French immigrants

SIGNIFICANCE: French immigration to the United States has been episodic—generally paralleling religious, political, and economic upheavals in France.

French settlement in the United States began during the age of exploration and colonization of the seventeenth century in Louisiana and intensified with the expulsion from France of the Huguenots—or French Protestants—during the eighteenth century. Migration from French Canada in 1755 originated with the expulsion of the French settlers from Acadia—Nova Scotia and New Brunswick—by Great Britain. Voluntary migration of French Canadians intensified from 1900 until 1930 to New England to work in shoe and textile factories. Haitian migration to New York City increased during the 1980s because of economic and political upheavals. French migration to the United States can also be documented from the French-speaking nations of Belgium, Switzerland, West Africa, and French Polynesia.

French Immigration Before the Revolution

French interest in the Americas was stimulated by the voyages of the Spanish, Portuguese, and English. During the seventeenth century, explorers sailing under the French flag navigated the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean and founded settlements along the Mississippi River in what would become Louisiana and along the St. Lawrence River in New France—or Quebec—with much smaller settlements at Beaufort, South Carolina, and Jacksonville, Florida.

Emigration from France was strictly regulated by law. French settlers in the New World were usually trappers, soldiers, or clerics until 1685 when King Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes—stripping the Protestant Huguenots of their political rights unless they converted to Roman Catholicism. In response, many Huguenots opted to immigrate to North America. Among France’s most skilled artisans, the Huguenots were well-educated members of the wealthy middle class. Their departure crippled the French economy but led to the creation of prosperous settlements at New Rochelle, Staten Island, Harlem, and New Paltz in what would become the state of New York. Huguenot families also settled in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina. Conflicting accounts made it difficult to provide accurate figures on the number of Huguenots who settled in the future United States—estimates range from as few as 3,000 to as many as 15,000 before the first US Census in 1790.

Nineteenth-Century Immigration

The first US Census in 1790 listed 11,307 residents of French origin. New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Maryland had the largest number of French-speaking residents. Other states with significant French populations included North Carolina, Virginia, Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and what was then the territory of Maine.

Between 1819 and 1870, 245,812 French immigrants arrived in the United States. Their numbers steadily rose—from 8,868 during the 1820s to 45,575 during the 1830s. The next two decades witnessed further increases in French immigrants—77,262 during the 1840s and 76,358 during the 1850s. The increased numbers of French immigrants during each of those decades reflected the disorders caused by political revolutions in France in 1830, 1848, and 1852.

During the 1860s—the decade the U.S. Civil War was fought—the number of new French immigrants declined to 37,749. The 1870 US Census counted 115,260 US residents born in France—with the largest numbers in New York, Ohio, Louisiana, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. The loss of the French province of Alsace-Lorraine to Prussia in 1871 in the Franco-Prussian War increased the number of French Alsatians—particularly French Jews—who went to the United States. Nevertheless, the 1880 US Census saw a decline in the number of French-born residents of the United States to 104,143. By this time, California had replaced Ohio among the five states with the most French residents.

The 1900 US Census showed a further decline in the size of the French-born population, whose numbers had dropped to 102,535. The largest communities were in New York, Colorado, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana. Between 1875 and 1914, France’s politics and national economy were stabilizing—most French emigrants chose to see economic opportunities in French colonies in North Africa and Southeast Asia.

Twentieth-Century Patterns

Immigration from France declined during the upheavals brought by World War I (1914–18) and World War II (1939–1945). After 1945, Europe experienced an economic recovery that further discouraged emigration to the United States—new immigration was most likely to be motivated by marriages between French and American citizens. The postwar French immigrants who came to the United States generally had high levels of education and significant job skills.

In 1980, the US Census began collecting information on national ancestry and found 13 million American citizens regarded themselves as having French ancestry—more than one-quarter of these people lived in the Northeast. A similar percentage in north-central and southern states claimed French ancestry—in the West, only 19 percent claimed French heritage. The individual states with the most residents claiming French ancestry were California, Louisiana, Michigan, Massachusetts, and New York. Although a cohesive French American community was lacking in the United States, according to the 2020 U.S. Census data, over nine million Americans claimed some connection to French ancestry.

French Immigrants in the Twenty-First Century

French immigration to the United States in the twenty-first century formed part of a broader pattern of selective, skilled mobility among French nationals worldwide. While the United States hosted a notable share of these migrants—about 182,000 French-born residents by 2022—France’s larger emigration trends showed that most French citizens settling abroad choose destinations within Europe or other OECD countries (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) such as Canada and Australia. Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada attracted substantial numbers of French expatriates, often for professional opportunities, cultural proximity, or cross-border economic integration. This global distribution highlights the tendency of contemporary French migrants to pursue professional or educational mobility rather than settlement-based migration.

Within the United States, these same dynamics produced a population of French-born immigrants characterized by high educational attainment and concentration in metropolitan regions such as New York, Washington, DC, San Francisco, and Miami. Their movement parallels broader transatlantic labor flows in which French professionals, students, and entrepreneurs circulate among global cities. The United States remains one important node in this network, but not the primary destination.

Bibliography

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