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Ethnography of the Fast Fashion Community: Chinese Entrepreneurs in Prato

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Native and Immigrant Entrepreneurship

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Abstract

The city of Prato is now a social microcosm, emblematic of Italy’s main immigration problems and of market globalization. This chapter investigates the organization of the Chinese fast fashion sector, and the factors contributing to its growth. I also investigate whether the presence of Chinese entrepreneurs causes a disadvantage for the local textile entrepreneurs and workers. Alternatively, did the Chinese fast fashion sector grow as a parallel district that shares few relationships with textile production? I address these issues through ethnographic tools such as open interviews with key informants and field research in the Macrolotto 1 industrial district (an industrial area in Prato occupied chiefly by Chinese fast fashion firms). The first part of the chapter analyzes the local Chinese entrepreneurs involved in fast fashion. The second part focuses on the connections between the Chinese entrepreneurs and the local economic players. Finally, the third part of the chapter examines the reactions of the local population toward the presence of Chinese immigrants (and particularly their businesses).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Between 2000 and 2009, Prato’s inhabitants employed in the industrial and artisan sector decreased from 41,080 to 34,049. The largest decrease involved the textile sector that declined from 25,304 employees in 2000 to 13,683 in 2009 (Prato Industrial Entrepreneurs Study Centre 2012).

  2. 2.

    By fast fashion, I mean a garment sector characterized by very rapid production and sales, where the time gap between producing the clothes and their consumption by the market is very short (Guercini 2001, pp. 69–79).

  3. 3.

    I use the term parallel district descriptively here, as a form of production that shows certain aspects encompassed in the wider local industrial district. Some other commentators use the term to refer to Chinese entrepreneurs as foreign bodies with respect to the local economic fabric, similar to the way the city population tends to view immigrants (Pieraccini 2008, 2010).

  4. 4.

    The list of interviewees is included as an appendix to this chapter.

  5. 5.

    This is a rough figure. I base it only on the advertisements that identify the type of firm directly or indirectly connected with the garment industry.

  6. 6.

    Interview in Prato, October 2012.

  7. 7.

    This area, the so-called Macrolotto 0, was once occupied by local small firms producing wool garments (Bressan and Tosi Cambini 2011).

  8. 8.

    Interviews with a representative of the National Federation of Artisans (CNA), a representative of Confartigianato, and the President of Confindustria (the national industrial entrepreneur association), Naples (Prato and Naples, September–October 2012).

  9. 9.

    Interviews with a law enforcement representative.

  10. 10.

    Interview with a trade union representative (Prato, September 2013).

  11. 11.

    This Chinese entrepreneur established a new firm several years ago, employing both Italian and Chinese people. He recalls that his fellow countrymen tend not to employ Italians, because “with Italians, you know that you need to respect the law, there are trade unions, holidays to be paid and so on. When you hire a Chinese worker these problems do not exist, so [the workforce] costs less, much less” (Prato, June 2013).

  12. 12.

    Interview conducted in Macrolotto 1 (Prato, February 2012).

  13. 13.

    A former Italian entrepreneur confirmed the figures reported by G and by the Macrolotto 1 manager. He was one of the first local entrepreneurs to rent his industrial building to Chinese entrepreneurs in 1996, because “they paid double the rent of the Italians” (Prato, April 2014).

  14. 14.

    Macrolotto 1 (Prato, September 2013).

  15. 15.

    Benetton, one of Italy’s largest clothing firms since the early 1990s, anticipated this new system of production. As one researcher points out (translated from Italian):

    the revolution of garment-dyeing allowed [this brand] to make products that were only dyed when they were finished, thus exploiting the sales data coming from its retail shops and adapting its supply to the current market trends.

    (Cietta 2008, p. 3).

  16. 16.

    Interview with a trade-union representative (Prato, September 2013).

  17. 17.

