Localizing ethnic entrepreneurship : “Chinese” chips shops in Belgium, “traditional” food culture, and transnational migration in Europe

Abstract

This article explores the causes, dynamics, and theoretical implications of the “localization” of ethnic entrepreneurship through “traditional” food businesses in Europe. Based on fieldwork conducted in 2014 and 2017, it analyses the emergence of “Chinese” chips shops in the Flemish province of Antwerp, Belgium. Highlighting the history of Chinese migration to Europe, it argues that a specific set of “contexts of exit” and “contexts of reception” explain this development. Important among these are Dutch language skills and long-term residence or citizenship in the Netherlands and Belgium, market saturation, and the global financial crisis of 2007-2008. The article posits that these Chinese entrepreneurs are neither “enclave entrepreneurs” nor a “middleman minority”: entering a “traditional” food sector, they must leverage on their “integration capital.” However, with this, they also become entangled in Belgian gastronationalism and gastropolitics. Finally, this “localization” also has a transnational dimension as many of these entrepreneurs re-migrated from the Netherlands.