Abstract
This article scrutinizes the trajectories of African men whose cross-border movements intersect two types of mobility routes: mining and migration routes. Drawing on field research in Mali and Guinea, as well as phone interviews with male miners/migrants in North Africa and Europe, this article provides a case to empirically question some of the premises in the approach to migration decision-making by giving a voice to African men moving across borders who do not necessarily identify as (prospective) ‘migrants.’ Building upon International Organization for Migration data and secondary sources, this article starts by sketching where migration and mining routes overlap. It then examines, in detail, the mobility trajectories of men who were sometimes considered migrants and other times miners in order to identify how these different routes relate to one another. While overseas migration is certainly not a common project for itinerant miners, the gold mines constitute a transnational space that fosters the expansion of movements across the continent, including outside the field of mining. Rather than encouraging overseas migration, gold mines appear to be more of a safety net, not only for seasonal farmers or young people in search of money and adventure, but also, increasingly, for people who are confronted with Europe’s intra-African deportation regime.
Highlights
West Africa is considered to have the most mobile population in the world, with intra-regional mobility accounting for 70% of all cross-border movements according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM)
I draw on field research conducted in 2020 in Mali and Guinea, telephone interviews with male miners/migrants in North Africa and Europe, as well as on data from a series of surveys on migration to artisanal mining sites in West Africa conducted by IOM as part of the broader programme “Protection and Assistance to Vulnerable Migrants in West and Central Africa.”
This article began with the observation that mining and migration routes are increasingly overlapping in Africa, raising the question of whether mining has become a common step towards migration out of the continent
Summary
West Africa is considered to have the most mobile population in the world, with intra-regional mobility accounting for 70% of all cross-border movements according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Taking the lens of these ‘mobility trajectories’ (Schapendonk, van Liempt, Schwarz, & Steel, 2018), the article argues that these African men, who, paraphrasing Hui (2016), are ‘sometimes migrants’ and ‘sometimes miners,’ primarily seek to increase their mobility, which in turn, is increasingly hampered by the expansion of European migration control and repressive policies on the continent In making this argument, I draw on field research conducted in 2020 in Mali and Guinea, telephone interviews with male miners/migrants in North Africa and Europe, as well as on data from a series of surveys on migration to artisanal mining sites in West Africa conducted by IOM as part of the broader programme “Protection and Assistance to Vulnerable Migrants in West and Central Africa.”. I use in-depth interviews with seven miners/migrants to propose two main relationships between mining and migration routes, which I call ‘mobility expansion’ and ‘refuge relationship.’
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