Abstract
Prato is a mid-sized city in Tuscany, Italy that has become famous for two reasons. First, it is a well-known success story in the literature on industrial districts worldwide. Second, Prato has become one of the areas in Europe with the highest Chinese population density, and the place where Chinese migrants have been able to develop the largest low-end fast fashion center in Europe almost from scratch.
In the introductory chapter, Antonella Ceccagno discusses the Chinese entrepreneurs’ spectacular success as clothing manufacturers in the quintessential Italian district and their growing role in the Italian fashion industry against the conceptual frameworks developed in migration studies, labor studies, and urban studies.
She also discusses the unique fieldwork methodology upon which this book relies and her own positionality as a researcher.
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Ceccagno, A. (2017). Introduction. In: City Making and Global Labor Regimes. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59981-6_1
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