Examining the words used in talk on immigration requires the researcher to take into account the socio-political context in order to assess the impact of public debates in the different social spheres. The situation in France has been characterized since 1980 by a politicization of immigration and belonging. This article studies the discursive modalities of ethnicization of the Other, based on a form of essentialization of difference, especially cultural, geographic or related to skin colour. It is based on a lexicometric analysis of a widely varied corpus of seven TV debates.