Superfluous Jobs in Extractive Industries: The Usefulness/Uselessness of Job Creation after Dispossession

Abstract

Job creation has become central to the global development agenda. Extractive industries in particular highlight employment opportunities for the host communities in which they operate through direct, indirect and induced jobs. Exploring literature on surplus populations/dispossession and distributive politics/Corporate Social Responsibility and using evidence from the Democratic Republic of Congo, we scrutinize the idea of job creation in the extractive industries as a development strategy. We argue that (1) superfluous jobs are being created to keep people alive yet silent in the wake of dispossession; and that (2) while they may help certain people to ‘stay alive’, these jobs also produce new inequalities and further marginalization.