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Paper short abstract:

The transformations in the shipbuilding sector led to a new composition of workers in Italian shipyards. With the example of the border town Monfalcone, I want to engage with ethnicization of labour mobility, precarious working and living conditions and the agency of workers and citizens.

Paper long abstract:

Monfalcone is located on the Italian-Slovenian border and has around 30.000 inhabitants. The city’s shipyard strongly shapes the identity of its inhabitants since its foundation in 1908 and affects their everyday life. Labour migration has always been an essential part of the development of the shipyard as well as the city. While in the 1980s a crisis led to the closure of many shipyards in Europe, this one succeeded in reinventing itself by specializing in the construction of cruise ships, under the condition to recruite foreign workers, mainly coming from Southern Asia and Eastern Europe. Due to their high numbers, journalists describe Monfalcone “like a shipyard in Manila, Taiwan or Dacca” (Maugeri 2015) and as a social laboratory.

While conservative politics with a nationalist course challenge the border town, the ethnicization of labour migration took on a new dimension as current right-wing politics declare the worker's presence a problem and instrumentalize their precarious conditions for their own purposes. In recent years, however, inhabitants increasingly face up to this stigmatisation. Local trade unions engage and together with the workers raise their voices for their issues, and several cultural associations give evidence of open-minded social and transnational relations, creating common projects and futures.

In my talk, presenting ethnographic research, I would like to pick up the idea of the city as a social laboratory, reflect on how individuals and groups of different backgrounds shape convivial and cultural practices on site and demonstrate that the agency of workers and citizens counteracts nationalist positions.