- 1 Sabine Luning was a German anthropologist specialised in West Africa, particularly Burkina Faso, wh (...)
1In honour of Sabine Luning1
2Artisanal mining has considerably increased in recent decades. While the International Labour Organization (ILO) estimated that it involved 6 million people in 1993 (ILO, 1999), 25 years later, an estimated 45 million people are directly involved in this activity, which affects over 500 million people, considering indirect employment and families (McQuilken and Perks, 2021).
- 2 Diop A., 2025. Mali: l’effondrement d’une mine artisanale fait une quarantaine de morts à Bilalikot (...)
3The correlation between poverty and artisanal mining is now widely accepted, as artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) is an essential livelihood for poor populations (Hilson and McQuilken, 2014). When poverty declines, the sector retracts (Canavesio, 2011; Reys, 2015). The opportunities represented by artisanal mining need to be linked to social and spatial contexts marked by economic injustice, especially in rural areas and spaces on the outskirts of globalised capitalism. Artisanal mining therefore represents a desirable prospect, despite the very precarious working conditions associated with it. Workers operating in this field have to take very large risks, sometimes several dozen metres underground, while inhaling dust, which causes respiratory illnesses and reduces life expectancy (Cossa et al., 2021). These workers are also victims of landslides, which attract limited media attention despite being very frequent. For example, in March 2025, around forty women gold miners lost their life in an abandoned industrial exploration pit in Mali2. Artisanal miners also face other health risks caused by the use of chemicals, such as mercury or cyanide, to process ore into gold, by drug use to boost their courage, or by a living and working environment that encourages the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases (Dzinamarira et al., 2024).
4Artisanal mining is also associated with its environmental cost (deforestation, water and soil degradation, poaching) (Taux et al., 2022), which has knock-on effects on the health of workers and neighbouring communities, leading to conflicts and the breakdown of social bonds (Malone et al., 2021). Finally, it is sometimes dependent on non-state armed groups, and is therefore accused of financing multiple conflicts, particularly on the African continent in the Great Lakes or Sahel regions (Vogel and Raemaeykers 2016; Lanzano et al., 2021). These situations result in most states attempting to limit its development, through predominantly repressive policies that tend to increase the precariousness facing many artisanal miners, both men and women (Bansah et al., 2018).
5However, artisanal mining is not a monolithic reality. Its social and environmental impacts vary enormously depending on whether it is a seasonal activity to supplement agriculture in densely populated rural areas, or a full-time enterprise based on discoveries in isolated or low-population regions. In this case, temporary villages are formed, such as Tchibarakaten on the border between Niger and Algeria (Grégoire and Gagnol, 2017), which can become a refuge for individuals marginalised in their community, but also spaces that support illegal activities or armed groups (Chevrillon-Guibert et al., 2019). The risks are therefore variable depending on the ore and processing required, the type of deposits, the geological and geographical contexts (central zone or isolated area on the outskirts, desert land or not) and mining policies.
6The expansion of artisanal mining should therefore be considered through the lens of labour crises in poor agrarian societies (Li, 2013) for which mining and its operations offer many possibilities, despite the precarious nature of the work (Bryceson and Geenen, 2016). After avoiding the issue for many years, international organisations and development donors now recognise ASM as a poverty-driven survival activity, “vital to global prosperity and poverty reduction” (World Bank, 2024, p. 6), and a “potential to explore” (IGF, 2024, p. 14). They encourage the formalisation of this activity, which exists in the more or less legal grey areas of the rule of law, as the solution to the woes outlined above. This kind of portrayal hides the historic mechanisms that produce inequalities, which led to the impoverishment of populations living in the socio-spatial margins of the world. These territories, sometimes referred to as the “Global South”, are the preferred contexts for the emergence of artisanal mining, as well as providing the necessary realities to keep the global system operating. Indeed, formalisation policies, especially those promoted by Bretton Woods institutions since the neoliberal shift of the 1990s, do not take these dimensions into account and miss their target. They perpetuate frequent bias in favour of industry in access to resources, which weakens artisans (Hilson, 2019), who are criminalised by formalisation policies that do not allow for substantial gains in labour laws and land security. Scientific research and debates around artisanal mining have mainly focused on its economic, social, environmental and geopolitical impacts, along with the challenges associated with governance and formalisation policies, emphasising these dimensions of social and spatial injustice (Tschakert, 2009; Spiegel, 2016; Diallo, 2017; Luning and Pijpers, 2017).
