After decades of rural drift, rural areas today experience a new demographic dynamism. Yet all the rural areas are not concerned by this trend. The Auvergne and the Limousin keep losing population habitants because of a natural and the young'continuous going away from their region. Here and there, however, the arrival of a new population can be seen. Given the stake they represent for the future of less favoured areas, it seems relevant to survey to population of newcomers and to define the strategies for attracting population. Building on the work done on 5 rural areas in the Auvergne, the article presents these new populations' characteristics and offers an analysis of the newcomers' representations and behaviours and tries to interpret the differences in attractiveness among these areas.
