Mobilizing cheap, flexible, and informal labor
The term informalization emerges from a critical body of scholarship, which draws attention to the ways in which global capitalism relies on the exploitation of cheap, flexible, and unregulated work, to overcome recurrent crises of accumulation. While informalization processes have been described in sectors like garments and export agriculture, an informalization perspective has not yet been applied to extractive industries.
Informalization processes in industrial gold mining primarily take the form of outsourcing and subcontracting. While subcontracting and outsourcing in the mining industry have long been limited to specialized functions such as construction and shaft sinking; more recently mining companies have started to rely on subcontractors for a broader range of core (mining) and non-core (cleaning, catering, security) functions. Contract workers in industrial mining tend to be less organized, more casualized, underpaid, and typically lack decent social protection.
In addition to the expansion of industrial gold mining, many new gold mining destinations have also witnessed a dramatic expansion of artisanal and small-scale gold mining. At a global scale, ASGM employs anywhere between 10 to 30 million people, who contribute up to one fifth of the global gold supply. In several countries (examples include Colombia, Ghana, Zimbabwe, the DRC, and the Philippines) ASGM is responsible for over half of total gold production. While often seen as a bottom-up response to poverty by those left behind by globalization, this project draws attention to how ASGM-expansion provides a systemic response to the challenges of scarcity (by targeting 'unprofitable' deposits), resistance (by offering employment- and rent-seeking opportunities to local communities), and costs (by mobilizing cheap informal labor). Moreover, rather than being an isolated phenomenon, attention is drawn to how ASGM is intricately linked to the global gold production system.
