Dirty Industry, Heritage, and the Erasure of Immigrant Pasts

Abstract:

Industry is dirty, and land, soils, and sites remain toxic even after operations have diminished or closed. Dominant heritage frameworks, aligned with narratives that serve national interests, and environmental plans, have not yet imagined the heritage futures of industrial landscapes— nor the narratives that link the industrial pasts of workers to the present and the future. Significant labor histories are frequently diminished, marginalized, or omitted altogether. Major nation-building industries in Australia, America, Canada and northern Europe were dependent on immigrant labor drawn from Asia, Europe, and South America, and their stories are embedded in the large tracts of industrial sites that have become wastelands of defunct and demolished structures. “Dirty” extends onto a linguistic terrain of “dirty histories” and the silencing of particular histories parallel the masking of environmental toxicity. Focusing on the Port Kembla steelworks in Australia, this article examines immigrant industrial labor history and develops a perspective from which to rethink heritage practice and the theoretical development of critical carbon. If critical carbon is conceptualized as a matter that concerns both the exploitation of land and of peoples, this article argues that heritage practice needs to develop projects around immigrant heritage sites such as the steelworks.