Chinese Espresso:

Contested Race and Convivial Space in Contemporary Italy

Princeton University Press, 2024

See more information at:

PUP: https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691245782/chinese-espresso

Chinese Espresso is a revised version of my Ph.D. dissertation. It investigates the conditions, mechanisms, and implications behind the rapid spread of Chinese-managed coffee bars in Northern and Central Italy since the Great Recession of 2008. It shows why and how Chinese immigrant labor is increasingly managing this “traditional” local business niche regarded by native Italians as rooted in a distinctively local taste and constituting a uniquely Italian social space. This ethnography paints a nuanced portrait of an immigrant group which relies on reciprocal and flexible family labor to make coffee and deploys local knowledge gleaned from indigenous residents, earning both their admiration and resentment.

Chinese Espresso thus represents new features of postmodern and postcolonial urban life in a pluralistic society where racialized immigrants, presumably embodying incommensurable cultural differences, assume fundamental roles in making taste and place for conviviality. The story of Chinese baristas producing an Italian nationalist commodity while preserving a distinctly Italian social space and local culture transcends the Eurocentric narrative about immigrant-host relations. It also complicates our understandings of the cultural dynamics and racial formation within the shifting demographic realities of the Global North.

Chinese Espresso in the Media

Featured interview for "Chinese Espresso: How Migration from China Changed the Face of Italian Bars" by Annalise June Kamegawa. Lampoon. January 22, 2025.

(S+) Italien: Wie Chinesen die Kaffeekultur des Landes rettenZwischen Mailand und Palermo kriselt eine der wichtigsten Institutionen des Landes: die Bar. Das Geschäft lohnt sich nicht, die Arbeitszeiten sind lang. Nun kommt Hilfe aus dem Land der Teetrinker.

Interview for "Wie Chinesen in Italien die Kaffeekultur retten" by Francesco Collini. Der Spiegel. September 27, 2024.

Thinking Allowed - Coffee Culture - BBC SoundsHipster baristas in Philadelphia and Chinese-run espresso bars in Italy.

Interview for BBC Radio 4's social science series, Thinking Allowed. Episode: Coffee Culture (2024).

Interview for the Sociological Review Foundation's Uncommon Sense podcast series. Season 3 Episode 4: Coffee Culture, with Grazia Ting Deng (2024).

Interviewed for a dedicated podcast on the New Books Network about Chinese Espresso (2024).

Chinese stir up Italy’s coffee culture in face of racism and violent crime‘Chinese bars are everywhere, and the cappuccino is in a state of shock’. So go the translated lyrics of a slightly xenophobic Italian pop song about Chinese migrants taking over neighbourhood cafes in northern and central Italy.

"Chinese Baristas Stir Up Italy’s Purist Coffee Culture in Face of Racism and Violent Crime." by Hilary Clarke. South China Morning Post. November 27 (2019).