Paso 1. Identificación de los puestos de Alto Riesgo

The quantitative comparative overview formed the frame for a series of semi-structured interviews with residents and stakeholders in the study areas. These were crucial in understanding how and why different forms of labour market adjustment took place. They were also key to understanding how initial short-term adjustments resulted in longer-term path-dependent developments. Particularly important in this

regard were the insights they provided on inter-generational effects, cultural transmission and community change.

The fieldwork element of this research was conducted in

Northumberland in summer 2005 and in the Mon Valley in spring 2006.

The structure of the fieldwork was modified from that originally proposed and subsequently presented at the upgrade seminar in spring 2005. This modification generated changes in both the practical

research design, and also to some extent to the research emphasis, and therefore the findings. The research shifted from a household based study of labour market decision-making, household coping strategies and household and inter-generational change, to a focus more broadly on the causal processes behind the different patterns of labour market restructuring in the two areas, and how this has shaped subsequent economic and social development within communities.

The original research proposal prioritised household level perspectives, and details of household responses to, and coping mechanisms for, loss of (male) work. The focus of the original proposal was set-out as:

With the feminisation of the workforce, and economic strategies defined at the household level, household studies will give a broader account of responses to deindustrialisation….A series of semi-structured interviews, comprising open questions, will be used to address people’s experiences of deindustrialisation..…Where relevant (i.e., in a household of marriage or cohabitation) interviews will be

conducted….with both partners interviewed together…The aim of these questions is to

investigate what factors have been influential in determining the labour market decisions made by that individual and household…A series of elite interviews will also be conducted in the study areas….they will offer supplementary information about the patterns of restructuring and labour market change in the study areas from individuals who have been involved in the regeneration processes’.

The proposal also intended conducting interviews with the working-age children of former industrial workers to explore issues of

inter-generational change in work attitudes and labour market experiences.

The focus of investigation however began to shift away from such individual and household outcomes to broader community outcomes, themselves driven largely by dominant labour market adjustment process, and exploring the longer-term implications of these changes.

The rationale for changing the research design was both practical and theoretical. The practical considerations are outlined in the Annex to this chapter, and revolve essentially around the difficulty of obtaining significant numbers of respondents willing to explore their family histories in detail. Greater emphasis therefore came to be placed on two other target groups, key community actors and local stakeholders.

Theoretically also, it became clear that the dominant structural

contrasts between the two regions, as their impacts emerged over a 25 year period, could be better reflected in a labour market/community approach than in one based on detailed studies of individual household experience, however ethnographically interesting this would have been.

In Northumberland 23 interviews were conducted and 21 in the Mon Valley. Those interviewed included stakeholders involved in economic and community development as well as a range of local residents, including those involved in local community groups and activities, local council members, and former industrial workers. Details of respondents are shown below.

The interviews investigated how industrial workers had responded to job losses. They examined both the macro level influences on

restructuring, such as government welfare and employment policies, and more localised influences, including levels of demand for labour and social and cultural trends. They also explored how the initial

processes of restructuring had influenced long-term growth and change in the communities.

The interviewees

Northumberland

Elite stakeholders:

1. Amble Development Trust- Employment opportunities manager 2. East Ashington Development Trust- Manager

3. National Union of Mineworkers- National Chairman and secretary 4. Northumberland Community Council- Assistant director

5. Northumberland County Council- Regeneration Manager 6. One Northeast- Economic Inclusion manager

7. South East Northumberland and North Tyneside Regeneration Initiative (SENNTRI)- Director

8. Trinity Youth- Youth Worker

9. Wansbeck Community Empowerment Network- Network development officer

10. Wansbeck District Council- Business and Enterprise coordinator 11. Wansbeck District Council- Regeneration initiatives Officer

Community interviews:

12. Bedlington Station Residents Association- Chair 13. Cambois Community Association- Chair

14. Choppington Community Association- Chair

15. East Ashington Community Area Partnership- Chair 16. Lynemouth Day Centre- Manager

17. Lynemouth Parish Council- Chair

18. Wansbeck Council- Councillor, Ashington

Former miners:

19. Former miner [N1]

20. Former miner [N2]

21. Former miner [N3]

22. Former miner [N4]

23. Former miner [N5]

Mon Valley

Elite stakeholders:

1. CareerLink- Allegheny County East and West - Executive director 2. Heritage Health Foundation- Vice-president for Development 3. McKeesport City- City Administrator and Director of Community

Development

4. Mon Valley Education Consortium- Executive Director 5. Mon Valley Initiative- Community Organiser

6. Mon Valley Initiative- Senior real estate manager

7. Pennsylvania House of Representatives- State Representative:

District 39 (Elizabeth Township)

8. Pennsylvania House of Representatives- State Representative:

District 34 (Turtle Creek)

9. Steel Valley Authority- Chairman

Community interviews:

