This project focuses on informal and illegal networks of African art and counterfeit brands put in place by West African migrants in Italy as well as on citizenship challenges raised by trajectories of social integration imbricated into informal/illegal trade (relationships with politics and civil society, political visibility, resistance to the State, market encounters). It engages domains of urban anthropology in relation to transnational flows (objects, knowledge, and people), shadow economies, materiality, social inequality and production of value. On one hand this research, based on qualitative methodology and first-hand fieldwork data on informal/illegal trades, figures out the market trajectories, trading practices and practical norms through which West African traders strengthen their social and economic ties (debt/credit/trust relationships). On the other hand it analyzes the extent to which the official urban economy of these neighborhoods is driven and nourished by migrant informal trade, low-level corruption and shadow networks. In relation to these domains the project wishes to break new theoretical ground by developing a conceptual and methodological approach to the ‘value chain’ and ‘liminality’ theories throwing new light on the interfaces between the construction of legality by the State and everyday practices of informal and clandestine activities. The urgency of this project is also emerging from the local context. Italy is right now going through dramatic changes of its urbanity, linked to immigration and a speedy development of new economic sectors. This project could greatly contribute to a better understanding of the social and economic stakes at work in the survival strategies of migrant residents improving empirical and theoretical understanding of migrant economies.