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This encyclopaedia presents a systematic overview of the existing scholarship regarding migration within and into Europe. The first section contains survey studies of the various regions and countries in Europe covering the last centuries. The second section presents information on about 220 individual groups of migrants from the Sephardic Jews emigration from Spain and Portugal in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to the present-day migration of old-age pensioners to the holiday villages in the sun. The first resource of its kind, The Encyclopaedia of Migration and Minorities in Europe is a comprehensive and authoritative research tool. A unique resource for scholars and researchers - there are no other publications with a comparable scope Argues that migration has been an integral part of the history of Europe, providing detailed analysis of immigration in a wide variety of European countries Reveals the variety of patterns of integration exhibited by various groups after migration

Chinese migration is now global in scale and is reaching an increasing range of destination countries. It is a complex and diverse process. This book is the first serious research in Europe that examines both the human trafficking and smuggling that occur alongside the Chinese migration. The research shows the increase and diversification of Chinese irregular migration and the existence of an 'ethnic business' that has become an integral part of the national economy in destination countries. In chapter three we explore legal and illegal aspects of Chinese irregular migration in Italy with detailed reference to individual case studies, academic writing, official statistics and data, interviews with police and labour inspectors, the findings of police investigations and court proceedings. The methodology used in explained in great detail. Using a combination of data, we show the implications of national immigration policies. Some of of the policies adopted in the monitoring of migration flows are having the unintended effect of worsening the situation fo migrant workers: criminal networks have emerged, managed predominantly by Italians, which specialize in providing illegal services and false papers for regularization.

This chapter presents an overview of Chinese migrants’ businesses in Italy, showing the constant growth of individually-owned businesses and the dramatic increase in commercial activities. This chapter describes how Chinese subcontracting workshops are operated and how for a long span of time they have enabled Italian final firms to remain competitive, notwithstanding the stiff competition from countries with low labor costs. It also describes a major change taking place within the ethnic workshops where by now different occupations within the ethnic niche tend to coincide with different regional origins of Chinese migrants. Chinese manufacturing businesses are concentrated mainly in the Italian industrial districts. The place in Italy with the highest concentration of Chinese is Prato, a mid-sized city in Tuscany, well known in the literature on industrial districts worldwide. In Prato, Chinese migrants previously active mainly as suppliers in recent years have been upscaling in large numbers and becoming final firms in the pronto moda (ready fashion) business, occupying the entire low and medium-to-low garment production. This move, started some years ago, is now realizing its full potential. This chapter uses interviews conducted in 2006 in Prato as well as a wealth of information collected during the last five years at the Prato municipality among social workers, lawyers and language and cultural facilitators active in providing services to migrants. It, for the first time, undertakes an in-depth description of the internal organization of Chinese-operated pronto modas and of their relationships with Italian suppliers and co-ethnic contractors in the context of a global fashion business. Finally this chapter argues that Chinese migrants’ production organization has followed a pattern strikingly similar to the one existing in Italian industrial districts at the times of their economic success (among the vast literature on industrial districts see Becattini, 2000, Dei Ottati, 2003), exacerbated by the new Chinese ideology of the successful migrant and by constraints of local contexts striving for survival in a globalized economy. While a systematic comparison of models of organization in the traditional Italian industrial districts over the years of greatest expansion, and the characteristics of Chinese migrant settlements in those districts over recent years, still waits to be outlined, this chapter provides a preliminary analysis of the main points of contact and macro-level differences.

In this chapter I argue that over time the Chinese productive activities in Italy have significantly contributed to maintaining the competitiveness of some of the sectors in which Made in Italy products are famous such as garments, leather goods, couches and shoes (this article specifically addresses the garment industry); and in some instances they have even contributed to the expansion of the sector and the area where they operate. Even more significantly, in recent years, a growing number of Chinese migrants have been able to blend strategies of migration and transnational capital accumulation taking advantage of China’s growing role in the global economy. Chinese importers’ businesses, which in the last few years heavily have contributed to redefine the modalities of the Chinese presence in Italy, is due to China’s central role in the globalization of markets, and to its growing capacity to produce goods of diverse quality at competitive prices for the European markets. In the first years of the new century, the businesses of Chinese importers were on the verge of making Italy one of the principal European wholesale centres, second only to Budapest, for manufactured Chinese goods for the European market. In this article I will present the major economic changes that have taken place during the last decades for the Chinese migrants in Italy and argue that a very new situation has emerged as the result of economic expansion and market development in the People’s Republic of China and its participation to the globalized economy. The impact of China’s new international role is modifying expectations, opportunities, employment patterns and self-perception among the Chinese migrants, and is enhancing the already strong propensity of these migrants towards high mobility along Europe and between China and Europe. I intend to offer Italy as a case study of how global capitalism and globalization is changing migration from being economic settlement in the ethnic niche of garment/leather with modest possibilities of expansion, to full manufacturing and new employment patterns as importers and wholesalers of goods made in China. Recently, however, both production and commercial activities managed by Chinese migrants in Italy have been affected by an acute crisis as a result of a number of factors. For the Chinese involved in productive activities, the crisis can be framed within the broader crisis of the manufacturing sector in Italy, and possibly due to competition wrought by imported Chinese goods; while the crisis weighing on Chinese wholesale and retail importers has principally been caused by the Italian government’s intent to contain those imports from China that are perceived to be in direct competition with Made in Italy products produced in Italy. Contrary to expectations that these new occupations and new businesses activated by the Chinese in Italy are well accepted as they produce entrepreneurial opportunities for migrants and indirectly also for the receiving country, Italy pursue to regulate and to limit these economic developments because she perceive them as a threat to national manufacturing and export. In this article, again, I argue that Italy can be seen as a case study since in this country a new way of trying to control migration through economic sanctions can be seen at work. In this respect Italy could be seen as the outpost, the place where policies are implemented of reaction to China’s economic expansion and market development which affects migrants and local population alike. What is now happening in Italy could in the future be a controversial issue high in the European agenda.

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.

The article introduces the different groups of Chinese migrants in Italy according to the areas of origin in China, and presents some of the major changes that have taken place in the past few years within the ethnic Chinese economy in Italy and in particular in Prato, an industrial district in central Italy with a high concentration of Chinese small productive activities.