Italian firms which produced garments and leather goods

Currently, Italy is the southern European country with the largest Chinese population. At the end of 2003, 100,109 Chinese lived in Italy legally (Caritas 2004). By contrast, the number of Chinese migrants in Spain was 66,486 in 2004.1 During the early years of their settlement in Italy, almost all of the newly arrived Chinese migrants worked for contracting firms performing manufacturing tasks for Italian firms which produced garments and leather goods. Powerful ethnic networks helped them to find work in the Chinese-operated workshops. This offered some advantages: they found work relatively soon after arriving in Italy, and they did not have to deal head-on with a new cultural and linguistic situation. Furthermore, they worked in a job sector in which the time needed to move up from worker to selfemployed seemed to be particularly short*a situation often described for ethnic niches (Portes 1994; Portes and Jensen 1987). This particular ethnic niche provided the new Chinese migrants with inroads into the fashion industry, an industry consisting of a combination of economic sectors that are still central to the Italian economy.2 Even though Chinese migrants’ work has become an issue regularly highlighted in the Italian media, it is still unclear to what degree the Chinese have entered the garment business by taking advantage of the so-called vacancy chain (Waldinger 1996). It is also not clear to what degree their economic model*which is characterised by high flexibility, exploitation of ethnic labour and self-exploitation* has displaced Italian subcontractors. Until now, no research has been done on this topic in Italy. This article aims at filling part of this gap by focusing on Chinese-operated ethnic businesses in two Italian industrial districts: Prato in central and Carpi in northern Italy. It shows the mixed characteristics of the businesses, thereby defying simplifications into a single explanatory model with clearly defined borders. yanzic0603. http://www.mltailor.com/products_empire-strapless-sweep-train-chiffon-stylish-evening-dress-mlsw21562-8922.html
 http://aviva521.fotopages.com/