Following instructions from the Bureau of Statistics of the Ministry of Interior, Napoleon’s administrators conducted a statistical survey on the migration of workers in the French Empire that occurred between 1807 and 1813. This example shows how, along with shifting representations of French society and its various social groups, an administrative science of describing and cataloguing was gradually changing and developing, after the French Revolution. Beyond the variety of statistical procedures and new nomenclatures, one can see how administrative techniques and new ways of classifying were institutionalized. An analysis of the statistical reports reveals the methods of explanation used by the administrators to survey migration. Eventually, this statistical survey would come to reflect their conception of society.