Dump Truck Destiny: Alberta Oil, “East Coast” Workers, and Attachment to Extraction

Abstract

AbstractThis paper considers how white, rural, working‐class men come to be seen, by employers and themselves, as a “natural fit” for mobile work in resource extraction. Examining mobility between eastern Canada and the Alberta petroleum industry, I trace longstanding racial, geographical, and gendered explanations of these workers as dependent and averse to work. I draw on interviews with employers, employment counsellors, and mobile workers, and media representations to consider how these narratives function to shape and constrain workers’ political imaginaries and understandings of themselves. The pervasive story of these workers as undeserving has enabled the emergence of a contrasting working subject: the hard‐working, flexible “east coast” worker who is a natural fit for mobile work in resource extraction. I argue that, despite the challenges of mobile resource work, the interplay of stories that pathologise and celebrate these workers has encouraged their attachment to resource extraction as the pathway to a better life.