From farms to foundries : racism, class and resistance in the life-stories of Yemeni former-steelworkers in Sheffield

From Farms to Foundries... explores the intersections o f the themes of racism, class
and resistance in the life-stories o f Yemeni former-steelworkers in Sheffield. These
main biographical themes are explored within the broader context o f post-war
British history. The research is based upon life-story interviews with twenty-five
Yemeni former-steelworkers who remained in Sheffield after the onset of the recession
in the late 1970s. The study begins to break with two o f the key conventions of literary
realism which prevail in much of the literature; namely the reliance on description and
the dominance of the singular voice of the ethnographer. The study does not, in the vein
of much of the ‘race’ and ethnic relations literature, attempt to describe ‘them’ to ‘us.’
The life-story interviews with the elderly men have been accurately transcribed and
reproduced in the thesis in order that they can represent their experiences in the former
steelworkers’ own unique industrial demotic. The study argues that in spite o f the
complementary process of production in the steel industry where Yemenis usually
worked in tandem with white workers, a racialised division of labour soon emerged
between a permanent Yemeni lower class, who were consistently denied any promotion,
and a relatively mobile white class, with opportunities to flee the least desirable jobs.
The thesis argues that the life-stories of the former-steelworkers have consistently
emphasised the interviewees’ confinement to the lowliest positions in the steel industry
and in the housing market, and demonstrate the prevalence of racism in their lives,
which was both overt and institutional, embedded in the structures in which they
worked and lived. The migrants’ stories have also revealed the pervasiveness of the
often informal acts of resistance against the various exclusionary practices that they
faced throughout their lives in Sheffield.