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City Making and Global Labor Regimes pp 183–214Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Foundations of the Mobile Regime: Global Restructuring of Social Reproduction and Ethnicization of the Workplace

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Abstract

Many scholars adopt a culturalist approach in their analysis of the Chinese migrants’ inclusion in Italian fashion districts. Distancing herself from such an approach to migrant entrepreneurship enables Antonella Ceccagno to gain new insights into the use of ethnicity.

She approaches the issue of ethnicity by dwelling on the structural factors that bring about an exacerbation of ethnically constructed working relations and, therefore, social relations. Essentially, she discusses the Chinese only workforce employed in Chinese contracting businesses not as an ethnic way of doing business, as many do, but as a process of compression of workforce diversity within the network of Chinese contractors as introduced to further smooth the processes of production.

Moreover, the author points to another crucial condition adopted in relation to the mobile regime: the multilayered process whereby social reproduction is outsourced so as to avoid hindering the productive flexibility required by fast fashion. She shows that the places of production and those where social reproduction is outsourced constitute relationally.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Antonella Ceccagno

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  1. Antonella Ceccagno
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Ceccagno, A. (2017). The Foundations of the Mobile Regime: Global Restructuring of Social Reproduction and Ethnicization of the Workplace. In: City Making and Global Labor Regimes. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59981-6_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59981-6_6

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