Summary

This panel, comprising members of the interdisciplinary team of the ERC ArchLabour project, adopts the concept of archival pace as a guiding lens for understanding historical archives inherited from the Portuguese colonial administration in Africa. By combining critical analysis of these archives with interdisciplinary approaches, from archival description practices to oral histories, the panel argues that grasping labour in public works requires a dual movement: recognising the limits imposed by colonial and postcolonial bureaucracies and archives and finding ways to make visible practices and experiences they silenced, particularly those of workers.

First, Milheiro and Vita explore how waged workers are represented in the records, thereby discussing simultaneously the presence and agency of women in colonial public works (PW), a presence often obscured by interpretative frameworks embedded in records and archival description practices. Serrazina examines the Diamang archive, using the company’s extractive activities in Angola as evidence of socio-spatial control and labour discipline, and as a documentary technology that simultaneously produced categories, silenced resistance, shaping both landscapes and labour.

Henrique, drawing on her background working at the Portuguese Overseas Historical Archive, elaborates on how different rhythms and practices in PW and labour records affect access to information, interrogating how archival authority is constructed. Lopes and Pires address how archival description, or its absence, in the archives of Cabo Verde shapes access to information and memory on PW, proposing collaborative indexing and metadata strategies that render overlooked workers and dynamics visible.

Finally, Rodrigues analyses housing and public works records, tracing bureaucratic and technical rhythms shaped by control and standardisation, and advancing slow-archive approaches grounded in oral histories to reinforce memory and inform architectural practice. Together, the panel conceptualises the archive as a contested field where interdisciplinary collaboration can address archival asymmetries and foreground overlooked dimensions of construction and labour.