Fashioning the future: Chinese migrant entrepreneurship in Italy

Ethnic entrepreneurship has long attracted the attention of policymakers and scholars due to their contributions to social development. Since the 1990s, Chinese migrants have transformed Prato, Italy, into a hub for textile, fast fashion, and wholesale industries, revitalising the local economy. Despite this significant impact, little is known about the entrepreneurial subjectivities, settlement motivations, community involvement, and social mobility of these Chinese migrants in Europe. This dissertation investigates the organisational resources that advance Chinese migrants’ business interests in Prato’s fast fashion industry, drawing from literatures on Economic Sociology, Ethnic Entrepreneurship, and Community Studies. Based on a one-year ethnography (2022–2023), this research employs 52 semi-structured interviews primarily with Chinese migrant entrepreneurs and other relevant business partners, scholars, and organisation staff, complemented by observational and archival data. The study explores aspects of migrant entrepreneurship, such as entrepreneurial legitimacy, community scheduling and upward aspiration. I argue that Chinese migrant entrepreneurship in Prato results from temporal embeddedness, which calibrates migration patterns and fast fashion production. Chinese entrepreneurs leverage social capital to navigate uncertainty in both their business operations and community involvement. This thesis highlights the novelty of how social capital operates as an organisational resource and fluctuates to support business advancement along with uncertainty. By introducing the interplay between temporality and entrepreneurial practices, this research contributes to understanding the uncertainty of ethnic entrepreneurship and its role in transforming local economies.