Working-Class Families Respond to Industrial Decline: Migration from the Pennsylvania Anthracite Region since 1920

Abstract

The decline of coalmining has been a worldwide phenomenon in recent years. In Great Britain, both Labour and Conservative governments have steadily closed down state-owned mines, provoking economic devolution in parts of the north of England and South Wales. European Community nations have collaborated to recovert declining European coal basins in the decades since the 1970s. In the Soviet Union coalminers played a crucial role in galvanzing support behind Mikhail Gorbachev.Nevertheless, despite miners' political importance and union strength, they have been unable to arrest the industrial decline of the Donbass region of the Ukraine.1 A long-term process of substitution among fossil fuels has had a major impact on developed economies over the course of the twentiethcentury. Economic and population shifts have been central features of this broader process. By focusing on the internal migration that accompanied the decline of anthracite coalmining in northeastern Pennsylvania, this article examines an American manifestation of this phenomenon of economicand social transformation. It argues for the importance of viewing working people as conscious actors in this larger process. While working people are certainly affected by economic forces beyond their control, they actively make choices that shape both their own lives and the broader process of economic transformation.2 Examination of the experiences of members of mining families in the anthracite region of northeastern Pennsylvania in the years since World War Two demonstrates the ways in which strong kinship, family, and ethnic networks have led residents in mining communities to resist an entirely economic calculus in responding to the region's economic decline.