Fri, Sep 27, 2024 10:39

In a recent episode of the BBC podcast “Thinking Allowed,” Grazia Ting Deng shares fascinating research on the spread of Chinese-owned coffee bars in Italy. As a former Bologna resident, I too was initially surprised by the high number of bars managed by Chinese or Chinese-Italian people. These bars served some of the best and most reasonably priced coffees, cappuccinos (complete with coffee art!), and breakfast pastries. The only aspect I didn’t like was that their cafes were often selling lottery tickets and having gambling machines in the back.

Grazia Ting Deng, Lecturer at Brandeis University’s Department of Anthropology, explores the paradox of “Chinese espresso". The coffee bar is a cornerstone of Italian urban life, with city residents sipping espresso at more than 100,000 of these local businesses throughout the country. So why is espresso in Italy increasingly prepared by Chinese baristas in Chinese-managed coffee bars? Deng investigates the rapid spread of Chinese-owned coffee bars since the Great Recession of 2008 and draws on her extensive ethnographic research in Bologna. She finds that longtime residents have come, sometimes resentfully, to regard Chinese expresso as a new normal and immigrants have assumed traditional roles, even as they are regarded as racial others.