Our presentation will examine population dynamics and migration flows to French rural areas, focusing on a national perspective and towards rural types previously identified. As in many European countries, a lot of rural areas in France have been repopulated since the years 1970-1980s. This general finding is widely known today, but little research has been undertaken that seeks a deeper understanding of its geographical and sociological features. This is the aim of our current PhD project, studying the characteristics and the diversity of rural revivals, according to populations and territories particularly implicated. Moreover, various analyses have demonstrated that natural evolutions are much less relevant than migration dynamics to explain positive trends in most rural cases in France. So, our main task is to analyse demographic flows towards rural areas - both within France and from a foreign country -, essentially focusing on processes not depending on urban attractiveness. In continuity with researches developed in Great Britain since the 1990s around the concept of rural gentrification - mainly by Martin Phillips (1993, 2009) -, we will investigate its potentials in analysing the French contemporary rural increases. We will present exploratory treatments - statistic and cartographic - which follow a quantitative and demographic approach of gentrification processes (Smith, 2002; Nelson and al., 2010). Analyses will be based on census data since the 1960s, income data and survey housing data since the 1990s. Both productive and consumption aspects of gentrification will be interrogated, in analyzing population structures and migrations (by ages, social groups, origins) and housing structures (second homes, vacant housings, price evolutions…). A statistical classification of gentrification processes in French rural areas will be commented to conclude our presentation.