Chinese Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Italy and England: The Case of Bologna and London

This paper aims at performing a comparison between the history of Chinese immigrant entrepreneurs in Bologna and London since they first moved to these two cities. In both cases before 1939 the small Chinese community came from mainland China, was lead by male immigrants and formed a geographically set community engaged in a selected business: peddling and fake-leather bags in the case of Bologna and laundries in that of London. After the second world war, Chinese influx changed over time. The vast majority of the Chinese in Britain emigrated from the rural areas of Hong Kong and invested the first savings to start their own business in the catering trade. In the Italian case, two  large influxes of Chinese immigrants started respectively in the 1960s and in the 1990s and engaged not only in the “old” business of bags but also in the tertiary sector. In a few cases, it is interesting to see the tendency to take over small firms on the verge of collapse. These Chinese “broad-parasite entrepreneurs” are accused of exploiting immigrant Chinese labour force to make these firms survive but on the other hand they represent the only alternative to failure and are deeply connected with the network of small and middle sized enterprises led by Italian entrepreneurs. This presentation will highlight the development of these two very different Chinese entrepreneurial communities in Britain and Italy.