Abstract
ABSTRACTThe study of the impacts of new mining projects in Africa is generally set in a normative debate about their possible contribution to development, which leads to a representation of African societies as divided between beneficiaries and victims of foreign investments. Based on research in the Congolese copperbelt, this article aims to examine in more detail the inequalities generated by the recent mining boom by taking the processes of labour market segmentation as a starting point. It shows that the labour market in the mining sector has progressively been organized along three intersecting lines that divide it: the first is between employment in industrial and artisanal mining companies, the second is between jobs for mining or subcontracting companies and the third is between jobs for expatriates, Congolese skilled workers and local unskilled workers. Far from simply reflecting existing social inequalities, the labour market has been actively involved in their creation, and its control has caused growing tensions in the Congolese copperbelt region. Although largely neglected in the literature on extractive industries, processes of labour market segmentation are key to making sense of the impacts of mining investments on the shape of societies in the global South.
Highlights
During the last two decades, African countries endowed with mineral resources have witnessed an unprecedented rise in foreign direct investments in the mining sector, primarily from Europe and North America and, for a rapidly growing share, from China
The conclusion of most of these studies is that mining reforms have only benefited the few, leaving the local population behind: the rise of foreign investments in the industrial mining sector has led to growing inequalities between a minority of ‘winners’, and a majority of ‘losers’
For many years the mining sector in the Congolese copperbelt region was dominated by the state-owned companies Union Miniere du Haut-Katanga (UMHK), from 1906 to 1967, and Generale des Carrieres et des Mines (Gecamines), from 1967 to 2003
Summary
During the last two decades, African countries endowed with mineral resources have witnessed an unprecedented rise in foreign direct investments in the mining sector, primarily from Europe and North America and, for a rapidly growing share, from China. The conclusion of most of these studies is that mining reforms have only benefited the few, leaving the local population behind: the rise of foreign investments in the industrial mining sector has led to growing inequalities between a minority of ‘winners’ (for example company shareholders, political authorities, local elites, etc.), and a majority of ‘losers’ (including artisanal miners and local communities and individuals) In this respect, the literature echoes those scholars who see behind neoliberal reforms a project of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (Harvey, 2003: 137–82) which generates a growing ‘relative surplus population’ — a population deprived of its means of subsistence and, at the same time, of no use to capital (Li, 2009, 2011, 2017; Sassen, 2010).
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