Survey on attitudes and behaviour of French people towards immigrants

In the early 1950s, the French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED) identified, as part of their areas of interest, research on foreigners living in France, as well as the attitudes of the French population towards these foreigners. This important scientific work was subsequently undertaken in partnership with UNESCO (the department of social sciences on social tensions).

For the past century, France had been one of the main European countries of migration: it has regularly welcomed workers or persecuted people for a variety of reasons. Due to its large migrant population, the question of how these migrants have been assimilating into their host country has become increasingly of interest. In more general terms, the question concerned the type of psychosocial relations that can be established within a given territory between the autochthonous population and migrants: their attitudes, which are more or less conscious, largely influence their respective behaviours, and it is these attitudes that researchers have been trying to understand. How can we reduce latent or explicit social tensions, which are largely developed in the psyche, without knowing the causes that provoke them?

It was therefore important in 1951 to examine in depth all the various ways in which the presence of migrants in France has affected them and the nation.
As such, the first survey to be undertaken (which is what is described here) focused on examining the behaviour and attitudes of the French towards migrants, as well as observing five different groups of distinct national origin, each made up of a hundred migrant families.

20世纪50年代初，法国人口研究所（French Institute for Demographic Studies, INED）将在法外籍人士研究、以及法国民众对这些外籍人士的态度纳入其核心研究范畴。这项重要的科研工作随后与联合国教科文组织（UNESCO，下设负责社会紧张局势研究的社会科学部门）合作开展。

近一个世纪以来，法国始终是欧洲主要的移民接纳国之一：出于各类缘由，该国持续接纳劳工与受迫害群体。鉴于国内庞大的移民群体，此类移民如何融入东道国的议题愈发受到关注。更宽泛而言，该议题聚焦于本土人口与移民在特定地域内可构建的社会心理关系：民众或显或隐的态度，在很大程度上左右着彼此的行为，而这正是研究者力图探明的对象。倘若尚未明晰引发社会紧张的根源，又该如何缓解潜藏或显性的、本质上源于心理层面的社会张力？

因此，1951年对法国境内移民的存在给移民群体与国家带来的各类影响展开深度调研，具备重要意义。据此，本次记述的首项调研聚焦于探究法国民众对移民的行为与态度，同时对五个来自不同国家的移民群体展开观察，每个群体均由100个移民家庭组成。