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This report is the result of fieldwork research conducted under the framework of TAAD (“The Aging African Diasporas: Perspectives from Lombardia”), a project led by Prof. Alice Bellagamba (University of Milano-Bicocca) that for three years has investigated the meanings of aging for members of the Eritrean, Senegalese, and Egyptian diasporas in Lombardy. More specifically, this report explores the results that emerged from semi-structured interviews and informal conversations with 68 people of Eritrean origin (36 women and 32 men) collected in Milan and its province between 2018 and 2020. The great majority of my interlocutors were over 65 years old and moved to Italy between the end of the 1960s and the 1980s, but younger members of the diaspora have been also interviewed to better address how meanings of aging change along generational lines. Since the beginning of the lockdown imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic in March 20201, some of these conversations have been conducted using telephonic or online means of communication. In this report I use pseudonyms and other precautions to guarantee the complete anonymity of my interlocutors.

From the colonial period to the 1970s, France has been the main country of destination for the Senegalese diaspora. The French and Senegalese academic debate on migration has paid considerable attention to the mobilities connecting Senegal and the former colonial power, focusing on – among other things – how kinship structures and gender and generational roles have been reproduced or reconfigured in a transnational space deeply structured by longstanding cultures of migrations (see, for instance: Dia 2008, 2013; Diop 2008; Timera 2010; Timera and Garnier 2010). In the late 1970s, when France started to implement more strict immigration policies, the Senegalese diaspora diversified its European destinations. Italy was one of them, and migrants from Senegal started to arrive in the 1980s, working mainly as street vendors but also contributing to an industrial system that was starting to shrink. Migrants of this first generation are now approaching or have reached retirement, have spent a large part of their lives in Italy, were joined by wives and had children in Italy, in many cases have obtained permanent residence permits or citizenship, and are now facing the many challenges connected to aging in a diasporic context.