Abstract
The demographic restructuring of rural areas is an acquired phenomenon in France for thirty years. Although it is now largely widespread, it still fits in very different ways in space and time. The aim of this paper is to propose a reading of the demographic trajectories and of their complexity by highlighting the processes of temporal and spatial continuity-discontinuity to which rural areas are subjected. This statistical and cartographic work studies these trajectories from the dynamic analysis of the different demographic components' behaviors, natural increase, migratory balance and total variation of population, for the whole French rural municipalities, from 1962 to 2006. It allows identifying models of trajectories that are discussed and confronted with territorial situations. Do these models fit into well-defined regional contexts or, conversely, do we assist to a strong atomization of the French countryside's demographic behaviors?