This article explores how contemporary inmigration affects rural areas in the French ‘middle’ mountains regions. Migrants reshape both socially and spatially. The reshaping is both large and ambivalent, although often difficult to assess accurately. Because of their relative youth and the high proportion of couples with children, newcomers contribute to the life of these areas, although inmigration is still not larger enough to reverse the natural deficit. But even though demographic revitalization is not completed yet, social reconditioning is underway everywhere and is often firmly implanted, thus enabling a re-enrichment of social structures that were impoverished by years of rural exodus. Indeed, these new residents, because of their social, intellectual and cultural potential, often bring to their new territory a fresh dynamic. These settlers are associated with an economic renewal by creating or taking on activities as more or less innovative micro-projects, and also, on a more general level, by contributing to the development of a ‘residential’ economy through enriching local linkages. However valuable their contribution may be, new residents are liable to bring fracture and instability to rural societies which are particularly sensitive to potentially rapid changes. These arrivals also raise new questions and trigger changes to rural life that may not be without prob-lems and tensions, because of integration issues as well as new competitions in rural areas (use conflicts, land pressure, political issues).