12/01/2021 – GTD Colloquium on Labour Dynamics in the Mining Industry

On the 12 January the fourth GTD colloquium with Benjamin Rubbers of Université de Liège will take plac. It will be on zoom. He will be presenting to us research from his collaborative ERC funded project WORKinMINING undertaken in Zambia and the Democratic republic of Congo.

Talk Title: Labour dynamics in the mining industry. A comparative analysis of the Congolese and Zambian copperbelts

Abstract

My talk will present a book on the workforce management practices of foreign companies that have developed new mining projects in the Congolese and Zambian copperbelts since the beginning of the 21st century. After highlighting the characteristic features of the labour regime that these investors have gradually put in place, I will discuss the variations in labour practices found between different mining projects, and show how mining companies’ labour management strategies have been negotiated by various of actors locally. Finally, I will examine some of the broader power dynamics implicated by new mining investors’ labour practices. To conclude, I will reflect on the lessons that we can draw from such a comparative research on the way we understand the development of mining capitalism in the global South