From mining policy to grassroot politics. Industrial citizenship in times of crisis

ended

Addressing a recent trend of mine reopening in southern Europe, the project will analyse the relationships between mining policies, expectations of employment and grassroot politics in times of economic crisis. On the basis of an ethnographic case study located in southwest Spain, the project will study mining revival from policy-making to its local impact on working-class families involved in the re-opening of a historical mine. The MINPOL project aims at shedding an innovative light on how economic and political order is produced, maintained but also challenged locally. Drawing upon the concept of “industrial citizenship”, which stresses the role of industry in the constitution of political subjects, on the work scene and beyond, this project will study political subjectivities arising from hopes of re-industrialization in European rural societies. Beyond the specificities of the economic sector and of the geographic setting, this research will contribute to the study of grassroots politics, emphasizing the prevalent importance of work while questioning how the economic policies in times of crisis transform the way (un)employment shapes daily life and subjectivation processes. The project will be conducted along three paths of investigation. 1. It will study Spanish mining policy, analysing the appropriation of economic doctrines from European to local scale, paying particular attention to the diffusion of policy narratives and devices. 2. Focusing on (former) miners’ families, the project will study local impacts of mining revival policies. Moving from the industrial world and the work-scene to the surrounding villages, it will analyse the renewed importance of mining industry in production and reproduction practices, and its influence on social identities. 3. Investigating public spaces, associations and collective action, it will scrutinize discrete processes of politicization that arise from ordinary sociality and (re)productive practices.