Desindustrialisisation in France and Germany: Experiences and Emotionen from the early 1960s to the present time. The Unmaking of the Working Class? – DesinEE

The Franco-German comparison is at the heart of the project. It belongs to the family of identity comparisons, to use Hartmut Kaelble's typology (Kaelble, 1999: 6). Such an approach constitutes an essential and novel added value insofar as we hope on this occasion to stimulate the comparative culture of the field of research on deindustrialisation. Comparing working-class cultures on a micro scale should enable us to get out of the rut of methodological nationalism and bring to light elements of convergence and divergence in the trajectory of these transforming working-class communities. Our methodological approach aims to take advantage of the ‘virtues of bilateralism’ (E. François) by comparing and crossing the different scales, historiographies, sources and conceptual tools used in one of the two countries (such as betriebszentrierte Gesellschaft, Strukturwandel or Eigen-Sinn in Germany; resilience in France).
This twofold step - adopting a Franco-German approach to comparative micro-history on the one hand, and developing a practice of cross-history on the other - leads us to grasp deindustrialisation by looking at local communities hitherto structured around and by industrial-type enterprises (whether textile, steel, metallurgical, mining, etc.) and now forced to reorganise their political, social and cultural links. The parallel study of a certain number of cases should enable us to provide an attempt at a general explanation for phenomena that are observed in different areas without attenuating the specificities and contrasts.
Thus, despite processes taking place within national frameworks, we formulate the hypothesis that deindustrialisation produces emotional communities at the level of each territory, which can sometimes form a transnational community in the sense that working-class communities are affected over a medium period by a profound upheaval in their identity, opening the way to a range of shared emotions. The aim of this research project is therefore to place the history of emotions at the heart of social and political history, using a comparative approach based on the study of clearly identified workers' collectives in a variety of industrial areas (small and medium-sized industrial towns, coalfields).

ince February 2023, the DesinEE Franco-German research team has held monthly online working meetings. It has also organised three workshops and developed synergies with a German-Luxembourg research project very close to its issues. The project ‘Confronting Decline: Challenges of Deindustrialisation in Western Societies since the 1970s’ (CONDE), coordinated by the Munich Institute for the History of the Present (Institut für Zeitgeschichte München) and nine other institutions, including the University of Luxembourg, is a kind of sister project to our DesinEE project. It looks at the processes of deindustrialisation that have been underway in Western Europe since the 1970s. Using a historical approach, the aim is to examine the consequences of deindustrialisation in a variety of fields, including politics, culture and gender. The aim is to provide a deeper historical understanding of the era that followed the industrial boom, through comparative studies of local examples in several Western European countries, notably Germany, Luxembourg, France and the United Kingdom.
This cooperation has resulted in respective invitations to take part in our scientific events. Thus, two members of the Conde team (P. Ghose and H. Schwinghammer) presented their work to our team. In addition, a joint event is planned for 2025.
In terms of individual surveys, Emmanuel Droit is about to complete his phase of qualitative interviews in France. His research has enabled him to get his hands on health data linked to the health dimension of deindustrialisation, namely occupational diseases (asbestos cancer). Raphaël Pernoud has now completed his research and is preparing to launch his interview campaign. On the German side, Birgit Metzger has made good progress with her oral history work and field data collection. Julia Wambach is currently on parental leave, but takes an active part in all the team's events.

For the academic year 2024-2025, a workshop is planned in Saarbrücken on 6 and 7 February 2025. A meeting with colleagues from the Conde project is also planned in Berlin at the end of June. A theoretical article will be proposed by Fabian Lemmes and Emmanuel Droit during the first half of 2025, and the research team has been selected to lead a panel at the European Social Science History Conference to be held in Leyden from 25 to 29 March 2025.
Frédéric Mougenot's photographic work will begin this autumn on the Lunévillois and Sarrebruckois sites.
Overall, since 2023, the project has made good progress, as shown by the first deliverables (publications by J. Wambach and E. Droit).

