Following the steel crisis of the 1970s, many Swedish industrial communities underwent major transformations in the 1980s and 1990s. The restructuring of the steel industry led to significant deindustrialisation in the industrial communities of central Sweden. For communities heavily dependent on large industrial enterprises, deindustrialisation posed fundamental economic and social challenges for local communities and their residents. These challenges also led to a redefinition of the towns identities as iron and steel towns, with stable, dominant companies and secure, lifelong jobs for generations of men. In these redefinitions, the old masculinities were less viable.The emerging local labour and economic policies of the 1980s and 1990s became crucial to the survival of the community. Although this area of intervention became the concern of all affected municipalities, the strategies and directions of action took different paths. This presentation will explore how some mill towns (bruksorter) in the formerly thriving industrial belt of Bergslagen have dealt with the sudden and challenging closures or downsizing of factories, with impoverishment, unemployment and out-migration as scenarios to be avoided or at least managed.