Circulating Children, Underwriting Capitalism: Chinese Global Households and Fast Fashion in Italy

• Published in: Current anthropology 2018-10, Vol.59 (5), p.572-595
• Main Authors: Krause, Elizabeth L., Bressan, Massimo, Baldassar, Loretta, Butt, Leslie, Feldman-Savelsberg, Pamela, Fong, Vanessa L., Leinaweaver, Jessaca, Piasere, Leonardo, Safri, Maliha
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Births; Capitalism; Childbirth & labor; Childhood; Childrearing practices; Children; Discourses; Division of labor; Economic structure; Ethnography; Experts; Fashion; Females; Globalization; Hegemony; Households; Immigrants; Infants; Migrant workers; Migrants; Money; Mothers; Noncitizens; Norms; Parents & parenting; Power; Reciprocity; Supply; Values; Women
• ISSN: 0011-3204; 1537-5382
• DOI: 10.1086/699826

This paper analyzes how kin-related values, norms, and practices become entangled in the hegemony of global supply chains. Our collaboration focuses on the Made in Italy fast fashion sector, where the ultimate flexible workers are Chinese migrants. We home in on a paradox: half of the births in this Italian textile city are to foreign women, yet once weaned many of these babies are then sent to China. This circulation of children gives rise to a host of new discourses and interventions on parenting from various institutions and experts. We develop and use an encounter ethnography framework to contrast the expert views of childhood circulation with those of immigrant parents. We argue that global households underwrite capitalism through noncapitalist elements that are integral to the economic organization that fast fashion requires. Parents find value in circulating children in its power to activate systems of reciprocity across kin, to create networked bodies across territories, to secure affective bonds across generations, and to free up time so as to enhance their ability to work and make money.