7This feature takes these various dimensions of injustice as a starting point by focusing on the relationships of power with relation to space, and particularly by encouraging artisanal mining to be considered a phenomenon in its own right. As artisanal mining is considered an informal or even illegal activity, prone to a number of excesses, and at best a temporary or provisional survival activity, it is always addressed in an incomplete manner, by default. This portrayal mainly reflects hierarchical visions of forms of production, where local knowledge is devalued in the name of modernity, and artisanal production is perceived to be an archaic step towards industry, similar to the historic development of capitalism in Europe, where artisanal work served as a basis for industrial accumulation, with its gradual integration into urban market systems (Verlagssystem or domestic system, distinguished from Kaufsystem) (Pfister, 2014; Mendels, 1978). When this type of production persists, it is often deemed “unviable”, despite the fact it continues to exist. Local knowledge of artisanal mining and the transfer of this knowledge are complex and sophisticated (Diouf and Diallo, 2019). To imagine this activity as transitory by nature is a misleading teleological view. A lot of research shows how small-scale production does not systematically disappear under capitalism, but that it can be integrated into it in an asymmetric and exploitative way, when it is not maintained as a cheap source of additional labour. Similarly, the boundaries between the two modes of artisanal and industrial production are more porous than they appear, and artisans of the Verlagssystem have often been workers in disguise dependant on the client.
8In some cases, the relationships are ambiguous. B. Harriss-White (2022) describes the co-existence of different modes of production, with a State that both supports small-scale production (via microfinancing policies and infrastructure, etc.), while also strangling it through policies that favour industry. Today, there are comparable dynamics within artisanal mining, which is authorised or criminalised depending on the States and circumstances. Robyn d’Avignon (2016) shows how, in West Africa, the industrial mining sector is based on the “active dispossession” of artisanal know-how and the discreet re-use of its assets by large mining corporations, aided by colonial and post-colonial States through the criminalisation of artisanal miners, allowing multinationals to capture mineral wealth by monopolising the regulatory space. These realities are less prevalent in Latin America, where there is an ancient artisanal mining tradition recognised by the state. Here, artisanal production is not just for survival, but is a mode of production that structures the local and national economy.
9This feature proposes to address this multi-faceted phenomenon through the lens of the geography of power. By developing in the margins but also embedded within global capitalism, artisanal mining is becoming a significant space for political production and socialisation for many individuals and territories (Velut, 2021; Le Tourneau, 2020; Cerceau and Laurent, 2023). We address it as the encounter between the rationales and practices of various groups and actors in the private sector (urban or rural, indigenous or migrant, men and women, owners of capital and those who are excluded, of all ages) and public sector, around the so-called artisanal production of ore, even though it will become apparent that this term covers a large variety of social forms and techniques. Relationships of power configure these encounters, and their network is “crystalised” (Geenen and Verbrugge, 2020) through dynamics of land control and territorialisation (Côte and Korf, 2018; Grajales and Vadot, 2020). The very terms of “artisanal mining” and “small-scale mining” express relationships of power, in opposition to large-scale industrial mining, which is implicitly the repository of extractive modernity, exploited by transnational companies that are much more powerful political actors than those in the artisanal world, but not necessarily more legitimate in the eyes of the population (Capitant, 2017; Côte, 2023). What’s more, depending on the regions of the globe, artisanal mining actors are not organised in a way to speak in a collective voice, unlike the powerful representative bodies of industrial actors.
