Small Firms and Minority Groups: Contradictory Trends in the French, German and British Clothing Industries

Abstract

This paper shows how the French, British and West German clothing industries were faced by the late 1960s with virtually identical problems of declining international competitiveness. Nevertheless, within a supposedly common framework of European Community policy towards the clothing industry, the strategies adopted by the three countries have differed markedly in degree of emphasis. We suggest that the retention of a large 'secondary' sector of small firms, now dominated by ethnic minority male entrepreneurs and immigrant female labour in France and Britain has been crucial in slowing the pace of decline in fashion-oriented sectors of production. In contrast, the relative absence of such a sector in the FRG has been a contributory factor in the relocation of a far higher proportion of clothing production to third countries than is the case in either France or Britain.