Documenting deindustrialisation: Slow memory and contrasting narratives in Luxembourg and Belgium

This article used documentary analysis to examine how deindustrialisation is remembered differently in Luxembourg and Belgium, focusing on D’Lëtzebuerger Stolkris (2011) and Des larmes d’acier (2017). These films produce contrasting memory narratives, shaped by their countries’ fundamentally different economic trajectories. By combining slow memory theory with the concept of deindustrialisation’s ‘half-life’, the analysis reveals how present circumstances can shape the interpretation of the past. While Luxembourg’s state- and corporate-produced documentary adopts a future-oriented perspective, celebrating the successful transition from steel to finance, Athus’s worker-led narrative maintains a past-oriented focus on loss and continuing economic dependence. The production contexts, determined by economic success or failure decades after factory closures, fundamentally determine what actors narrate deindustrialisation. The findings challenge declinist interpretations by demonstrating how similar industrial transformations can generate different memory landscapes, depending on subsequent economic outcomes and the voices that narrate them.