How Foreigners Destroyed Our Factory. Repressed Memories of a Czech Flagship Sugarplant
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11230%2F24%3A10486037" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11230/24:10486037 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="https://www.press.purdue.edu/9781612499703/" target="_blank" >https://www.press.purdue.edu/9781612499703/</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
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Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
How Foreigners Destroyed Our Factory. Repressed Memories of a Czech Flagship Sugarplant
Original language description
The chapter by Ondřej Klípa explores the intersection of deindustrialization, transnational capital, and nationalist populism in post-socialist Czechia. Using the case of the Hrochův Týnec sugar plant, the chapter examines how the plant's closure and the subsequent demolition in 2008 contributed to xenophobic and anti-European Union sentiments among its former workers and the local community. Klípa draws on archival materials, media reports, government documents, and interviews with former employees to investigate how the disintegration of professional identities and the exclusion of the workers' collective memory from the national historical narrative contributed to a rise in nationalism. The plant, once a symbol of socialist internationalism and Czech-Polish cooperation, became a site of resentment towards "foreigners" and EU policies after it was bought by the French-British company Eastern Sugar. Following the Czech Republic's entry into the EU in 2004, Eastern Sugar closed its Czech plants, while maintaining operations in France and the UK, sparking feelings of betrayal and injustice among the workers.The chapter highlights how these workers, despite receiving severance pay and financial compensation, viewed the closure as an economic and cultural loss, as the factory had been central to the town's social and professional life. Klípa contrasts this case with similar trends in post-socialist Hungary and East Germany, focusing on how noneconomic factors, such as the loss of communal identity and local memory, fostered nationalist-populist sentiments in the Czech context. Ultimately, the chapter illustrates how the erasure of local history and the exclusion of workers' voices from public discourse fueled discontent, challenging simplistic views of deindustrialization and political radicalism.
Czech name
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Czech description
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Classification
Type
C - Chapter in a specialist book
CEP classification
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OECD FORD branch
60101 - History (history of science and technology to be 6.3, history of specific sciences to be under the respective headings)
Result continuities
Project
<a href="/en/project/GA19-12941S" target="_blank" >GA19-12941S: Made by Polish Comrades. The Stories of Czech Industrial Objects and Polish Guest Workers in Interrelated Perspective</a><br>
Continuities
P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)
Others
Publication year
2024
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Book/collection name
Everyday Postsocialism in Eastern Europe: History Doesn't Travel in One Direction
ISBN
978-1-61249-969-7
Number of pages of the result
18
Pages from-to
41-58
Number of pages of the book
283
Publisher name
Purdue University Press
Place of publication
West Lafayette, Indiana
UT code for WoS chapter
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