Native and Immigrant Entrepreneurship

Simone Guercini is a Professor of Management at the University of Florence and visiting professor at the Grenoble Graduate School of Business. His research interests include business marketing, heuristics in business, entrepreneurship in communities, and internationalization, with a special focus on the Italian fashion industry. Simone received his PhD in economics from Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa. Gabi Dei Ottati is a Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Florence and a member of the European Research Centre on Regional and Local Development. Her main research interests include industrial organization and economic development, with a special focus on Italy and industrial districts. Having collaborated for many years with Giacomo Becattini, the revitalizer of the Marshallian industrial district concept, she is part of the Florence school of local development. Loretta Baldassar is a Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Western Australia, and Adjunct Principal Research Fellow at the School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University. Her research interests focus on transnational migrants, families, and caregiving, including the question of generations. Loretta received her PhD from the University of Western Australia. Graeme Johanson is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Monash University. His research interests include social informatics, virtual communities, and e-democracy, with a focus on migration and transnationalism. Graeme received his PhD in economics from Monash University.

• Introduction.- Liabilities of native and immigrant entrepreneurship in the process of globalization.- Chinese immigration to Italy and economic relations with the homeland: A multiscalar perspective.- A social accounting matrix for Prato: Interrelating the Chinese migrant community and the provincial economy.- Ethnography of the fast fashion community:  Chinese entrepreneurs in Prato.- Italian-schooled Chinese migrant youth in Prato: The liability of outsidership and social identity formation.- Smartphones and outsidership in Prato’s small business community.- Liabilities of foreignness and of outsidership in the evolution of immigrant Chinese entrepreneurship.- Liabilities in the Prato’s industrial district: An analysis of Italian and Chinese firm failures.- The mechanism of sustained immigrant entrepreneurship: Wenzhounese immigrants in Italy.- Understanding Chinese immigrants in Prato’s industrial district: Benefits to local entrepreneurs.- Concluding remarks: The benefits of overcoming local liabilities.