The image in question: https://i.imgur.com/2PpT7KY.jpg
I've also read that they're Belgian coal miners from the 1900's, though I can't track down the original source of the photo. Can anyone confirm this or provide more information? Thank you!
TinEye suggests that this image has been circulating widely online for almost a decade now. The earliest recorded use was on a Spanish site called malgusto.com, which incorporates a popular section on "Historical curiosities", where the photo was posted on 27 September 2012. The original caption read: "Photograph taken at a mine in Belgium about 1900. I don't even want to imagine how hard it must be to live like this."
Since then the same image has been given a wide variety of attributions. It has been claimed it shows a mine in Mingo County, WV, in the Appalachian coalfields, for example – but this suggestion has been debunked in the only investigation of the image I've been able to uncover.
You are right to say that many of the versions of the image posted identify the people in the picture as Italian miners – quite frequently the more specific attribution is that they are former sulphur miners from Sicily who have emigrated in search of work appears. But as no source is ever given for this identification in any of the pages that I've visited, the suggestion may well be guesswork. It is by no means implausible – the Belgian mining industry did make extensive use of imported labour from the latter half of the nineteenth century onwards, the result of a major industrial revolution taking place in a relatively small country. But until the original of the image can be sourced, it would be unwise to assume it even comes from Belgium.
With regard to the image's current use as a piece of "evidence" supporting posts commenting on Irish "slavery" (in reality, indentured labour) – we've covered this very controversial topic quite a few times in the past, and you might like to check out those earlier threads as well:
Were the Irish ever brought to America as slaves?, with u/sowser
How accurate is the proclamation that Irish slavery in America was as prolific as African slavery?, with u/agentdcf
Irish slave trade, with u/SuperPlaner
Source
Frank Caestecker, Alien Policy in Belgium, 1840-1940: The Creation of Guest Workers, Refugees and Illegal Aliens (2000)