10. City of Clairton- Councilman /Clairton Community Development Corporation member

11. East Pittsburgh Community Development Corporation- Member 12. Homestead Borough- Mayor

13. Homestead Economic Redevelopment Corporation (HERC)- Chairman

14. Homestead Economic Redevelopment Corporation (HERC)- Founding member

15. Mon Valley Unemployed Committee- Co-director (former mill worker)

16. Munhall Borough- Mayor

17. North Braddock CARES- Member

Former mill workers:

18. Former mill worker [MV1]

19. Former mill worker [MV2]

20. Former mill worker [MV3]

21. Former mill worker [MV4]

Most of the former industrial workers interviewed were involved in their local union as, from a practical perspective, it was easier to contact union members while, 20 or so years after closures, it proved much more difficult to contact a more random sample of affected workers.⁷³ Of course, union members tend to come with a particular political view, and opinion about closures, which it is important to acknowledge in the analysis of interviews.

Initial contact with the union in Northumberland was through the local branch secretary. The secretary then provided further contact details of former miners. In the Mon Valley, a former local union secretary, who I was introduced to by another community contact, provided some contact details of former millworkers which were supplemented with others from the Steel Industry Heritage Center’s oral histories

database.

Former industrial workers were asked to reflect on their own

experiences, and also on those of friends, family members and former colleagues. They were, of course, reflecting back over a long period since the closures. Their responses were compared with those of other stakeholder interviewees, and also with some valuable local oral history projects undertaken nearer the time of closures. This included an oral

73Finding former mill workers in the Mon Valley, even union ones, proved somewhat difficult. I was told that most had left the area (or died), and those that remained were too bitter to talk about it (Former mill worker [MV3]). This problem had been found by previous researchers in the area (Carroll, 1992; 120; Sturdevant, 1993; 20;

Lease, 1992; 2).

histories programme undertaken in different mill towns by the Steel Industry Heritage Corporation in the early 1990s, and an oral history project undertaken in the late-1980s by Bob Anderson on workers immediate post-closure experience. This allows for the triangulation of peoples’ reflections on the past with information gathered at the time.

In Northumberland local statutory agencies including Northumberland County Council and Wansbeck District Council acted as ‘gatekeepers’ to facilitate contacts in local community organisations.⁷⁴ This was

combined with a process of selective snowballing. In the Mon Valley local agencies similarly provided details of community contacts, of particular help here was the Mon Valley Initiative (MVI) and the Heritage Health Foundation.

The aim of the interviews with those involved in formal economic development was to explore the longer-term labour market and social implications of industrial change, as well as to evaluate the policy response and future prospects. This was complemented by interviews with individuals, both paid and voluntary, engaged in community

development and local community groups who served to give a sense of community and social change in the period since closures.

The themes which the interviews addressed derived from three key elements identified from past research. They are, i) the local and regional demand for labour including the number and type of jobs within commutable distance; ii) the public welfare context of

government support for people and places and; iii) the historical and cultural context, including the existing norms and values in the areas.

74 Gatekeepers are ‘those individuals in an organization that have the power to grant or withhold access to people or situations for the purposes of research’ (Burgess, 1984; 48 cited in Flowerdew and Martin, 1997; 115).

The following headings served as a template for the interviews, suitably adjusted to each type of interviewee:

· The experiences of industrial workers

· Labour market decision-making

· The labour market since closures

· The cultural legacy of mining and restructuring

· Inter-generational change

· The effectiveness and limitations of policy interventions

· Regeneration

· Public welfare

· Community change

· The social impacts

· The geography of change

The interviews with all participants, which had been recorded, were selectively transcribed in a series of notes and quotes of their

responses. Coding was then used to help interpret the material collected (Payne and Payne, 2004; 36; Cope, 2003; 445). First, using relatively basic descriptive codes to reflect the main areas of interest of the interviews, significantly derived from the LMA framework, to categorise and organise data. Broad categories, for example, included local job opportunities, commuting, and migration. Then, topic coding was used to provide relatively interpretive labelling of the main codes and sub-codes that were judged to be important from the interview responses, such as work aspirations, public welfare system roles, and cultures of mobility. How the central and subcategories related to each other was then explored (Strauss, 1987; 4). These relationships are defined in terms of varieties of ‘conditions’, ‘interactions’, ‘strategies’

and ‘consequences’ (ibid; 64). This served to establish links between the important variables which form the basis of people’s decisions, as well as the different influences on long-term patterns of social and

economic change and how these fit together. The coding was then used to develop themes running through the data which brought together the dominant causal structures and processes at work in the areas, producing a network of explanation for the different forms of restructuring and subsequent development (see Richards and Morse, 2007; 143). The data were coded without the use of specialist qualitative software and the text was held in a database, with the outputs of different codes and themes linked, analysed and interpreted manually.