Spaces of extraction and suffering: Neoliberal enclave and dispossession in Tete, Mozambique

Abstract

In recent years, following the discovery of huge coal reserves in the province of Tete, Mozambique, there has been an increasing rush of global capital into the province. This interest in the mining industry has resulted in the creation of enclaves and spaces of enclosure that entrench the existing class differences further by integrating small groups into global circuits of production whilst subjecting others to dispossession. These dynamics of contemporary capitalist expansion across Sub-Saharan Africa have been analysed in the literature on neoliberal enclaves as exclusionary spaces of extraction and capital accumulation.This paper contributes to this scholarship. It focuses on the resettlement site of Cateme that was built to accommodate the populations dispossessed by the neoliberal mining enclave in Tete, and highlights how the space of Cateme constituted through the dispossession from this enclave is characterised by extreme forms of socio-economic marginalisation. Through this discussion, the paper demonstrates how neoliberal enclaves, rather than just being exclusionary spaces of extraction as observed in the literature, ought to be analysed as interacting in complex ways with broader socio-economic landscapes of host countries, through which they create spaces of suffering and entrench the existing class differences beyond their own spaces of extraction and accumulation.