Great Replacement conspiracy theory, Digi Mart USA News (France): Frequently promoted by the far right, the Great Replacement thesis does not withstand analysis of demographic and historical data, according to a publisher report from Sud Ouest.
The anti-immigrant conspiracy theory of the “Great Replacement” has returned to the center of debate following the racist attack in Trappes, researchers note. It has no scientific validation.
The attack in the Yvelines on October 23 killed a 26-year-old Black Frenchman and left seven people injured.
In response, Green lawmakers filed bills on Friday to criminalize statements invoking “the replacement of one population by another.” The attack also fueled a wave of heckling in the National Assembly, where Minister for the Fight Against Discrimination Aurore Bergé was booed after she invoked “freedom of expression” in September regarding the Great Replacement, while saying she also intends to combat it.
The theory claims that a white, European and Christian people is being replaced on its territory by a largely Muslim immigrant population. Figures ranging from Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2014 to Jordan Bardella in 2021, Éric Zemmour, Marion Maréchal and Valérie Pécresse, the Republican candidate in the 2022 presidential election, have repeatedly invoked it in political debate.
The notion was formulated in 2011 by writer Renaud Camus, who describes a “change of population” happening “almost all at once, within a generation,” as the result of an elite plot. Camus, convicted several times for incitement to hatred, did not invent the idea.
It draws on anti-Semitic, racist and xenophobic writings from the late 19th century.
In 1893, nationalist writer Maurice Barrès spoke of “the submersion, the disappearance of our civilization, all linked to immigration… of Belgians,” according to François Héran, honorary professor at the Collège de France. The obsession then persisted for decades on the margins of the radical right, historian Nicolas Lebourg observes.
After 1945, former Nazis and collaborators developed the idea of a destruction of Europe by a “Jewish plot” organizing the “importation” of African and Asian populations. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, the theory refocused on racist and Islamophobic themes.
Camus argues that anyone can observe this accelerated “replacement” by North African, sub-Saharan, Muslim immigrants simply by opening their eyes. Experts, however, say the theory has no scientific basis and no supporting data.
Data from the national statistics institute Insee show that the share of immigrants in France’s total population rose from 3.7% in 1921 to 7.4% in 1975, remained stable until 1999, and climbed to 11.6% in 2025, or 7,970,000 people, including 3,920,000 African immigrants. That is an increase of about 50% over the past 25 years.
Patrick Weil, emeritus research director at the CNRS, calls the rise “significant” but states it “is in no way a submersion,” averaging 133,000 additional people per year, in his 2026 book.
Jean-Christophe Dumont, head of the OECD’s international migration division, says immigration in France is not high relative to its population, in either flows or stocks, compared with other OECD countries. In 2024, the immigration rate was 0.45% for France, against an OECD average of 0.81%.
Data also undermine the claim, promoted by Éric Zemmour, of very high fertility among immigrant women from the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa. A recent study by the National Institute for Demographic Studies (Ined), covering 2019-2020, finds their final fertility is above that of the majority population (1.87 children per woman), but it converges already in the first generation of descendants born in France.
Fertility falls from 2.84 children per woman among sub-Saharan African immigrants to 2.11 among their daughters, and from 2.80 to 1.91 for women from the Maghreb.
Some argue that a demographic and cultural replacement occurs through mixed unions. Demographers respond that there is no displacement of one population by another, but rather significant intermixing.
Ined notes that descendants of immigrants are far better integrated into French society than first-generation immigrants.
Researchers also express concern about the opposition of two categories of population, one termed “of stock” and the other “of non-European origin.” They ask how many generations without an immigrant ancestor one would have to trace back to be considered fully French.
