Immigrant workers represent 22% of the active population of the Ile-de-France region, twice as many as in the rest of metropolitan France, according to a statistical study by INSEE. They hold “difficult” but “essential” jobs in construction or personal services, according to this study.
A total of 1.25 million immigrants worked in the region in 2018, according to the study released Thursday. A stable rate over a decade: immigrant workers represented 21.4% of the active population in Ile-de-France in 2008, 23% in 2013. In proportion, this is much more than in other regions: for example 4% in Brittany or Normandy and 12% in Corsica.
Overrepresented in difficult jobs
These workers, who are mainly concentrated in Seine-Saint-Denis, the poorest department of metropolitan France, are half from Africa, mainly from Algeria, Morocco, central and sub-Saharan Africa, details INSEE. . They are “overrepresented in low-skilled, very difficult jobs, but essential to the proper functioning of a territory”, observes Mustapha Touahir, head of the regional service of the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies.
According to the study, more than six out of ten home helpers, housekeepers or domestic workers (61.4%) were immigrants in 2018. Immigrants also represented nearly two-thirds of the workforce at this date. total (60.8%) workers in the structural work of building and public works. One out of two Ile-de-France cooks was an immigrant and more than four out of ten worked as guard and security guards (47%), cleaners (45%) or childminders (43%).
Professions which are characterized “by more restrictive working conditions than the average”, in terms of physical effort, repetitive tasks or schedules and for which “employers are faced with recruitment difficulties”, notes the statistical institute.
Discrimination
Conversely, this workforce is largely under-represented among executives or intermediate administrative professions (9%). And it is not necessarily a question of skills, according to INSEE.
“We measure downgrading situations, with immigrants who do not occupy jobs commensurate with the diploma they have obtained”, continues Mustapha Touahir. A situation whose explanations are “multiple” but whose “phenomena of discrimination” are an “element of explanation”, he believes. Just like the obligation to have a European diploma or one recognized by the State to practice certain professions, in particular medical.