Liv och arbete i pizzabranschen

Sammanfattning: This thesis unravels the pizza trade through a sociological inquiry into its history, its businesses, and its people. In Sweden, the typical pizza place is a small independent business, owned and operated by one or a few people with immigrant backgrounds. Hence, the trade is an immigrant small business niche. The analysis is concerned with how the trade ‘works’; how its structural properties are established, maintained and challenged.Two questions serve as point of departure: how is the trade populated, and what does everyday life in the pizzeria look like? These ‘simple questions’ serve to uncover the diachronic and synchronic life nexus of the restaurant keeper, and how this is embedded in and shaped by the trade as a ‘social world’.Thirty-four life stories form the basis of the analysis of life courses as they lead up to, and continue in, the trade. The resulting life-course pattern is visible as three types of insertion sequences, distributing people to the trade in different ways. They differ in the extent to which they are smooth or fraught with friction. Some insertion sequences make life as a restaurant keeper appear acceptable, if not desirable, while others make it into a forced and awkward choice for the individual. The analysis of the life stories accounts for how people are installed in the social world, which is the precondition for its existence. Equally important is the way in which the social world is maintained on a day-to-day basis, thus directing attention to the workings of the pizzeria and the synchronic life nexus of the restaurant keeper. The inquiry details the everyday challenges which the restaurant keeper in the pizza trade must deal with. Operating a pizzeria entails working in an industry with sharp competition and low status. At the same time, it means working independently, being part of a life mode that both presupposes and enables a life pattern within the bounds of what some people regard as a ‘normal’ or ‘good life’.