Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MPP (Mapping Practices under Pressure. The Everyday Experience of Socio-Economic Change in Deindustrialising Cities, 1960-2000)
Berichtszeitraum: 2021-05-01 bis 2023-04-30
In Antwerp, the contestation of environmental risks was one of the key issues of deindustrialization. Thus, I focused on practices through which residents of deindustrializing neighborhoods addressed and tried to mitigate environmental hazards and pollution. This focus ties in with recent scholarship on environmental justice, which has controversially discussed the ability and likelihood of disadvantaged communities to confront hazards and nuisances. In this debate, the relation between social inequalities and environmental justice is widely understood as a socio-spatial issue and many scholars have employed Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to analyze this nexus. However, while most researchers have used GIS to show how disadvantaged communities were disproportionally affected by the location of polluting facilities and environmental hazards, I employed this methodology to understand where and how opposition formed around such sites. In this way, I was able to map the emergence of practices of political and social engagement directed against the environmental risks which deindustrializing neighborhoods were exposed to.
For a more in-depth analysis of a case on the neighborhood level, I turned my attention to one of the most controversial industrial sites in Antwerp, the lead refinery operated by Metallurgie Hoboken-Overpelt (today Umicore) in the district of Hoboken. Located in a deindustrializing part of the city, the plant’s lead emissions posed a serious hazard to the local community which was affected by rising levels of unemployment and destitution. Nonetheless, community organization and political engagement to confront lead pollution persistently grew throughout the 1970s and 1980s. For the analysis of this specific case, I did not only consult the relevant primary sources but also collaborated with the Hoboken history association to reach out to the local community. The main conclusion of this case study is that the ability of “disadvantaged” communities to confront environmental risks is significantly enhanced by the emergence of social networks which bring together residents, experts, and politicians.
I presented main results of the project at the European Association for Urban History (EAUH) Conference 2022 as well as at six workshops and lectures at the University of Antwerp and other universities. Insights from the project also fed into my tasks as a member of the advisory board for the exhibition “Remix Industrial Past: Constructing the Identity of the Minett” (European Capital of Culture Esch2022) at the University of Luxembourg/C2DH. With a presentation at the local history association of Hoboken, I was able to communicate some of the major aspects of the project to the local community. Results are further disseminated through the publication of the data acquired as well as a number of journal articles to be published in the course of 2023/24.