Prato, Italy--when East doesn't meet West

Ken Endo / Special to The Yomiuri Shimbun

My recent trip to Prato, an Italian city near Florence, gave me quite a surprise. Although I'd heard about it, I was stunned to see a huge Chinatown there, which looked completely like it belonged in China. The area was full of excitement, and everything there was reasonably priced.

With a splendid Duomo cathedral, Prato, in the Tuscany region, is a typical medieval city. Though textile making has long flourished in the city, the industry has been completely taken over by Chinese immigrants. In other words, many clothing articles produced in the city are "made in Italy, by Chinese."

Local police estimate that of the city's population of more than 180,000, 35,000 are from China, including 10,000 legally registered immigrants, meaning that one in five residents in the city is Chinese.

Chinese immigration to the city started in the late 1980s, but the flood of Chinese immigrants really surged in the '90s. Many of these hailed from the city of Wenzhou, but recently, the areas of origin have been diversifying.

What has surprised those who are native to the city is not only the sheer number of Chinese immigrants, but also that their lifestyles and way of working are completely different from those of Italians.

A group of factories and warehouses are located a short distance from Chinatown. Here, many Chinese basically live in their workplaces, sharing tiny rooms with many others. At peak production times, they don't stop working except to eat and sleep. Coupled with their low wages, these practices have caused clothing costs to significantly drop in the past 10 years.

Italians and Chinese barely interact it seems, with most Italian residents not daring to venture near Chinatown. Though Italy, a country that once sent out a massive number of emigrants to other countries, has struggled with prejudice, it seems to have already forgotten that history.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi dispatched about 50 military personnel to Prato in an apparent effort to crack down on illegal immigrants although it was clear this would not be much help. Berlusconi did so apparently in an effort to please his coalition partner, which advocated a crackdown, and to ingratiate himself with the voting public. The dispatch was requested by the city's right-wing mayor, who was recently elected, overturning the city's more than half decade of left-wing administration.

Of course, Chinese are not the only foreigners in Italy. Although the precise number is unknown, about 3,000 Japanese are believed to live in the Tuscany region. When including short-term visitors, the figure is probably much higher.

In the region, Japanese, especially female long-term residents, are found mostly in many retail stores, including quality tailor shops, wine stores, gelato shops, bakeries and even greengrocers, giving helping hands to Japanese tourists.

When thinking of visa overstayers, many Japanese readers might think of people from countries other than Japan. But among the Japanese men who are in training at Michelin-starred restaurants, many have been investigated by police for overstaying their visas.

Globalization involves human migration. The examples of Japanese and Chinese nationals in Italy are just two examples of this.

On one hand, these examples bring up the issue of coexistence, but on the other hand, just as Chinese are producing cheap but sometimes high-quality clothing around the globe, delicious Italian food and safe sightseeing trips are supported by Japanese overseas.

Endo, an expert in international politics, is a professor at Hokkaido University in Sapporo and a senior fellow of the European University Institute in Florence. He lives in Italy.