Entrepreneurial Urbanism Meets Migrant Businesses: Critical Perspectives from Silk Road Paris (Tremblay-en-France)
摘要
In the context of China's emergence as a global economic power and diaspora state, this chapter examines the changing patterns of Chinese migrant entrepreneurship in Paris, bridging migration studies and the literature on the entrepreneurial city. It combines (i) a spatial analysis of the historical implementation of Chinese entrepreneurship in the Paris region, and (ii) an original ethnographic study of the new Silk Road Paris wholesale market in Tremblay-en-France. Adopting a place-based perspective, the chapter underscores the role of Chinese entrepreneurs as city-makers, embedded within a complex institutional, regulatory, and sociocultural context shaped by urban actors such as policymakers and developers. Through new "growth coalitions" that promote the Chinese approach to business, Silk Road Paris is transforming the Chinese commercial marketplace into a valuable metropolitan asset—a transformation driven by the synergistic efforts of local governments, private developers, and Chinese entrepreneurs themselves. In this way, Chinese migrant entrepreneurs are contributing to urban development in new ways, fueling the entrepreneurialization of the city in contemporary France.