The 'east' Of Italian Entrepreneurs Is Also A Land Of Opportunity

By Author: peter
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Together with EU-led reforms, the activity of Italian banks and services firms played a major role in familiarizing Central and Eastern Europe. The case studies from Slovakia and Romania presented in this paper show that Italian banks and services were cultural mediators between the local communities and the smaller Italian manufacturers, helping them to 'feel at home.' In the eyes of Italian entrepreneurs, the more Italian banks and service firms were active in the region, and the more national and local governments adopted neoliberal reforms, the more these countries became 'European', and the more the 'East' was pushed back.

Partners and employees within the region constructed the Italians in contrasting ways. Although they positioned themselves as 'learning from' the more 'advanced' Westerners, both Slovaks and Romanians saw Italians as sometimes occupying a lower moral ground. Italians, at least in the early 1990s, were 'not serious,' uneducated, hagglers like gypsies. Moreover, from an 'Eastern' perspective, the boundaries of what constitutes 'West' and 'Europe' are fuzzy. Italy is Europe, because it is a mature ...
... capitalist country and one of the original members of the EU. At the same time, Italy is not really Europe, because of the popular stereotypes of Mafiosi and political corruption. In presenting these findings, this paper suggests that further research is needed on the ways in which 'Others' construct the 'West.' Thus far, most of the literature has adopted a western perspective, even when the author is from the East, like in the case of the Bulgarian Maria Todorova, arguing that the East is constructed in a negative light in order to claim a superior identity for the 'West.' Even when an 'Eastern' perspective is adopted (Bakic-Hayden 1995), the eastern actors claim a western identity in order to Orientalize their immediate neighbors. The question of how actors from within the region have actively constructed 'Others' (including 'Westerners') to claim their own identity is still relatively unexplored.

Finally, this paper destabilized the concepts of 'East' and "Europe." From the standpoint of Italian investors, 'Europe' is not at all an entirely positive concept. Europe implies "rising costs without giving back anything to the industry", while Slovakia "will soon have the same problems of Italy" (Interview technical director, SVIK, 28 June 2006). In practice, the neoliberal project of the EU carries an internal contradiction as it provides the stability to increase commitment and spread business networks, but also contains the preconditions for pushing cost sensitive firms towards further outsourcing. Therefore, the 'East' of Italian entrepreneurs is both a 'dark side' of Europe, but also a land of opportunity.