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This article proposes an investigation of the paradoxes in the use of “backgrounds” and “culture” in the discourses of child welfare professionals in relation to first, second and third generation French children. In this way it questions the current state of the programs and practices of categorizing these children, which have developed in this field. Establishing a parallel between two periods (1970-1980 and today), this article reveals that the same processes for constructing otherness play out in different periods, based on a logic of comparison and distinction of ethnic populations, between immigrants themselves, and children born in France within immigrant families.