This volume focuses on how, why, under what conditions, and with what effects people move across space in relation to mining, asking how a focus on spatial mobility can aid scholars and policymakers in understanding the complex relation between mining and social change. This collection centers the concept of mobility to address the diversity of mining-related population movements as well as the agency of people engaged in these movements. This volume opens by introducing both the historical context and conceptual tools for analyzing the mining-mobility nexus, followed by case study chapters focusing on three regions with significant histories of mineral extraction and where mining currently plays an important role in socio-economic life: the Andes, Central and West Africa, and Melanesia. Written by authors with expertise in diverse fields, including anthropology, development studies, geography, and history, case study chapters address areas of both large- and smallscale mining. They explore the historical-geographical factors shaping mining-related mobilities, the meanings people attach to these movements, and the relations between people’s mobility practices and the flows of other things put in motion by mining, including capital, ideas, technologies, and toxic contamination. The result is an important volume that provides fresh insights into the social geographies and spatial politics of extraction. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of mining and the extractive industries, spatial politics and geography, mobility and migration, development, and the social and environmental dimensions of natural resources more generally.

Mining and Development in Sierra Leone examines how different actors in Sierra Leone use the effects of large-scale mining to navigate and transform the challenging conditions of life. The book offers an in-depth analysis of the processes of development and change that mark resource extraction environments globally. Across the world, resource extraction is assigned an important role in development agendas. Yet a key question is how development opportunities are given shape and accessed and how extraction’s negative impacts are dealt with in actual politics and practices. Set in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone during a global mining boom, this book shows how mining-cum-development’s multifaceted effects materialize. By taking the micro-politics of large-scale mining as its principal focus, the book analyzes a range of the most perplexing phenomena of life in Sierra Leone and scrutinizes the intricate and contentious processes of change unfolding in mining environments. Mining and Development in Sierra Leone goes beyond promise-or-problem dichotomies, offers key insights into the struggle for progress that characterizes the mining-development nexus, and provides innovative understandings of the resourceful ways in which different actors negotiate change and navigate uncertainty. This book will be of interest to students and scholars working on resource extraction, large-scale investments, globalization, and development, as well as to development practitioners, mining professionals, and policymakers.

This book examines how extractivism transforms territories and affects the well-being of rural people, drawing on in-depth fieldwork conducted on tree plantations in Chile. The book argues that pine and eucalyptus monoculture plantations in southern Chile are a form of extractivism representing a mode of nature appropriation that captures large amounts of natural resources to produce wooden-based raw materials with little processing and an export-oriented focus. The book discusses the nexus of extractivism, territorial transformations, well-being, and emerging resistances using a participatory action research methodological approach in the Region of Los Ríos, southern Chile. The findings show how the configuration of an extractivist logging enclave generated a substantial and irrevocable reordering of human-nature relations, resulting in the territorial and ontological occupation of rural places that disrupted the fundamental human needs of peasants and indigenous people. The book maintains that Chile's green growth development approach does not challenge the consolidated tree plantation enclave controlled by large multinationals. Instead, green growth legitimises the extractivist logic. The book draws parallels with other countries and regions to contribute to wider debates surrounding these topics. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the extractive industries, development studies, political ecology, and natural resource governance.

This book gathers international and interdisciplinary work on youth studies from the Global South, exploring issues such as continuity and change in youth transitions from education to work; contemporary debates on the impact of mobility, marginalization and violence on young lives; how digital technologies shape youth experiences; and how different institutions, cultures and structures generate a diversity of experiences of what it means to be young. The book is divided into four broad thematic sections: (a) Education, work and social structure; (b) Identity and belonging; (c) Place, mobilities and marginalization; and (d) Power, social conflict and new forms of political participation of youth.

Part of the Critical Perspectives on Work and Employment series, this edited collection brings together contributions from leading international scholars to initiate an important dialogue between labour process analysis and scholarship on work in the Global South. This book characterises the forms of work and labour process that characterise globalising capitalism today and addresses core analytical concerns within Labour Process Theory and research on work in the South. It explores how a wide range of production relations in the Global South, ranging from formal to informal employment and self-employment, are embedded in wider social relations of gender, caste, religion and ethnicity, and are related to wider patterns of commodification and resistance. Drawing on cutting-edge research, the book's chapters consider a diverse range of working situations, covering migrant workers in the Middle East, commercial surrogacy work in India and cooperative garment workers in Argentina. In offering a novel reading of the political economy of work in the Global South and shedding light on lesser-considered fields of work and worker organization, this volume will provide new insights for making sense of the changing world of work for students, scholars, labour activists and practitioners alike.

This monograph addresses the complexity of China-Africa and Japan-Africa relations from a comparative perspective. The volume is divided into five sections. Section I focuses on the divergent perspectives that are reflected in the discourse on China-Africa relations. Section II discusses Japan’s economic modernization and its potential lessons for Africa. Section III compares the foreign policies of Japan and China in Africa and analyzes their supposed rivalries on the continent. Section IV explores the relationship between Southeast Asia and China and its relevance to Africa-China relations. Section V provides an in-depth case study of Ethiopia-China relations over the last century. The book fills a major gap in the existing literature on the triad of Africa, China, and Japan. Under the guidance of the disciplines of African studies, international relations, political sociology, and international political economy, this volume elucidates and examines the complexities of the foreign policies of the two Asian powers toward Africa as well as their economic, political, and cultural underpinnings.

Artisanal mining is commonly associated with violent conflict, rampant corruption and desperate poverty. Yet millions of people across Sub Sahara Africa depend on it. Many of them are living in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), home to important mineral reserves, but also to a plethora of armed groups and massive human rights violations. African Artisanal Mining from the Inside Out provides a rich and in-depth analysis of the Congolese gold sector. Instead of portraying miners and traders as passive victims of economic forces, regional conflicts or disheartening national policies, it focuses on how they gain access to and benefit from gold. It shows a professional artisanal mining sector governed by a set of specific norms, offering ample opportunities for flexible employment and local livelihood support and being well-connected to the local economy and society. It argues for the viability of artisanal gold mining in the context of weak African states and in the transition towards a post-conflict and more industrialized economy. This book will be of great interest to researchers and postgraduates studying natural resources and development as well as those in development studies, African studies, sociology, political economy, political ecology, legal pluralism, and history.

This volume integrates a conceptual framework with participatory methodologies to understand the complexities of dryland socio-ecological systems, and to address challenges and opportunities for stewardship of future drylands and climate change in the global south. Through several case studies, the book offers a transdisciplinary and participatory approach to understand the complexity of socio-ecological systems, to co-produce accurate resource management plans for sustained stewardship, and to drive social learning and polycentric governance. This systemic framework permits the study of human-nature interrelationships through time and in particular contexts, with a focus on achieving progress in accordance with the 2030 United Nations Agenda for Sustainable Development. The book is divided into four main sections: 1) drylands and socio-ecological systems, 2) transdisciplinarity in drylands, 3) interculturality in drylands, and 4) the governance of drylands. Expert contributors address topics such as pastoralism and the characteristics of successful agricultural lands, the sustainable development goals and drylands, dryland modernization, and arid land governance with a focus on Mexico. The volume will be of interest to dryland researchers, sustainable development practitioners and policymakers.