The DesinEE research team organised three workshops between February 2023 and May 2024. On two occasions, it was able to organise a conference for the general public at the Strasbourg site, which was well received: the conference given by the German historian Lutz Raphaël at the MISHA in Strasbourg on 2 February 2023, and that given by the French sociologist Henri Eckert in Strasbourg on 16 May 2024.
Another highlight was Emmanuel Droit's ability to forge a fruitful link with the association of asbestos victims (ADEVA 54) in Lunéville. This enabled him not only to conduct interviews with former employees of the Trailor factory, but also and above all to gain access to the association's archives. The result will be a database that will be delivered to the association in summer 2025. For his part, B. Metzger has immersed himself in the fabric of associations and trade unions in Völklingen, enabling him to conduct an effective interview campaign.

Articles and Chapters
1. Julia Wambach, Pride & Prejudice. A history of Gelsenkirchener Barock furniture Special Issue «Changing the Feeling Rules«, Social Science History, à paraître
2. Emmanuel Droit, « La fin d’un monde tel que nous l’avons connu. Lunéville et Zeitz deux villes moyennes désindustralisées », in C. Zimmermann, G. Clemens et K. Thielen (dir.),Industriestädte. Historische Herausforderungen und aktuelle stadtpolitische Strategien, Leyden, Brill Verlag, 2024.
3. Julia Wambach, « Sport als emotionaler Anker regionaler Identität nach der Kohle, der Fall des FC Schalke 04“, in: Florian Bock, Julia Czierpka et Sarah Thieme (éd.), Identitätskonstruktionen im Ruhrgebiet seit den 1970er Jahren, Göttingen, Vandenhoeck&Ruprecht ,2024.
4. Julia Wambach, Deindustrialization, Leisure & Feeling Communities, in: Jackie Clarke, Tim Strangleman, Steven High, Sherry Linkon, Stefan Berger und David Nettleingham (dir.), Routledge Handbook of Deindustrialization Studies, Londres, Routldge, 2024.
5. Julia Wambach, Key-Note Forum Industriekultur, Berlin 14.11.2024. Emotionen und Industriekultur

Directed by Stefan Berger, Emmanuel Droit et Fabian Lemmes, DesinEE defines itself as a research program dedicated to a comparative and transnational history of Deindustrialization as socio-political and emotional experiences of the transformation of the working-class culture from the early 1960s to the present time.
The subtitle of our project refers in an explicit way to the pioneer study of E.P. Thompson about the sociability of the English workers. In a French-German perspective, we want to focus on the contemporary impact of the deindustrialization on workers, on the transformation of workers communities that we also understand as emotional communities.
Three main questions will constitute the foundation of our project:
1. How does deindustrialisation reconfigure the experiences of impacted workers and what kind of emotions are generated by this socio-economic process?
2. How do these experiences and emotions product effects on the political identity in terms of habitus, ideological consciousness and practices?
3. How does deindustrialisation as a lived experience create new forms and dynamics of social life emerging from a former social order?
In order to grasp the complexity of this process at the grass roots, different socio-economic and industrial regions have been selected for the field research carried out by the subproject. Each researcher defined a field of work, either in a French-German perspective or in a transregional (Sarre-Lor-Lux). Small and medium-sized industrial cities in Alsace, Lorraine Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt will serve as case studies beside the analysis of the big traditional industrial spaces in the northern part of France, the Ruhr.
This project is based on a rich variety of sources. We will produce a shared Oral History Program with overview and specific individual and collective interviews of former workers for each case study We want to gather written and video materials from the companies, the Trade Unions, the local newspaper
In this context of depoliticisation and the rise of right extremist movements in territories impacted by the deindustrialisation, our project has also a political significance and a very strong civic dimension. Far away from a negative discours, we aim at focusing on the complexity regarding both the reconfiguration of social and political relations and the transformation of cultural identities in this socalled post-industrial regions