A Migrant/Minority Economy? Jewish and Greek Migrant Entrepreneurial Patterns in the Greek Interwar Clothing Industry, 1923–1940

Orly C. Meron ()
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Orly C. Meron: Bar-Ilan University

A chapter in The Garment Economy, 2023, pp 63-78 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This chapter surveys the development of the clothing industry that enabled mass production to develop in interwar Greece. The influx of over 1,000,000 repatriated refugees in the wake of the Turkish-Greek transfer agreement (1923) led to cheap labour markets and broader consumer circles. Jewish and Greek Orthodox entrepreneurs, particularly around Thessalonica—the largest Jewish community in pre-1940 Greece—took advantage of both these factors. Drawing, inter alia, on archival document from the Jewish-owned Bank Amar, the chapter analyses: The context—industrial growth in Greece following the transfer The knitting and ready-made underwear industries The ready-made ‘needle industry’—shirts and clothing accessories Self-employed seamstresses (gender and entrepreneurship) Finally, it discusses the question of whether and to what extent the clothing industry’s reliance on migrant and minority entrepreneurship can be compared with the digitalisation the industry is currently experiencing.

Keywords: Ethnic entrepreneurship; Ready-made garment industry; Needle industry; Sewing machine; Knitting machine; Female migrant labour (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sptchp:978-3-031-33302-6_5

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-33302-6_5

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