Unravelling The Rag Trade

Focuses on Amsterdam, Birmingham, London, Los Angeles, Miami, New York and Paris.

Immigrant-owned enterprises are a highly visible phenomenon, but frequently and increasingly so after 9/11, immigration has been cast in pessimistic and apocalyptic terms which became associated with rising xenophobia and restrictive legislation, such as the Patriot Act in the United States. This book examines the issue of immigration and the contribution immigrant enterprise plays in the economic development of gateway cities such as London, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Amsterdam and Miami, cities which appear as the living embodiment of globalization. Questioning the extent to which cities are transformed by immigrants themselves, ‘from below’, this revealing book points to relationships with wider processes, such as the legal and political framework and the restructuring by capital of particular industries and localities. What happens to immigrants is shaped by membership of particular groups, historical circumstances, and the reproduction of social stratification rooted in class, gender, race, age. The book points to the development of social and economic differentiation, and challenges popular stereotypes of immigrants in business. Its findings point to a highly differentiated enterprise structure. This informative volume contains rich case study material. Ideal for students and professionals, it demonstrates that the recognition of diversity is a necessary first step to understanding winners and losers in immigrant enterprise.

This book provides a major new examination of the current dilemmas of liberal anti-racist policies in European societies, linking two discourses that are normally quite separate in social science: immigration and ethnic relations research on the one hand, and the political economy of the welfare state on the other. The authors rephrase Gunnar Myrdal's questions in An American Dilemma with reference to Europe's current dual crisis - that of the established welfare state facing a declining capacity to maintain equity, and that of the nation state unable to accommodate incremental ethnic diversity. They compare developments across the European Union with the contemporary US experience of poverty, race, and class. They highlight the major moral-political dilemma emerging across the EU out of the discord between declared ideals of citizenship and actual exclusion from civil, political, and social rights. Pursuing this overall European predicament, the authors provide a critical scrutiny of the EU's growing policy involvement in the fields of international migration, integration, discrimination, and racism. They relate current policy issues to overall processes of economic integration and efforts to develop a European 'social dimension'. Drawing on case-study analysis of migration, the changing welfare state, and labour markets in the UK, Germany, Italy, and Sweden, the book charts the immense variety of Europe's social and political landscape. Trends of divergence and convergence between single countries are related to the European Union's emerging policies for diversity and social inclusion. It is, among other things, the plurality of national histories and contemporary trajectories that makes the European Union's predicament of migration, welfare, and citizenship different from the American experience. These reasons also account in part for why it is exceedingly difficult to advance concerted and consistent approaches to one of the most pressing policy issues of our time. Very few of the existing sociological texts which compare different European societies on specific topics are accessible to a broad range of scholars and students. The European Societies series will help to fill this gap in the literature, and attempt to answer questions such as: Is there really such a thing as a 'European model' of society? Do the economic and political integration processes of the European Union also imply convergence in more general aspects of social life, such a family or religious behaviour? What do the societies of Western Europe have in common with those further to the East? This series will cover the main social institutions, although not every author will cover the full range of European countries. As well as surveying existing knowledge in a manner useful to students, each book will also seek to contribute to our growing knowledge of what remains in many respects a sociologically unknown continent. The series editor is Colin Crouch.

Cutting-edge perspectives on the functioning of cultural industries are offered in this volume, which explores the media, entertainment and artistic sectors. Contributors place these industries in the new economy and suggest ways in which they can contribute to urban and regional economic and social development.

Firms in the clothing industry engage in global sourcing and operate in global markets. Their global production networks have often been subject to scrutiny as the power relationships between buyer firms in developed countries and supplier firms in developing countries raise issues concerned with 'fast fashion', the role of brands, labour standards in developing countries, job losses among the most vulnerable workers in Europe and the US, and the growing differentiation within the bloc of developing countries between the least developed and fast developers, such as China and India. This book analyses the way British, American and German firms in the clothing industry (manufacturing and retail) co-ordinate and govern their global production networks/value chains. It offers a multi-level study, concerned with processes of economic interaction between international, regional, and national economic institutions and actors. This combines an analysis of international/regional regulatory systems, global markets and conditions in the developing countries where suppliers are found, with a focus on the recent development of the clothing industry in three western countries. The analysis of firms' global networks focuses on the power relationships between western producers and retailers on the one hand and between buyer firms in developed and supplier firms in developing countries on the other, as well as their impact on labour. Utilising over one hundred interviews in six countries on three continents, it follows the value chain from developed to developing countries and studies the many issues which confront students of globalization at the current time. The study combines theoretical perspectives from economic sociology, political economy and management and seeks to utilise the complementary strengths of the Varieties of Capitalism approach and that of Global Production Networks/Value Chains. It will appeal to advanced students and academics interested in processes of economic globalization and the way firms manage them, as well as to those looking for a study of the clothing industry which combines theoretical depth with broad empirical coverage.

Argues that the Jews who flocked to the United States during the age of mass migration were aided appreciably by their association with a particular corner of the American economy: the rag trade. Comparing the history of Jewish participation within the clothing trade in the United States with that of Jews in the same business in England, Mendelsohn demonstrates that differences within the garment industry on either side of the Atlantic contributed to a very real divergence in social and economic outcomes for Jews in each setting. --From publisher description.

This book examines the development of enterprise among key migrant groups in Europe and the United States. It argues that the development of 'ethnic economies' provides the material basis for alternative models of social integration, such as multiculturalism 'from below', which are critical of mainstream assimilationist thinking.