Calibrated Time: Temporal Embeddedness of Chinese Migrant Entrepreneurship in Prato Fast Fashion Industry

Temporality is rarely discussed in migrant motivation and ethnic entrepreneurship. This research reveals the temporal embeddedness of Chinese migrant settlement and entrepreneurial practices in Prato, a city famous for textile production in Italy but has suffered labour shortages and economic recession in the last decades. Chinese immigrants came to Prato and converted it into a fast fashion centre and propelled the local economy. This research aims to investigate why Chinese migrants prefer to settle down in a midsized Italian city and how this new trend of immigration shapes the local industry and the city, following an analogy of plant growth. Through my fieldwork in Prato and other research sites, I concluded the four growth phases of entrepreneurship: Seeding, Rooting, Sprouting and Flourishing, to analyse migrants' motivation, economic settlement, entrepreneurial attempt and business ecology formation based on temporal embeddedness. As the first level of temporal embeddedness, the imagined futures attracted Chinese migrants to calibrate their social jet lags and embrace Western advancement, leading to their economic settlement and entrepreneurship in Prato’s fast fashion industry. Moreover, the second level of temporal embeddedness made Chinese migrants another time calibration to synchronise the world time zones in the latest trend in fast fashion. The Chinese migrants formed a self-sufficient ethnic industrial chain and the corresponding business ecology to chase the fashion speed. This research further explores Chinese presence led to reconstruction possibilities in declining industrial cities in the Global North with immigrants’ involvement.