This article analyses the links between crimes attributed to West African migrants in Italian statistics and the global upswing in political struggles by African and Afro-descendant communities, through an ethnographic research based on participant observation, biographical interviews and a post-colonial interpretation of the European governance of migrations. Crimes of West Africans are here analysed as types of deviance related to a West African youth subculture rebelling against mechanisms of control and criminalization by African and European elites.