This article analyses the ways in which labour and social movement activists accounts for the mobilisations experienced in the Volta Redonda city, during the decades 1980 and 1990. We verify the city's social representation presented in these accounts. Situated in the Southern region of the Rio de Janeiro State, this internationally known steel city has got a enduring history of labour organisation and collective action. Focusing in that case one can deal with the memory, space and social identities embeddedness. Guided by labour anthropology issues, the empirical data resulted from field observation and oral history methodology.
city; labour; memory; militancy