Identidad y conciencia de un cambio de forma de vida. Del trabajo en la minas a la jubilación en Torrevieja

Abstract

This doctoral thesis aims to anthropologically analyze the influence of the current globalized contexts, on concrete and local situations, specifically on the construction of the identity and awareness of Asturian and Leonese miners who, upon reaching retirement, establish their residence in the Alicante locality of Torrevieja. It is based on a study carried out in the first sixteen years of the 21st century in the coastal town of Torrevieja, but because bibliographical documentation and informants' discourses continually refer to work contexts and the history of mining, a parallel and complementary investigation is developed in the mining basins of the north of Spain, especially in the one of Sabero in León. Conducting fieldwork in both geographic contexts, the techniques of participant observation, semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, life histories and discussion groups are applied, with the use of which the ethnography that underlies the research has been developed. By creating an atmosphere of trust and empathy with informants, maintaining ethical values of honesty and respect for themselves and their decisions, the vital experience of these people is analyzed from the sub-system approach of the culture elaborated by White (1953) and broadened in Munárriz (2011), and explains how this social group is organized to cover their needs through the techno-economic, institutional, ecological, and ideal sub-systems. The past of these miners in the Asturian and Leonese basins, in touch with a profession that develops in a peculiar context and environment, whose repercussions expand and influence all aspects of life: socialization, economy, health, leisure, family relationships, social organization, beliefs, values, etc., identifies the members of this collective as a peer group, creating a strong link between them and fixing the referents that make up the miners' conscience and identity. We emphasize the great influence of this work activity and its cultural manifestations on the construction of identity; how has a dissolution of personal identity in the peer group developed, with affiliations and affinities that establish a strong collective identity that expands from the working context from the inside of the mine to the outside, unfolding across the mining towns to be maintained even in territories far from the mining basins. These collective movements of the inhabitants of the mining basins to the town of Torrevieja show the presence of cultural expressions far from the original context, and the idea that the cultural system is not confined to a specific geographic environment but can rather move with people to other places, especially if they move in groups. This confirms that it is not possible to reduce neither people nor their cultural manifestations to a territory and, thus, question the false identification between the local base and the culture. The research verifies and broadens the starting hypothesis: retired miners living in Torrevieja retain numerous identity and awareness traits generated in the socio-labor context of mining basins, due, in part, to the fact that contact with this activity generates beliefs and peculiar values that persist in other geographical contexts, and also because the Asturian and Leonese miners reproduce their cultural manifestations in the town of Torrevieja, adapting to local influences and the current globalizing trend.