Contested concept, competing narratives, and coercive policy intervention: A study of government intervention in the illegal artisanal mining sector in Ghana

Abstract

This research presents the findings of a study on the outcomes of policy intervention for eradicating illegal artisanal mining in Ghana. Using theories of everyday resistance and discourse, the study explored how actor motivations, choices, and behaviour affected the outcome of the government's attempt to eradicate illegal artisanal mining. Driven by the necessity for survival, illegal miners asserted their agency and developed strategies of covert resistance to undermine government intervention. Our data reveal a dynamic interplay between the government's use of discourse to frame illegal mining as a criminal activity and the miners' deployment of “weapons of the weak” and counter‐narratives to mount covert resistance to the government's attempt to stop illegal mining. Using cynicism, evasive action, and survival discourses as well as playing on the government's ambivalence and doubts about its commitment to a long‐drawn‐out fight, the resilience of miners seemed to have paid off in the end as the government failed to achieve its major objective.