IF EVER there were deaths foretold, it was those of the seven Chinese workers, who
perished on December 1st, trapped inside a factory in which they both lived and worked on an industrial estate outside the Tuscan city of Prato.
The Chinese-owned factory (pictured after the accident) is one of up to 5,000 in the area, part of an industry that has expanded at vertiginous speed in the past 20-odd years. What they make is known as
pronto moda: cheap fabric is imported, generally from China, and turned into high-fashion garments at a lightning pace for sale at rock-bottom prices of, in many cases, less than €5 (less than $7).
Not the least of the attractions for the buyers who converge on Prato from all over Europe and further afield, is that the clothes carry a prestigious label, declaring they were “Made in Italy”.
Pronto moda, Prato-style, is a form of reverse globalisation. The reality behind the proud—and entirely truthful—assertion on the labels is all too often a sweatshop in which Chinese workers put in shifts of up to 16 hours, cooking, eating and sleeping within a few metres of the machines at which they toil. Few speak more than the most rudimentary Italian. But then many see no point in integrating, since they expect, often wrongly, that they will one day go back to China. The vast majority come from poor areas in the Zhejiang province, south of Shanghai.
The pioneers of Prato’s
pronto moda were brought in by local textile employers. In some cases, they were hired in China when the Italian firm outsourced its manufacturing. Largely because of Chinese competition Prato’s own textile business has contracted sharply in recent years. But the city’s traditional products are fabric and yarn, which are not directly vulnerable to the activities of the Chinese entrepreneurs.
Most of the sweatshops evince blatant contempt for Italy’s health and safety regulations. Much of the profit is sneaked back to China before it can be taxed in Italy. And many of the workers are illegal immigrants (some of whom have been found during investigations to have had their passports confiscated by their employers).
Local estimates of the true size of the Chinese community in Prato range as high as 50,000. Yet only about 15,000 are officially registered there. That in turn highlights another salient aspect of this week’s blaze. When Italians talk or think about illegal immigration they almost always have in mind rickety boats laden with Africans arriving in perilous conditions on their southern coasts. Small wonder: that is the migration that the media focus on because it is the most evident, dramatic and tragic.
But far more of the non-Italians who are present illegally in Italy slipped in in more banal ways. Some entered the European Union’s passport-free Schengen area by smuggling themselves across a land border further to the east. But it would seem that the vast majority simply arrived on a tourist visa and overstayed. Statistics on illegal immigration are hard to find. An interior ministry reckoning from 2006 put the number of overstayers at 64% and the proportion who entered by sea at just 13%.
