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Migration, authority and the gendered organization of labour in artisanal gold mining in Sierra Leone (and Mozambique)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 June 2022

Blair Rutherford
Blair Rutherford*
Affiliation:
Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
*
Email: Blair.Rutherford@carleton.ca
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Abstract

Recent studies of migration into artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) have explored the motivations, strategic agency and professional trajectories of women and men miners who move to mine. In this article, I seek to shift the focus from the ‘push/pull’ factors in migration to consider the varied entanglements of mobility with authority and power relations pervasive through rural institutions. The importance – or lack of importance – of being a ‘migrant’ in these mining sites rests largely on the particular gendered cultural politics shaping livelihoods in the area. Drawing principally on ethnographic research in Tonkolili District, Sierra Leone, this article examines how migrant status for men and women working in the gold sites who came from other parts of the country is more marked than for Zimbabwean migrants working in artisanal gold mines in Manica, Mozambique. I argue that migrant status is marked by various authority and power relations in artisanal gold-mining sites when those controlling access to mining livelihoods, including access to residency in the mining communities, are able to emphasize contingent forms of belonging by migrants compared with those defined as ‘locals’. Critical to these differential forms of valuation is the particular organization of labour.

Résumé

Résumé

Des études de migration récentes sur l’exploitation minière artisanale et à petite échelle ont exploré les motivations, l’agentivité stratégique et les trajectoires professionnelles de mineurs hommes et femmes qui se déplacent pour miner. Dans cet article, l’auteur cherche à déplacer le centre d’intérêt que représentent les facteurs d’attraction et de répulsion dans la migration vers les imbrications variées de la mobilité et des relations d’autorité et de pouvoir omniprésentes dans les institutions rurales. L’importance, ou le manque d’importance, d’être un « migrant » dans ces sites miniers repose surtout sur la politique culturelle genrée particulière qui façonne les existences dans la région. S’appuyant principalement sur des études ethnographiques menées dans le district de Tonkolili dans la Sierra Leone, cet article examine en quoi le statut de migrant pour les hommes et les femmes travaillant dans les mines d’or et venus d’autres régions du pays est plus marqué que pour les migrants zimbabwéens travaillant dans des mines d’or artisanales à Manica, au Mozambique. L’auteur soutient que le statut de migrant est marqué par diverses relations d’autorité et de pouvoir dans les mines d’or artisanales lorsque ceux qui contrôlent l’accès aux moyens de subsistance miniers, y compris l’accès à la résidence dans les communautés minières, sont capables de souligner des formes d’appartenance circonstancielles de migrants par rapport à ceux que l’on définit comme « locaux ». L’organisation particulière du travail est un élément critique de ces formes différentielles d’appréciation.

Type
Artisanal mining, gender and migration
Information
Africa , Volume 92 , Issue 3 , May 2022 , pp. 354 - 372
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press

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