Description du projet
Explorer l’histoire industrielle et environnementale du port de Marghera
Dans les années 1920, le régime fasciste a établi les usines de superphosphates au port de Marghera, qui étaient reliées à «l’archipel des phosphates» en amont. Cet archipel était constitué d’un réseau d’espaces extractifs et industriels s’étendant de part et d’autre de la Méditerranée. La présence de phosphates a également établi des liens entre les mouvements ouvriers du port de Marghera et les luttes anticoloniales en Afrique du Nord. Dans les années 1990, des campagnes environnementales ont conduit à la fermeture des usines d’engrais du port de Marghera. Le projet LabEcoInt, financé par le programme MSCA, explore l’histoire des régions industrielles européennes et examine l’interaction entre le travail et les changements environnementaux d’un point de vue global, y compris la production d’engrais dérivés du phosphate.
Objectif
This research, hosted by Ca’ Foscari University of Venice in partnership with the Geneva Graduate Institute, investigates the making and unmaking of Europe’s historical industrial areas uncovering the intersections between labour and ecological transformations from an international perspective. It does so by deploying theories of extractivism to the case study of the major industrial cluster of Porto Marghera (Venice, Italy), using the production of phosphate-based fertilisers as an entry point.
Porto Marghera’s “super-phosphate” plants were established in the 1920s, in the context of rising fascism. They integrated Porto Marghera with the “green factories” of expanding modern agriculture – downstream –, and with the “Phosphate Archipelago”, a network of extractive and industrial spaces on the two shores of the Mediterranean – upstream. Phosphates thus invisibly and contradictorily connected Porto Marghera’s labour mobilisations with North Africa’s anticolonial struggles. This link was also ecological, as shown by the noxious health and environmental effects of phosphates. The closure of Porto Marghera’s fertiliser plants in the 1990s was in fact accelerated by environmental campaigns against the dumping of phosphate waste into the Adriatic Sea. Meanwhile, restructuring in the extractive areas of Morocco and Tunisia (Khouribga and Gafsa respectively) turned them into important points of departure for working-class migration to Italy.
While deindustrial studies focus on the history of industrial areas from a local or national perspective, less attention has been paid to the insertion of such industries in global hierarchies of labour and environmental degradation. By analysing Porto Marghera’s place in the Phosphate Archipelago, this research generates insights for today’s ecological transitions in mining, industry, and agriculture, at a time when fertilisers are once again in the spotlight due to concerns over sustainability and instability in food supply chains.
Champ scientifique
Mots‑clés
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Régime de financement
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-GF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global FellowshipsCoordinateur
30123 Venezia
Italie