Mining towns, enclaves and spaces: A genealogy of worker camps in the Congolese copperbelt

Benjamin Rubbers

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.10.005

Abstract

At the dawn of the recent mining boom, James Ferguson has forcefully argued that new investors in Africa develop a new capital-intensive mode of production within securitized enclaves, breaking with the tradition of providing housing and social infrastructure to workers characteristic of large corporations in the 20th century. This article aims to provide a more detailed analysis of changes in mining companies' spatial government practices by retracing the genealogy of workers' camps in the Congolese copperbelt from the early 20th century to the present day. Based on archival and ethnographic research, the article draws attention to transformations in the camps' architecture and the political rationalities underlying them. What this historical exploration shows is less the emergence of a new spatial government reflecting the globalization of neoliberal capitalism than a series of gradual changes over a century that result from the adaptation of mining companies to local constraints and correspond to the development, or re-organization, of various power strategies.

Highlights

At first glance, the tradition of mining companies providing housing to employees appears to be a vestige of the 20th century
At the dawn of the recent mining boom, James Ferguson has forcefully argued that new investors in Africa develop a new capital-intensive mode of production within securitized enclaves, breaking with the tradition of providing housing and social infrastructure to workers characteristic of large corporations in the 20th century
Regarding the investors who participated in the mining boom in the 2000s, Ferguson (2005, 2006: chap. 8) has argued that they develop a new capital-intensive mode of production in enclaves exonerating them from the obligation to provide housing and social services to employees

Summary

Introduction

The tradition of mining companies providing housing to employees appears to be a vestige of the 20th century. In Southern and Central Africa, where mining towns emerged later, they continued to have a life of their own until the 1980s (Crush, 1993; Demissie, 1998; Home, 2000; MacMillan, 2012; Mususa, 2012) It was not until the economic decline and political change of the last two decades of the century that companies were pushed to progressively abandon these housing estates. The town is not strictly speaking within an enclave: it is open to newcomers and visitors This case, I think, calls into question the narrative of the end of mining towns in the 21st century.

Rubbers

From mining towns to extractive enclaves?

Conclusion