Mining, Mobility, and Social Change in the Global South (original) (raw)
Related papers
An Introduction to Mining, Mobility, and Social Change
Mining, Mobility, and Social Change in the Global South: Regional Perspective, 2023
This volume focuses on how, why, under what conditions, and with what effects people move across space in relation to mining, asking how a focus on spatial mobility can aid scholars and policymakers in understanding the complex relation between mining and social change. This collection centers the concept of mobility to address the diversity of mining-related population movements as well as the agency of people engaged in these movements. This volume opens by introducing both the historical context and conceptual tools for analyzing the mining-mobility nexus, followed by case study chapters focusing on three regions with significant histories of mineral extraction and where mining currently plays an important role in socioeconomic life: the Andes, Central and West Africa, and Melanesia. Written by authors with expertise in diverse fields, including anthropology, development studies, geography, and history, case study chapters address areas of both large-and smallscale mining. They explore the historical-geographical factors shaping mining-related mobilities, the meanings people attach to these movements, and the relations between people's mobility practices and the flows of other things put in motion by mining, including capital, ideas, technologies, and toxic contamination. The result is an important volume that provides fresh insights into the social geographies and spatial politics of extraction. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of mining and the extractive industries, spatial politics and geography, mobility and migration, development, and the social and environmental dimensions of natural resources more generally.
Large‐scale mining, spatial mobility, place‐making and development in the Peruvian Andes
This paper focuses on population mobility dynamics in and around mining areas in the Peruvian Andes. We use a case study of Rio Tinto's La Granja exploration project in Cajamarca Region to highlight the complexity and fluidity of the population movements around that project and the significant level of agency exercised by local people, as well as how people have been impacted by corporate decisions. We argue that, far from being a relatively static system of social and production relationships, the Andes has long been a place of movement, where individuals and families have used a broad range of mobility strategies to improve their economic well‐being and mitigate the impact of external shocks. In the case of La Granja, the use of such strategies has helped local people to cope with variations in the level of project activity, maintain a connection with the area (even while living outside of it), and to access project‐related benefits such as jobs and compensation payments. At some points in the history of the project, corporate decisions and actions have had a clearly deleterious impact on the local community. However, in more recent times the project also revitalised La Granja as a place, at least for a time, and created new opportunities for individuals and families. In the final section of the paper, we address some broader questions about the role that spatial mobility and family networks can play in diffusing the impacts and benefits of mining projects.
The country and the city: Mobility dynamics in mining regions
A B S T R A C T Mining projects contribute to and are impacted by changing patterns of spatial mobility amongst local – – populations. This paper explores these processes through a case study of the La Granja copper mining project in the Cajamarca region of Peru. Historically, when job opportunities declined many members of extended families moved to coastal cities or more productive lowland farming areas, with some, mainly older, members remaining to secure family land and properties. Conversely, there was an in ux back to La Granja when opportunities fl improved. These two-way migratory patterns have created a uid and dense network connecting individuals and fl families across a broader region, helping them to leverage economic bene ts and retain control over strategic fi decisions. The paper relates these ndings to wider debates about the nature of migratory processes in Peru and fi argues for greater attention to be paid to mobility dynamics when analyzing the social impacts of mining projects.
Mobilities, 2017
Internal labour migration from rural areas to urban centres has been and remains one of the dominant patterns of migration in South Africa. Based on data from ethnographic field research, this paper explores the mobility patterns and translocal relations of miners in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. By considering the tension between mobility and locality in a historical and political perspective, the concept of translocality helps to explain why miners try to expand their action space and, at the same time, why they are embedded in certain places. Thus, a translocal perspective enhances the interpretation of the spatio-temporal transformations in South Africa’s mining communities and beyond, as it sheds light on the agency of mine workers, superseding merely structuralist explanations.
THE TRANSLOCAL VILLAGERS. MINING, MOBILITY AND STRATIFICATION IN POST-APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICA
Internal labour migration from rural areas to urban centres has been and remains one of the dominant patterns of migration in South Africa. Based on data from ethnographic field research, this paper explores the mobility patterns and translocal relations of miners in the Northern Cape province of South Africa. By considering the tension between mobility and locality in a historical and political perspective, the concept of translocality helps to explain why miners try to expand their action space and, at the same time, why they are embedded in certain places. Thus, a translocal perspective enhances the interpretation of the spatio-temporal transformations in South Africa’s mining communities and beyond, as it sheds light on the agency of mine workers, superseding merely structuralist explanations.
Extractive Economy and Mobilities. The Case of Large Copper Mining in the Antofagasta Region
Migration in South America, 2022
We are interested in identifying the different types of mobilities that take place, and how they are related to the development of mining in northern Chile, specifically in the Antofagasta region, since it is an economic activity that has been historically linked to the arrival of workers from different places and countries. Based on the emblematic case of Antofagasta, we will show that the city incorporates national and international migrants in a differentiated and unequal way, thus marking the possibilities of work and the limits that their labor and migratory trajectories face. In methodological terms, this analysis is based on previous and more recent research carried out in Antofagasta. The first one was commissioned in 2016 by the Regional Government of Antofagasta in order to prepare a diagnosis of the international migratory situation. Two other ongoing projects also considered in this study started in 2019 and 2020.
Rushing for Gold: Mobility and Small-scale Mining in East Africa
Development and Change 40(2), 249-79, 2009
African rural dwellers have faced depressed economic prospects for several decades. Now, in a number of mineral-rich countries, multiple discoveries of gold and precious stones have attracted large numbers of prospective small-scale miners. While their ‘rush’ to, and activities within, mining sites are increasingly being noted, there is little analysis of miners’ mobility patterns and material outcomes. In this article, on the basis of a sample survey and interviews at two gold-mining sites in Tanzania, we probe when and why miners leave one site in favour of another. Our findings indicate that movement is often ‘rushed’ but rarely rash. Whereas movement to the first site may be an adventure, movement to subsequent sites is calculated with knowledge of the many risks entailed. Miners spend considerable time at each site before migrating onwards. Those with the highest site mobility tend to be more affluent than the others, suggesting that movement can be rewarding for those willing to ‘try their luck’ with the hard work and social networking demands of mining another site.