Based on the notion of “discourse genre” as a structuring frame for perceptions of society, this paper aims at analysing the first pages (incipits) of administrative reports of the French Higher Council for Integration and of the German Commissioner for Migration, Refugees and Integration between 1991 and 2014. Although a new outlook is repeatedly claimed, strong diachronic continuity in each country and strong lexical similarities between France and Germany are observed, which shows how institutional constraints shape the genre of administrative reports. In both countries, administrative reports on integration sway between the necessity to neutrally inform a biased public opinion and the need to influence State action. By doing so, administrative reports reveal themselves as political objects per se.