The clusterisation of specific ethnic business activities inside a city space offers a unique economic forum for cross-cultural interaction among employers- employees, sellers, and buyers belonging to different cultural groups. The continuous modification of urban landscape within and outside of these ethnic quarters can impose strong impact on the local street and residential morphology of the city. The case study research taken up by the authors in the present paper is about the Hakka tanning activities inside Tangra Chinatown in Kolkata. The tanning operations of the Hakka community still retain its peripheral cluster outfit since its inception. This peripheral location has helped these ethnic entrepreneurs to attract local customer base with their exclusive leather making techniques besides remaining isolated from the cut throat competition around the inner city for acquiring commercial space. The situation at present is not viable for the Hakka tanners with the verdict of the Supreme Court a decade earlier. Consequent to this, the relocation of units will lead to a permanent sacrifice of self proclaimed identity of unique business skills inherited for generations by this community. So, the intended focus of study is the understanding of the critical space-emotion psychology of these migrants and their economy addressing specific case of ethnic commerce. This paper also deals with a detailed spatial layout of commercial activities of the Hakka community and some alternative remedial measures to ease the tension raised by the situation concerned have been proposed. A mixed method research design has been applied: quantitatively and qualitatively in contextualising the research findings.
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Author Name: Kunaljeet Roy Dr. Sukla Basu
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Keywords: Clusterisation Ethnic Entrepreneurs Peripheral Cluster Space-emotion
ISSN: 22493921
EISSN: 22494316
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