The paper deals with the issue of migration and city on the basis of African migrants, in particular it defines the case of a religious brotherhood coming from Senegal in the city of Bolzano/Italy. The study focuses on describing tho- se arising dynamics of informal spaces and their significance for new modes of cohabitation and interaction beyond traditional normative settings within a concrete and tangible urban context on the basis of an ‘urban topology’ which allowes to define the ‘topological invariants’ that are enabling the formation of identity. Furthermore it explores how such a framework, namely an ‘African vil- lage’, inscribes itself within the city of Bolzano as a kind of ‘sampling machine’ that transforms existing dwellings into an autonomous layer. The purpose is also to show how those trans-local zones of acting get malleable and form a ‘collective’.