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Portuguese immigrants and their descendants are understudied, yet they occupy a particular position within the dynamics of social stratification in France. Provided with economic capital, they rarely reach the highest positions in the markets for diplomas and jobs. Based upon interview-driven fieldwork including observations, archives and statistics, this article describes the social and residential trajectories of this group in order to identify the processes of racialization as well as the hierarchies to which it contributes, by comparison with other immigrant groups. It does so by using the category of “honorary whites,” originating in the US context, in order to account for the importance of these intermediary groups in ethno-racial hierarchies. This category makes it possible to characterize the privilege of individuals of Portuguese background vis-à-vis colonial and postcolonial minorities as well as the ambivalent and precarious nature of such a privilege. In order to be effective, it requires the acceptance and the reproduction of the expectations of the dominant group, in particular when it comes to what differentiates one from stigmatized groups. The analysis of the contribution of postwar immigration and housing policies in the development of this privilege also suggests that racialization has not been a linear and uniform process. It has generated conditions of socialization that converged with some of the migratory projects of the families living in slums and, as a result, structured in the long run the trajectories and positioning strategies of the individuals who come from these families.