Hidden Identity. The Italian-Chinese Community in Prato

According to Istat (the Italian National Institute of Statistics), Prato (Italy) has the highest proportion of Chinese immigrants of any Italian province. In 1989 there were only 38 Chinese residents in Prato, by 1991 there were 1009 and by the end of 2006 there were 10080 legal Chinese residents.
In the last thirty years the Italian and Chinese communities in Prato have been forced closer together. For this reason they have developed a new identity, the "sameness of essential or generic character in different instances" (Webster Merriam Dictionary definition for "identity"). There are certainly still elements of diversity between these communities, but each year this new 'hidden identity' is growing. The aim of the photographic research combined with psychological analysis is to document this new 'hidden identity'.