10In this way, the links between the state and artisanal mining remain understudied and deserve greater attention. The aim is to better understand the consequences of the State’s actions, through the criminalisation of artisanal mining, the perception of informal profits by politicians and other State agents (e.g. Nkomo and Nkomo, 2023), and even the territorial frictions caused by competition between industrial concessions and artisanal sites (Geenen 2014; Werthmann and Ayeh, 2021; Kaufmann and Côte, 2021). Like for industrial mining activities (Magrin and Perrier-Bruslé, 2011), artisanal mining is built according to political and territorial rationales, through asymmetries of power between groups of unequal actors involved in the production of ore. These relationships of power are territorialised in many ways - controlling the space gives power over the mine, when the very existence of the mine creates the territory (which especially corresponds to the space of mining regulations), and therefore territorial control. While scientific work is often compartmentalised according to the regions studied (e.g. Latin America or Africa), and/or around specific ores (e.g. gold or copper), this feature attempts to compare perspectives to identify the differences and similarities in the deep-rooted transformations at play since the expansion of this activity across much of the globe (Dessertine et al., 2022 for West Africa and the Sahel; Lahiri-Dutt, 2018) and around different ores.
11A first series of articles focuses on the distribution of profits between workers and semi-industrial companies, the customary mining or village authorities and State representatives. They show that the governance of artisanal mining is based on subtle and dynamic balances between actors, influenced by indigenousness, the dynamics of mechanisation, and varying degrees of tolerance from the State, within the context of ambivalent relationships. While the State does not seem to be at the centre of artisanal mining, which is based on customary standards evoking a kind of informality, it is permanently influencing it. In return, the seemingly imperfect regulation of artisanal mining activity (to adopt a positivist reading) contributes to State building, by encouraging the deployment of its standards and agents within the territorial margins, whether simple police officers or powerful figures close to the government, pulling the strings of illegal trade, and by providing a source of taxation revenue that is certainly valuable but difficult to mobilise for new local authorities.
12The article by Robin Petit-Roulet, entitled, “Security and distribution: changes to the governance of gold mining in Guinea”, discusses the challenges associated with the governance of artisanal gold mines in Guinea, within the context of the gradual mechanisation of gold mining over the past twenty-five years. Using a survey conducted in a long-established gold region (Kintinian, in the north-east of the country) and in a space recently opened to mining (Kounsitel, in the north-west), he shows that this governance consists of precise and dynamic forms of customary organisation, whose function is to ensure the legitimisation of mining activity, allowing for its expansion by securing the activity and providing a certain level of profit redistribution. Changes to techniques, in line with multiple phases of mechanisation, is making the landscape of artisanal mining more complex and leading to the co-existence of different forms of governance depending on whether the mining is organised by wells (more collective redistribution to customary institutions, like the tombolomaw in Bambara-speaking contexts, which is the mining police) or by mechanised mining sites (limited redistribution to local authorities and land owners). This local, multi-scale and polycentric governance is embedded in State control over mining areas. While the regulatory framework for mining is rarely enforced, the State is guiding artisanal activity towards the gaps in its national policy, through waves of repression that tolerate gold-mining in certain forms and in certain areas, alongside daily interactions between its local representatives and decentralised public actors, dependent on the customary authorities.
13Similarly, Guillaume Bagayoko (“Gold mining and the territorialisation of State power in Mali”) considers the matter of gold mining within a long timeframe, in order to question its interactions with the territorial construction of the State of Mali from the colonial era to the modern day. Using archives and research in the circle of Sadiola, in the south-west of the country, he observes two constants in State policy: a crackdown on gold miners; and the ousting of customary authorities. During colonisation, the attempt to impose State standards (taxation, reserves) was largely unsuccessful, and was accompanied by the tacit recognition of the role of customary institutions. After 1960, new State standards continued with the aim of excluding customary authorities. These became more pronounced during the neo-liberal phase starting in the mid-1980s, with the aim of attracting industrial investment, of which Mali was one of the pioneers in West Africa. The decentralisation of the management of gold mining, which was theoretically entrusted to the local authorities from 1999, marked an attempt by the State to redeploy its powers to the detriment of village authorities. Indeed, these authorities remain widespread in the governance of mining, especially providing security. Contrary to the idea that the abundance of diffuse resources such as gold would weaken the ties between marginal territories and the central government, the article shows that gold mining has instead contributed to strengthening the State’s territorial control, especially by serving as a trailblazer for the mining industry, which is accompanied by the deployment of the police as an important agent of State territorialisation.
