UNRULY WORKERS AND LABORLESS LANDSCAPES: The role of marginal places and redundant people in energy transitions

This chapter focuses on the role of labor in the upcoming and ongoing low-carbon energy transition. After a first section discussing the connection between labor and energy transitions at a theoretical historical level, the chapter moves to the particular case study of Southern Catalonia. My description, which is based on long-term historical ethnographic research, explores the arrival to this peripheralized, poor rural region of nuclear and wind energy, analyzing their deep yet contrasting effects upon the livelihood practices and political strategies of the inhabitants of Southern Catalonia. This divergence, I argue, is largely explained by the different organizational characteristics and labor requirements of these two forms of electricity generation: Whereas the availability of cheap labor was a key factor motivating the location of nuclear plants in the area, wind developers primarily seek spaces that can be cheapened, that is to say, treated as lacking in economic value and moral worth. To close the chapter, I connect empirical material and theoretical insights and suggest some general conclusions about the role of labor and peripheral regions in the ongoing green transition.