unskilled labour predominates among the first generation of non-French speaking migrants, but the second generation, supplemented by highly qualified professionals from India, start entering the job-market with qualifications. Few in numbers, Indians tend also to be invisible as migrants for the general public and in academic research –the later traditionally focusing on formerly colonised migrants. India benefits from a good image in France, and Indians tend to be considered as a model minority.CARIM-India: Developing a knowledge base for policymaking on India-EU migratio