Talking about identity: Milanese-Eritreans describe themselves

This paper presents a conversation between second-generation Eritreans in Milan. The focus is cast on how the youths speak about themselves and their experiences living in Milan, going to Eritrea, their transnational family and their daily life between different realities. Their words show that belonging is not clear cut, and neither are identities. Blackness, Africanness, Italianness, Eritreanness, race and culture, closed and opened mentality, and civilized versus uncivilized behaviours are the topics they speak about in the group conversation, in which they open the debate as to how they play with existing definitions of the self and how they reproduce them.