In a context of strengthened metropolization and urban growth, official French spatial categories have erased the references to rural areas as a space distinct from cities and their influence, so that the adjective “rural” appears now to be an out-dated socio-spatial scientific reference. However, this paper intends to demonstrate that rural peripheries in France are still to be considered as a research object per se, since recent changes into the most remote, scarcely populated areas in France have occurred. Based on three recent studies, this paper will show that “hyper-rural” peripheries are growing again, with positive allocations of revenues and new, non-productive economic bases – but with remaining structural weaknesses at the same time. That is why an adapted regional policy is still claimed for those “hyper-rural areas”.