Migration, authority and the gendered organization of labour in artisanal gold mining in Sierra Leone (and Mozambique)

Abstract

AbstractRecent studies of migration into artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) have explored the motivations, strategic agency and professional trajectories of women and men miners who move to mine. In this article, I seek to shift the focus from the ‘push/pull’ factors in migration to consider the varied entanglements of mobility with authority and power relations pervasive through rural institutions. The importance – or lack of importance – of being a ‘migrant’ in these mining sites rests largely on the particular gendered cultural politics shaping livelihoods in the area. Drawing principally on ethnographic research in Tonkolili District, Sierra Leone, this article examines how migrant status for men and women working in the gold sites who came from other parts of the country is more marked than for Zimbabwean migrants working in artisanal gold mines in Manica, Mozambique. I argue that migrant status is marked by various authority and power relations in artisanal gold-mining sites when those controlling access to mining livelihoods, including access to residency in the mining communities, are able to emphasize contingent forms of belonging by migrants compared with those defined as ‘locals’. Critical to these differential forms of valuation is the particular organization of labour.