ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the question of space and how it was inhabited, appropriated and sought to be controlled by dock workers and their families. It presents changes in the political economy to changes in the spatial configurations of the port-city and their effects on the lives of workers. The chapter identifies kinds of neighbourhoods and the ways in which living space, life-styles and social networks served as important strategies of survival. It suggests that it is time to broaden the concept of the 'port sector' to include both work and residential site. The chapter focuses on the researches presented in the port studies, as well as on secondary literature. Reality is always more complex and subterranean feelings live on, memories of times past, of neighbourhoods, pubs, clubs and hiring halls having served as sources of comfort and support.