14The article by Vincent Moutédé-Madji, “Gold mining and the reconfiguration of rural mining systems in south-western Chad”, focuses on the local benefits of gold mining. He describes the forms of the recent gold boom in one of the three gold provinces in Chad, Mayo-Kebbi Ouest, where the presence of gold has been known for over a century but only mined in a limited and intermittent manner. In the past twenty years, mining has been marked by the co-existence of formal production and distribution methods (semi-industrial permits and artisanal licenses) and informal practices, which have been repressed at varying levels of intensity, thereby contributing to the shifting geography of the sites. In any case, gold revenues have contributed to an interesting form of economic diversification in rural households, supplementing agricultural income. However, they have had no impact on local development as taxation has remained low and with limited local redistribution.
15The second series of articles sheds welcome light on the diversity of the organisational forms of artisanal mining, by showing that miners, both men and women, are not just isolated actors looking for survival, but individuals developing collective and adaptive strategies to structure their activity in the face of economic, social and legal constraints.
16The article proposed by Claude Le Gouill (“Rationales of mining cooperativism in Bolivia. Local roots, knowledge and social struggles as legitimacies of a contested activity”) explores the dynamics of the mining cooperative movement in Bolivia, where 90% of mining labourers work within artisanal cooperatives. He presents three distinct yet sometimes interlinked associative rationales. One vertical hierarchical rationale perpetuates forms of domination inherited from the country’s mining history, particularly by exploiting precarious daily labour, like in Colquechaca, where a local elite takes ownership of resources and marginalises the rural miners. Second, a community rationale based on indigenous groups taking control of mines, who reinvest in the cooperative model to secure their territorial sovereignty and to maintain a balance between agricultural and mining activities, despite some lingering internal hierarchies. Finally, the entrepreneurial rationale, illustrated by the Multiactive de Catavi cooperative, which adopts a more modern and collective management of resources, promoting technical knowledge and training in order to guarantee profitability and to meet environmental requirements. These rationales are sometimes hybrid and conflictual, revealing that the mining cooperative model is not a homogenous political alternative, but a space of struggle, where local roots act as a lever to legitimise the ownership of resources and to structure various forms of collective organisation.
17The article by Antoine Latarge, Hugo Quemin, Kaarina Efraim, Marie Forget and Mélanie Duval (“Mining in the desert: rationales of association and spatial forms of artisanal mining in Namibia”) analyses the forms of association of artisanal miners of semi-precious stones in Namibia. It identifies four organisational rationales shaped by economic, social and geographic factors: the model of the solitary miner is based on relatively inexpensive yet precarious individual mining. Horizontal association, based on equal collaboration between miners, is characterised by sharing resources and profits, although it can include some informal hierarchies. Vertical association is based on a leader in possession of a mining title or equipment, giving them a dominant position in the distribution of profits. Finally, contractualisation involves relationships between miners and external investors, who finance the mining in return for control over the profits. This form of organisation, despite securing access to resources, reinforces relationships of dependence and domination. These models are often combined depending on the opportunities and constraints, showing that artisanal mining in Namibia is a space of struggles and adaptations, where strategies of association are responses to the tensions caused by precariousness, regulations imposed by the state and relationships of power with the land owners and buyers.
18This research shows that artisanal miners are not just subjected to market risks or formalisation policies, but create their own forms of local governance and more favourable relationships of power, depending on the available resources, the legal framework and relationships with other actors (land owners, intermediaries, institutions). This kind of approach goes beyond the image of a strictly informal and marginal activity, promoting better understanding of the articulation between forms of cooperation, internal inequalities and differentiated integration into extractive capitalism.
