By Matthieu Bolay, Université de Neuchâtel
When I was carrying out fieldwork in Guinea and Mali between 2010 and 2014, some ministry officials, with whom I discussed the topics of mining and migration, used the nineteenth century US gold rush as an analogy to explain why thousands of people choose to live in temporary settlements across West Africa. Indeed, these artisanal gold miners mainly rely on non- or semi-mechanical excavation methods to extract ore and predominantly use gravitational techniques to purify it, thereby supposedly placing their future in the hands of chance and the hope that their lives will be transformed once they strike gold.
Yet, although this is an appealing – and popular – analogy for artisanal mining in West Africa, the image of the “gold rush” has been demonstrated to be rather problematic when the actual mobility dynamics of artisanal gold miners are considered. Continue reading