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Abstract
People around the world are on the move and settling in new, unexpected places. In Prato, Italy, Chinese immigrants now run most of the city's textiles-apparel companies and even subcontract for such leading designers as Giorgio Armani and Dolce & Gabbana. Italian products once made by Italian workers are now increasingly made by the Chinese! I argue that this development resulted from dramatic macro-level policy shifts that created an opportunity for an uncanny synchronicity between the Chinese business approach and the demands of Italy's local, family-based, small-batch production environment. Despite fierce competition, outmoded policies and social friction, the Chinese have adapted to their new home and made significant contributions to an increasingly multiethnic and multicultural Italy.
Notes
1 Although most of the interviews were conducted in Prato, I also draw upon testimony collected in Bologna, Milan, Florence and Venice. Clifford Geertz coined the term ‘thick description’ (see Geertz Citation1973).
2 The term ‘social capital’ was largely popularized by Robert Putnam (Citation2000, Citation1994).
3 For an analysis of the silk industry in Como, Italy, see Yanagisako (Citation2002, esp. 35–69).
4 They were not off the mark. ‘Italy promoted regularizations (regardless of the composition of the ruling coalition) in 1977, 1982, 1986, 1990, 1995, 1998 and 2002’ (Allievi Citation2010, 155).
5 Respondent #6, personal interview, Prato, Italy, 18 July 2007.
6 Respondent #36, personal interview, Prato, 26 June 2008.
7 Respondent #9, personal interview, Prato, Italy, 22 July 2007.
8 Respondent #16, personal interview, Prato, Italy, 27 July 2007.
9 Respondent #38, personal interview, Campi Bisenzio, Italy, 27 June 2008. It is important to point out that even in the 1960s and 1970s, Italian workers often lived in the factories in which they worked. Despite regulations banning such arrangements, local enforcement of these stipulations was lax.
10 Ibid.
11 Respondent #6, personal interview, Prato, Italy, 17 July 2007.
12 Respondent #22, personal interview, Milan, Italy, 14 June 2008.
13 Respondent # 21, personal interview, Prato, Italy, 29 July 2007.
14Pronto moda garments are typically less expensive than clothes sold in retail stores and, thus, especially attractive to consumers with limited incomes.
15 Respondent #15, personal interview, Prato, Italy, 28 July 2007.
16 Respondent #55, personal interview, Prato, Italy, 26 July 2010.
17 Respondent #17, personal interview, Prato, Italy, 28 July 2007.
18 Respondent #44, personal interview, Prato, Italy, 18 July 2010.
19 Respondent #22, personal interview, Milan, Italy, 14 June 2008.
20 Respondent #73, personal interview, Venice, Italy, 4 August 2010.
21 Respondent #15, personal interview, Prato, Italy, 28 July 2007.
22 Respondent #10, personal interview, Prato, Italy, 25 July 2007.
23 Respondent #15, personal interview, Prato, Italy, 28 July 2007.
24 Respondent #14, personal interview, Prato, Italy, 26 July 2007.
25 Respondent #20, personal interview, Prato, Italy, 29 July 2007.
26 Respondent #21, personal interview, Prato, Italy, 29 July 2007.
27 Respondent #14, personal interview, Prato, Italy, 26 July 2007.
28 Respondent #25, personal interview, Milan, Italy, 18 June 2008.
29 Respondent #22, personal interview, Milan, Italy, 14 June 2008.
30 Ibid.
31 Respondent #43, personal interview, Prato, Italy, 19 July 2010.
32 Ibid.
33 By contrast, Silvia Pieraccini (Citation2008) takes a particularly hard-line stance against the Chinese.
34 Respondent #45, personal interview, Prato, Italy, 18 July 2010.
35 Respondent #54, personal interview, Prato, Italy, 25 July 2010.
36 Respondent #47, personal interview, Prato, Italy, 20 July 2010.
37 Respondent #52, personal interview, Prato, Italy, 26 July 2010.