Jean-Paul Gourévitch is an international expert on human resources, specializing in migrations and in Africa, where he has conducted missions since 1987 for various organizations: the French Department of Foreign and European Affairs, the European Union, UNESCO, the World Bank, and a range of companies and NGOs.

His most recent books in this field are Les migrations en Europe (Acropole, 2007), La France en Afrique (Acropole, 2008), and Les Africains en France (Acropole, 2009) as well as a monograph on Le coût réel de l'immigration en France (Contribuables associés, 2008). His report on sub-Saharan migrations was adopted by the Council of Europe parliamentary assembly on April 18, 2008.

He has also taught in French universities on political imagery (Paris XII), the informal economy (Paris II), and the history of youth literature (Bordeaux IV). A number of his books, L'image en politique (Hachette Littératures, 1998), L'économie informelle (Pré aux Clercs, 2002), and La littérature de jeunesse dans tous ses écrits 1529-1970 (CRDP Créteil-Argos, 1999) have become reference works.

In addition, he has written detective novels (Maux Croisés, Archipoche, 2008) and children's novels, including Pompei.com (Belin, 2008) and Ulysse.com (Belin, 2008) as well as the Barbares saga (Bayard Poche Jeunesse) recounting the lives of street children revolting against society in nineteenth-century Paris. He has also written, for Le Pré aux Clercs, the text of illustrated anthologies on writers who spoke of their childhoods (Mémoires d'enfances, with Jacques Gimard, 2004) or of love (Plaisirs d'amour, with Dominique Marny, 2006).