Parisian: someone whose legacy of sophistication can be traced back to the Parisii tribe and the times of Caesar. Though this makes a pretty story, it’s actually a creation myth. Paris has long been one of Europe’s most permeable entrance points for immigrants.

“Scratch many of these people and you’d find they come from somewhere else,” suggests Colin Jones, a historian whose book, Paris: the Biography of a City, will be released in paperback in March.

For decades after the Revolution in 1789, which laid the foundations for French citizenship, most migrants came to Paris from France’s pays, regions so distinct that the word literally means “countries”. (The transition from a local identity to a national, Republican, one still stands out as one of the modern state’s main achievements.) Pockets of British, German, Spanish, Swiss, and Belgian immigrants—mostly artisans and factory workers—started to trickle in from the mid-1850s. The growth of industry in the banlieue brought Italian and Polish laborers in the late 19th century.

By the early 20th century, Paris’s diverse and thriving immigrant communities distinguished it from other European cities.

By the early 20th century, Paris’s diverse and thriving immigrant communities distinguished it from other European cities. In 1911, with a foreign population of 6.7 percent, the city was home to over twice as many immigrants as London. France’s lax immigration policy (see sidebar) was designed to compensate for a declining birth rate and to supply cheap labor.

At this time, many immigrants “were attracted by the image of the pays des droits de l’homme that the city embodied,” Claire Zalc, a researcher at the Institut d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, explains. Jews fleeing pogroms, White Russians escaping Bolsheviks, Italian and German anti-fascists, and Armenians, as well as scores of artists and intellectuals from all over, gravitated to Paris.

France tightened its immigration policy during the Depression and the build-up to World War II. Peaking in 1931, immigration to Paris tumbled from 1932 onward, when the government legislated its first restrictive quotas. Only foreigners who had work identification cards were granted entry.

Quotas were relaxed after 1945 in order to resurrect the shattered economy. From then until the 1970s, the government itself recruited laborers, mostly in North Africa, offering temporary visas to foreigners to develop industry without draining the countryside of farmers. During that time, North African laborers arrived in Paris, where affordable housing was in short supply, and many were forced to live in shantytowns on the city’s outskirts. The government constructed temporary housing projects for single men in, but mostly surrounding, the city, thinking or hoping the laborers would leave when France no longer needed them. Later, when a law authorized their families to join them, the government built new projects, called cités.

Immigration to Paris more than doubled from 1954, when it fell to under 5 percent of the general population, to 1975, with the majority of new arrivals coming from France’s former colonies in Africa and Southeast Asia. By 1975, immigration had become a controversial political issue, not just a stop-gap economic measure. Parisians argued heatedly about whether these non-white, non-Catholic immigrants could be integrated into French society.

Today, despite stricter policies, about 14 percent of Parisians are foreigners.

Although some skilled foreign workers can still enter France legally, immigration was otherwise banned in 1974. Unskilled immigrants can enter legally by asking for political asylum or through the family reunification program. An illegal alternative remains: 9,000 to 10,000 undocumented aliens—called sans papiers, or those without ID—currently live in Paris.

Despite stricter policies, 310,00 Parisians, about 14 percent, are foreigners. Some 110,000 are European nationals who since 1999 no longer qualify as immigrants and can work and travel freely among member states of the European Union.

Immigrants have enhanced the fresco of Parisian life, offering fresh hues to a city steeped in tradition. In 1930 a Parisian wrote about the “little Italy” in La Villette: “The Italians decorate rue Curial with pyramids of peppers—red, yellow, and green—and with delectable charcuteries: salamis, mortadella, sausages, and Parma ham triumph.” Today's windows showcase Moroccan jewelry in the 18th, saris and gold bangles in the 10th, and Eastern European pastries in the 4th. The shops welcome homesick immigrants and show other Parisians how the old world’s aromas and textures can be enriched by those of the new ones.