City Making and Global Labor Regimes : Chinese Immigrants and Italy's Fast Fashion Industry

Description

This book investigates the success story of the fast fashion industry—mainly owned by Chinese migrants—in Prato, Italy. It outlines how Prato has become the center of a value chain stretching from suppliers in China and Turkey all the way to buyers in Europe. Despite this, a policy attacking Chinese entrepreneurship has been devised and implemented in Prato. This volume analyzes said policy against the crisis of Prato’s textile industry. Based on the author’s 15 years of fieldwork in Prato, the book sheds light on the entangled processes of city making and the restructuring processes linked to capital accumulation by tackling issues of governance, territory, migration, division of labor, labor mobility, housing, and human rights. Front Matter ....Pages i-xvii Introduction (Antonella Ceccagno)....Pages 1-37 Globalization and Its Impact on the Italian Fashion Industry (Antonella Ceccagno)....Pages 39-82 Migrant Pathway of Emplacement in Prato (Antonella Ceccagno)....Pages 83-120 The Global Low-End Fast Fashion Center (Antonella Ceccagno)....Pages 121-146 The Mobile Regime (Antonella Ceccagno)....Pages 147-181 The Foundations of the Mobile Regime: Global Restructuring of Social Reproduction and Ethnicization of the Workplace (Antonella Ceccagno)....Pages 183-214 ‘My City Brought to Its Knees’: The Downscaling of Prato and the Criminalization of Chinese Entrepreneurship (Antonella Ceccagno)....Pages 215-255 Conclusions (Antonella Ceccagno)....Pages 257-264 Back Matter ....Pages 265-301