Goodbye Dreams of Glory: the Economic Crisis Reaches the Chinese in Italy

The vast majority of Chinese migrants settled in Italy have pursued the dream of quick economic success without being able to translate it into reality. These migrants have remained ensnared in dependent work – be it within the ethnic economy or with Italian employers – and have been unable to emulate the pioneers that had succeeded in seizing the opportunities offered by a market open to immigrant subcontracting and by the growing availability of compatriot labor. Those seriously excluded from independent work are prevalently the migrants who arrived in the second half of the nineties, when the opportunities for quick success seized by the first migrants were drastically decreasing. It is thanks to the scores of migrants who have not been able to pull themselves above dependent work that the business of the ethnic economy – and, consequently, part of that of Italian firms who contract single manufacturing tasks to the Chinese – has been able to expand for so long. Caught in the middle we find the small entrepreneurs, those who have been able to fulfill their entrepreneurial dream but who have remained vulnerable and as such have been penalized by a context in which they represented the weakest part of the productive chain. Today, these small entrepreneurs find themselves in the grip of the crisis. At the opposite end, we find instead those Chinese who have reached economic success and who have managed to make it into the restricted group that today constitutes the Chinese elite in Italy. To this elite belong the Chinese who have risen above the intensive and precarious workshop business and who now manage the entire production process. However, for them too the future is full of unknowns and the position that they have gained is now threatened by the increasing presence on Italian markets of products imported from China. At the top of this increasingly stratified community we find the migrant importers and especially those who have been able to exercise their business activities for a few years prior to the Italian government’s reaction to the growing presence of Chinese products in its internal market. These are special migrants, quite removed from the stereotype of the migrant that has prevailed so far in Italy. They embody to the highest level the new model of Chinese migrant and are perceived as transnational individuals (or groups) who derive a role of their own – as well as their own interests and identities – from the new flow of persons, merchandise, and information engendered by globalization. The destiny of the Chinese migrant-importers, entrepreneurs, and contractors in our country – like the destiny of the Italian textile industry – is linked to the evolution of national and international industrial policies and of the regimes of exchange that will prevail in the next few months and years. In 2005, due to the approval of the Multifibre agreement, the quotas that have influenced the global commerce in textiles and clothing will lapse. At the time of this article’s printing, the fear that China’s new situation will monopolize the market is growing in many countries. Peking does try to reassure the world by explaining that it aims to shift its production from current practices, which are prevalently labor-intensive, to ones that are capital, technological, and research intensive . It is exactly this route which, within a short period of time, could make the competition between the Italian and Chinese fashion industry more direct.