26 Nov. 2016 – 1.30 p.m.
Lecture Hall, Library, South Campus, Wenzhou University (Chashan)
Fabio Berti, Andrea Valzania
“Luckily I sell to the Chinese people!”. Notes on consumption of Chinese immigrants in Prato
The paper investigates the dynamics of social mobility of the Chinese people in Italy. Despite a widespread representation that depicts the Chinese settled in Prato as a homogeneous “community”, at most divided between laoban (employers) and zagong (miscellaneous workers), the Chinese group is increasingly internal differentiated and characterized by a rather complex socio-economic stratification. Social mobility processes and the emergence of a local “middle class” are associated with and can be analysed through the lens of specific consumption patterns. The research shows the opportunities that the Chinese group, thanks to its local consumption and involvement in social transnational networks, may bring to the overall host society. Such opportunities can be grasped by enlarging the perspective beyond the local context and by taking into account what is going on in the country of origin as well as in the articulations of transnational spaces. Therefore, the study of consumption becomes a new and original way to understand the complexity of Chinese migrants’ social stratification in Prato.
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