From the Centrality of the Working Class to its Demise: The Case of Bagnoli, Naples*

In the 1970s Bagnoli, located to the west of the city of Naples, was a working-class neighbourhood and a left-wing stronghold; above all, it was a symbol of proletarian culture and values in a city largely dominated by a rapacious middle class and an urban underclass made up of unemployed, petty criminals, home workers, prostitutes and pimps, as well as a great variety of people scraping a living mainly through expediency Bagnoli was by no means the only working-class suburb of Naples, but for many years it took on an almost mythical status thanks to the presence of one giant state-owned steel plant, Italsider, which in the 1970s employed thousands of workers, dominating (and polluting) the coastal landscape. ¹