ABSTRACT
Port Kembla in Australia is a site of heavy industry. Its history is presented as progressive and expansive, dominated by the huge Broken Hill Propriety (BHP) Steelworks industry. At the end of WWII, the demand for labor to service economic growth led to a pendulum swing of Australia’s immigration policy. Industry, especially BHP, influenced recruitment policy, which led to the arrival of hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers. This chapter extends and complicates the politics of race, ethnicity and architecture shown in studies of ghettoized ethnic enclaves or ethnic expression. It will draw on Foucault’s theory of power, toward an analysis of industrial space as a new space of management strategies, and the consequence for non-Anglophone immigrants classified as unskilled. The voices of non-Anglophone immigrant workers (from interviews) will contribute to an understanding of their experience in the most oppressive work in the coke ovens, blast furnaces and sinter plant. The chapter argues racialization and ethnicization structure the space of labor and the architectural landscape of postwar industry, and the immigrant experience is a contingent part of Australian history.
