Chapter 11
From Marginal Spaces to Strategic Assets
In: Handbook of Chinese Migration to EuropeSearch for other papers by Wuzhi Li in
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Abstract
This chapter addresses the adaptation of Chinese entrepreneurship to economic and urban transformations in the Paris context over the last fifty years. It focuses on the Chinese ready-to-wear wholesale trade. Chinese marketplaces in Paris emerged with the substantial influx of Chinese immigrants into France in the 1980s. Over the decades, they evolved from marginal ethnic economic enclaves scattered in the city’s interstices into strategic assets sought after by local authorities for the purpose of economic development. Chinese immigrants were initially employed as workers and then became entrepreneurs, opening workshops supplying local wholesalers. Gradually, they transformed into wholesalers. Some of them collaborated with local and international actors, both private and public, to build wholesale business centres. In doing so, they became actors in the entrepreneurialization of the city. Simultaneously, the source of their goods underwent a shift from local production to Chinese imports. We show, in particular, how the evolution of Chinese wholesale markets in Paris is driven both by local and global dynamics.