This talk will discuss the strategies and narratives of residential persistence offered by long-term residents in Iron County, Wisconsin—a remote community near Lake Superior that has experienced persistent economic problems since its eponymous mines shuttered eighty years ago. I first typologize how long-term residents of a rural mining community remained residentially persistent in the wake of company closure in the 1960s. I find that residents who remained in place consistently traded higher income for locational preference. Reflecting on themes of homeownership, place attachment, and social networks, interviewees suggested they made sense of their residential persistence in an inhospitable economic landscape in increasingly symbolic terms that entangled their identities with landscape and community. I conclude the talk by showing how the very process of solving pragmatic, long-term issues accompanying deindustrialization cultivated lasting, ideological priorities that frame how long-term residents interpret economic development options in their home communities today.
Amanda McMillan Lequieu is an Assistant Professor in Sociology and Faculty Affiliate in the Center for Science, Technology, and Society at Drexel University. Her research focuses on culture, social change, and equity in transforming economic and environmental systems. Her multimethod research employs interviews, focus groups, commodity chain analysis, and document analysis. She earned her Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Wisconsin- Madison in 2019. Her book, Who we are is where we are: Making home in the American Rust Belt, will be published with Columbia University Press in 2024. More about the speaker at www.amandamcmillanlequieu.com