FRANCE: Government statisticians use census data on national origin to get around restrictions on acquiring ethnic data.

Several decades after mass immigration began, enough long-term data exist to see how the generation raised in France by parents from other countries has done.

In a word, badly. Youth unemployment of 32% for French-born citizens whose parents arrived from Africa, including sub-Saharan countries and those of the Maghreb, is twice as high as for those with no immigrant background. Fully 30% leave high school without any diploma or qualification, against 16% of those without immigrant parents. French people with parents from Africa have less stable working lives, and are more likely to live in poor neighbourhoods, than those with non-African immigrant backgrounds, the report finds.