#7 Across territories and
felder
Across territories and political contexts, employment in the steel industry was more than ‘ just a job’: the mills structured life, built cities, transformed landscapes and - alongside its many contested conditions – produced tight social networks. Dealing with the relics of this industry therefore needs to go beyond preserving or monetising its physical structures. Instead, soft heritage and the cultivation of new forms of civic life must become a central concern of post-industrial planning.
Industrial migration entails the migration of labour, value, knowledge and belonging. Yet such structural change is commonly presented as technical or economic necessity, driven by efficiency, competitiveness and the promise of future prosperity. This narrative depoliticizes industrial transformation, reducing it to questions of productivity while obscuring its social consequences.
Our research follows the migration of Blast Furnace C from Belval, Luxembourg, to Anning, Yunnan, China, to examine how cities and communities are reshaped when industries relocate. Listening to former workers and family members and observing both contexts onsite, we focused on the lower, softer voices rather than the official success stories.
What happens to people and places when the productive heart of a region is dismantled and reassembled elsewhere? What are the social costs of structural industrial change? How does 'creative destruction' manifest on the ground?
After the steel crisis of the 1970s, Luxembourg shifted from primary steel production towards recycled steel. Blast Furnace C, still state of the art but no longer compatible with the new model of production, was sold to the Chinese steel producer KISCO in 1996. Around 240 Chinese workers were sent to Esch to dismantle 10,000 tons of steel before reconstructing the furnace in Anning as Blast Furnace 6.
At the peak of the Luxembourgish steel industry, in 1970, the steelworks and iron mines provided work for 16 percent of national employment. In Esch, the heart of the terres rouges, the share intensified with ARBED dominating the job marke by large. Yet, these figures only hint at the industry's full impact: the plants structured society far beyond their gates. Sirens calling for shifts set daily rhythms for workers and families, over generations. Hierarchies at work extended into everyday life: The position in the factory determined where and how to live, which sports club to join and whom to marry. Foremen carried authority within the mills as much as the role of mediators within the local community. Employment was not merely an occupation but a framework that formed society. The dismantling of the furnace triggered the successive dismantling of a way of life. Although the Division Anticrise mitigated economic consequences through wage protection and early retirement, it did not address the tight social networks that had sustained and ordered the 'steel society.'
In Anning, Blast Furnace C witnessed equally profound changes. KISCO – Kunming Iron & Steel Holding Co – was a historically relevant but productively moderate player in Chinese steel production until the 1990s. With the arrival of Blast Furnace C, KISCO gained national importance and became the region's largest employer. While Blast Furnace C, now BF 6, was crucial to reaching new peaks of productivity, it did not prevent further rationalization from restructuring the production facilities. In 2022, a new centralized site took over, shutting Blast Furnace 6 and most of its surrounding production facilities.
Today, market-oriented reforms have profoundly restructured Chinese state enterprises, and the steel industry is in decline, as the construction sector slows down and the economy structurally changes. Before these reforms, employment at a state-owned enterprise came as an "iron rice bowl": as lifetime employment within a stable welfare system. The urban fabric of Anning, largely built by KISCO and still home to most of its (now) aging employees, reads as a material archive of these shifts. Adjacent to the mill, KISCO built workers' housing, schools, hospitals, canteens, cinemas, even a zoo. These spaces sustained a sedimented social order where life unfolded in the rhythm of the factory. Today, however, this welfare infrastructure is gradually being eroded by the rationalization of state-owned enterprises and the ongoing restructuring of the steel sector.
Comparing Esch and Anning is not intended to equate two profoundly different political and economic systems. Rather, it demonstrates that both transformations systematically prioritized measurable economic outcomes over its soft heritage: the social infrastructures that sustained everyday life. Yet it is precisely these infrastructures of care, everyday routines and regular encounters that shape a sense of local belonging and a community's capacity to navigate profound economic change.
We therefore call on the City of Esch to recognise industrial heritage not only as static monuments but as the material trace of previous soft structures. Industrial transformation should systematically account for the societal shifts that accompany economic restructuring. This requires:
- listening to and documenting a multitude of lived experiences before they disappear
- involving affected communities in defining post-industrial futures
- preserving and cultivating spaces that continue to foster everyday social relations and
- understanding heritage preservation as an ongoing, and often contested, social process rather than a completed act of conservation.
Industrial transition can not merely replace productive infrastructures. It must create spaces and conditions in which new forms of civic life can emerge.