Chinese Migration to Italy: Features and Issues

This essay examines the Chinese experience of migration to Italy. Archival material has been integrated with oral history field work conducted in Bologna and the Romagna. We have identified three distinct waves of Chinese migration to Italy. The first wave occurred in the very early stage of Sino-Italian relations (1850–1915), when only four categories of people moved to Italy from China: the students and priests studying and teaching at the Chinese college in Naples, the diplomats and their families based in Rome, a few sailors and the first street vendors.The sporadic presence of Chinese citizens in Italy was matched by the low number of Italians in China mainly living in the territorial concessions of Tianjin. During the second wave of Chinese immigration (1930–1970), a small but cohesive community started to develop both in Milan and Bologna. The most recent wave of Chinese immigration started in the 1990s, bearing little resemblance to the preceding one. However, all the three waves show a strong entrepreneurial attitude on the part of Chinese migrants and a sense of close community kinship