‘Structures of Return’ Between Italy and Ethiopia: Mobility of the Second Generations to the Ancestral Land as a Self-fulfilling Prophecy

The mobility of second generations is a subject of increasing interest in the scientific community. The article tells the story of Marta, an Italian woman of Ethiopian origin, who moved to her ancestral land to work in an NGO. Tracing back the significant steps that allowed her to work for an Italian NGO in Addis Ababa, it underline how her “voluntary return” was based on a proper status transition: to enhance her career path, Marta – an Italian looking for a job position in international development – became an Ethiopian working for an Italian NGO. The analysis is intended to highlight what the author defines as “structures of return”: a set of structural processes of “othering”, from everyday practices of differentiation to institutional classifications in both the homeland and the ancestral land, influencing second generations’ orientation to return.