Mining habitat, house and home during an East African gold boom: economic and emotional dimensions

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article interrogates migrants’ economic and emotionally entwined decision-making regarding migration and settlement in unfolding stages of a gold mining boom. Three Tanzanian gold mining settlements representing temporal, spatial and scalar differences along the gold mining trajectory are contrasted: an artisanal rush site, a mature artisanal mining settlement and Geita town, site of a large industrial gold mine. Our data derives from in-depth interviews with miners, traders, service providers and farmers supplemented by a household survey. Interviewees’ verbatim narratives describing their work and family life are laced with feelings of both anticipation and apprehension. Strategic calculations and contingency thinking combine with emotional anxiety as they pursue efforts to ‘get ahead’ during the mining boom. Amidst the uncertainty of stressful work lives, and obstacles to secure housing and residence in infrastructurally deficient, unsafe and polluted mining environments, a ‘deferred sense of home’ surfaces in many mining settlement residents’ narratives. Seeking a ‘comfortable and secure home eventually’ is a coping mechanism for bridging the gap between initial high expectations and their current material reality.