    An earlier study found that in Prato the Chinese entrepreneurs are seen as having stolen work from the local population (Chen 2011). A similar perception—in this case related to the fear of crime—emerged from one of my interviews. A magistrate who worked for years at Prato’s city court (and now works in the court of Florence) reported:

    Around a year before the 2009 local political election [which gave city government to center-right political parties] I predicted the winner. I was invited to talk at a public debate on security and crime in a city borough that has historically been left wing. When I said that it is not possible to fight Chinese immigrants only from a judiciary standpoint, I immediately sensed that the audience stepped back. Later a young man in the audience said that every time he takes the train at the Porta Serraglio railway station [close to the Chinese settlement in the city] he is afraid that he will be the victim of crime. I replied that the perception of insecurity is not connected to Chinese criminality. However, the people present were astonished that I, of all people, would make such a statement. It was as if these people were saying to me: ‘You cannot understand us because you do not know anything about these things… we really feel in danger.’ When I subsequently started to talk about what we do as public magistrates to fight Chinese criminality in the city, then people’s opinion changed.

    Interview (Florence, July 2011).

  18. 18.

    The comparison is between non-Chinese textile/clothes firms and Chinese firms present in the same textile/clothing sector. I use the expression non-Chinese firms, because the available data can be divided between all firms and Chinese firms. Clearly, the non-Chinese category includes a great majority of Italian firms and a very small number of other foreign firms.

  19. 19.

    Consider the figures for 1976, when Prato’s textile industry was at its peak. In that year, Prato city was home to 4914 firms involved in textile production and to 730 firms in the garment industry. Moreover, in 1991, Prato province had 34,956 workers in the textile sector and 2739 in the clothing sector (Cerreta 1999).

  20. 20.

    The new-wave of Chinese immigrants to Prato started in the early 1990s. At the time, their presence was on a small scale, as evidenced by the 212 Chinese firms existing in Prato in 1993 (Ceccagno 2003).

  21. 21.

    L. Montanari, “Condannati per i morti nel rogo di Prato,” in La Repubblica, January 13, 2015.

  22. 22.

    According to data provided by the municipal administration of Prato, 319 Chinese firms were checked in 2010, leading to the seizure of 145 industrial buildings and 6259 machines. In 2011, there were 365 inspections, with the seizure of 179 industrial buildings and 5254 machines. In 2012, there were 338 inspections, with the seizure of 127 industrial buildings and 5508 machines.

  23. 23.

    On interviewing several Chinese entrepreneurs in Prato several years ago, Chen (2011) points out, “Chinese migrants feel Italian officials are targeting and taking advantage of their vulnerabilities simply because of who they are” (Chen 2011: 28).

  24. 24.

    According to a recent report by the Regional Institute for Economic Planning of Tuscany (IRPET), the economic contribution provided by the Chinese community in the province of Prato amounts to €705 million, corresponding to 11% of the province’s entire gross domestic product (IRPET 2015).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Stefano Becucci

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  1. Stefano Becucci
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Correspondence to Stefano Becucci .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics and Management, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Simone Guercini

  2. Department of Economics and Management, University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Gabi Dei Ottati

  3. School of Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia School of Social Sciences, CRAWLEY, West Australia, Australia

    Loretta Baldassar

  4. Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Caulfield East, Victoria, Australia

    Graeme Johanson

Appendix 1

Appendix 1

List of persons interviewed between January 2012 and April 2014 (Prato, Florence, and Naples).

  • Councilor of the Municipality of Prato

  • Representative of Confederazione Nazionale Artigiani (CNA)

  • Representative of Confartigianato

  • Representative of the Entrepreneurs Industrial Association Study Center

  • President of Naples Entrepreneurs Industrial Association (Confindustria)

  • Representative of the police force

  • Representative of the police force

  • Representative of the customs office

  • Chinese garment entrepreneur

  • Italian garment entrepreneur

  • Italian former-entrepreneur

  • Trade union representative (CISL)

  • Trade union representative (CGIL)

  • Trade union representative (CGIL Florence)

  • Italian trader of clothes (Campi Bisenzio, Florence)

  • Italian dyer entrepreneur

  • Manager of Macrolotto 1

  • Italian translator from Italian to Chinese

  • Prosecutor for the Court of Florence.

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Becucci, S. (2017). Ethnography of the Fast Fashion Community: Chinese Entrepreneurs in Prato. In: Guercini, S., Dei Ottati, G., Baldassar, L., Johanson, G. (eds) Native and Immigrant Entrepreneurship . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44111-5_5

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