Abstract

This article is part of a wider study on the life pathways of immigrants' children in Piedmont, with a specific focus on the role of social capital for the life choices and social trajectories of a group of adolescents who have few contacts with school, associations or other institutional milieus. In 2012-2013 ethnographic observation was conducted and the stories of ten young people whose parents came from Morocco or Tunisia were collected. We usually met in a public square in a run-down working class area in Turin. This square was the first place these ten youngsters met other young people when they arrived in Turin and it has become the most significant place for their socialization, identity formation and access to resources (knowledge, personal and social support and models of action). Lacking alternatives, this homogeneous and closed-in milieu has an influence on their daily life and will probably also affect their future projects, careers and life trajectories.