Gnawing Away at the City: Narratives of Domestic Precarity in a Congolese Mining Town

Abstract

The relationship between urbanization and mining is a precarious one; the latter often expands at the expense of the former. The incautious urban planning of a mining city in southeastern DR Congo, however, has opened up opportunities for residents with artisanal mining skills. Since the city is constructed on top of mineral deposits, the residents are able to dig ore in their own backyards to draw their subsistence. Based upon archival and ethnographic research, Geenen argues that, by self-generating the livelihoods they expected their resource-rich soil to bring forth, these artisanal diggers take advantage of the urbanized mineral deposits and write their own narrative of capitalism.

Small-scale mining and child labour in Kolwezi, Democratic Republic of Congo

“…One focus group participant said that his children are not as fortunate as those of the rich, the rich drive on the road in jeeps but he and his household struggle to survive from one day to the next. This is in line with Geenen's (2021) argument that artisanal workers are confronted on a daily basis with the extravagant spending of the employees of mining companies making them aware of their misfortune.…”

“…To sum up, we draw on concepts of labour precarity (Cooper, 2018;Geenen, 2021;Makori, 2017) and socialization (Bass, 2004;Gnanou, 2017;Kielland and Tovo, 2006) as well as a rethinking of the modern slaves' narratives (Brace and Davidson, 2018;Maconachie and Hilson, 2016;Mende, 2019;O'Connell Davidson, 2010;Simic and Blitz, 2019) to analyse the causes of child labour. This conceptual framework allows for a deeper analysis of children's experiences that goes beyond the work-free approach.…”

Why time matters for understanding the ASM-LSM nexus in south-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

“…It was hastily constructed during the 1930s at the demand of the Belgian colonial mining company Union Minière du Haut-Katanga (UMHK) without any form of urban planning. Today, built on top of rich mineral deposits, Kolwezi finds itself completely surrounded by industrial mining operations ‘gnawing away’ at the city's boundaries (Geenen 2020). At the same time, artisanal mining constitutes an important source of livelihood for thousands of city-dwellers trying to make ends meet in a context of chronic political and socio-economic instability.…”