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Abstract
This article presents the results of research conducted in Milan in 1993 and 1994, collecting life stories among Algerian immigrants involved in petty crimes such as shoplifting and pickpocketing. Against a broad picture of the presence of crime among foreigners in Italy based on official sources, the article reconstructs the social and familial contexts of the immigrants interviewed, analyzes the ways they arrived and settled, and why they chose to come to Italy. Two main patterns of immigration emerge. The first is that of young people who, using social migratory chains, arrived in Italy in the late 1980s, mainly because opportunities in their own country appeared to be blocked. The second consists of older people who emigrated from Algeria at the time of decolonization, and arrived in Italy because they were marginalized from established migratory chains or because alternative migration plans failed.
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