After a long period during which migration as it affected France was a matter of poor people coming to settle within the terms of the requirement to integrate, a new phase has opened in the 1990s. Its characteristics are the diversification of people who move and the greater complexity of their patterns and modes of movement. New techniques and the process of globalisation have led researchers to re-assess supposedly accepted concepts, such as integration. This renewed research dynamic, which is currently in evidence in France and elsewhere, will no doubt lead to more ambitious and better coordinated approaches