What happens to African migrants once they age? What are the needs of this unexplored section of Lombardia aging population? Although aging migrants, institutions and civil society organizations see the return to the home country as the ideal option, the number of aging migrants who seek assistance from public and private services is going to increase in a near future.

Besides psychological challenges, return trajectories are fraught with social, political, and economic difficulties that often make unrealizable what seems easier in an earlier stage of life.

The choice of spending what is left of a diasporic trajectory “here” in Europe or “there” in Africa depends on a number of variables. It happens that elderly migrants, who opted for return, are back to Italy after a few years, in the effort to continue their social role of economic providers for families and relatives back home.