In this article, I compare the collective identifications mobilised by university graduates of sub-Saharan origin in Paris and London to politicise their experiences of discrimination. I reveal how these identifications echo French and British public policies and debates. While a black identification is clearly claimed in the “race-conscious” British context, it is scarcely politicised in the “colour-blind” French framework. Blackness is mobilised only by French respondents who are highly aware of race issues; others promote migrant or neighbourhood identities to denounce injustice. In effect, the spatialisation of social problems in France means that the politicisation of discrimination emerges more easily through a neighbourhood identification, albeit one into which a racial dimension is interwoven. Conversely, this kind of territorial belonging is not politicised in the United Kingdom, where racial segregation is less of a public issue.