19The contribution by Merlin Ottou, “Local intermediaries in the political topography of mining governance in Cameroon”, studies the rationales of local regulation in semi-mechanised artisanal mining in Cameroon, by shedding light on the central role played by local intermediaries, organised into village collectives. These actors are recognised by the administrative authorities and govern relationships between gold miners and the mining companies, which are often Chinese, by regulating access to gold residues and ensuring social stability through non-codified standard practices. Their action is part of a rationale of “indirect discharge”, where the State delegates some regulation, security and social management functions, while conserving an arbitration role. As local development project managers, these collectives act as brokers between companies, the public authorities and populations, especially by supervising the implementation of corporate social responsibility. Through their activities, they contribute to a socio-spatial transformation of mining territories, redefining uses of the space, structuring social relationships and introducing new infrastructure in a context of significant marginalisation. They therefore embody hybrid forms of power, mixing customary authority, administrative recognition and technical functions. Although they help pacify tensions linked to land dispossession, their legitimacy remains fragile, and is often contested by gold miners who reject the opaque management of the resources collected and the unequal relationships of power. This localised mode of governance reveals an unstable balance between state delegation, community initiative and capturing mining profits, at the heart of political shifts in contemporary mining territories.
20A third significant dimension of the geography of power surrounding artisanal mining relates to the political construction of the boundary (legal, symbolic, geographical, empirical) between different forms of mining. Work by Sabine Luning was especially foundational in this field of reflection, revealing the wide range of relationships of power in access to mining land (Luning 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2014). It presented the role of relationships of legitimisation between mining companies, the State and neighbouring communities, which underpin the possibility of mining land or not, and which have inspired much research. Many articles in this feature discuss these dimensions through the lens of different case studies across the African continent.
21The article by Matthieu Bolay and Paule Pastré (“From right of use to right of profit? The co-existence of mining in the light of investment arbitration in Tanzania”) explores the arbitration dynamics between industry and artisanal mining in Tanzania. Tanzania is often cited as an example of best practice in the formalisation of artisanal mining, supported by the World Bank, but it is also facing instances of international arbitration for mining conflicts, especially after John Magufuli’s government removed the possibility for international companies to maintain “retention licenses”, reinforcing land speculation dynamics. The article presents what appears to be a turning point in the regulations operated by mining countries as they return to a kind of “nationalism of resources.” It also shows that territorial challenges are shifting - they were concentrated at the national level when the legislation favoured international mining companies, but are now becoming international, through the deployment of hybrid standards by foreign companies seeking to secure “fortress territories”. Artisanal mining is now at the heart of competing territorialisation models, one promoting the co-existence of industry and artisanal mining, while the other excludes ASM.
22The article by Laurent Gagnol, “Mining expansion in Mauritania. Towards a ‘bottom-up’ industrialisation of artisanal and semi-industrial gold mining?”, analyses what he calls the emergence of bottom-up industrialisation in Mauritania, which questions how resources are shared between an artisanal sector that would be naturally local, and industry that is, by nature, international. The article retraces the emergence of a “semi-industrial” sector since the gold rush of 2016, and how formalisation policies were used to varying extents. The originality of this article lies in its refusal to confine itself to just land access dynamics, but to also discuss the trade in gold and related products (mercury), along with the re-investment of gold profits in other trade circuits. The analysis demonstrates the emergence and consolidation of an extraverted (according to the meaning of Bayart, 1995) local elite, through the mobilisation of foreign capital, especially from the Persian Gulf, but also from partner companies in Sudan, China, India and Turkey. This capital is essential to fund gold-mining activities and to raise capital to shift towards semi-industrial mining. However, the capital is deployed in a clientelist and dysfunctional way, encouraging its concentration in a few people’s hands, at a national and international level. This dynamic is both facilitated and rendered invisible by the official discourses of formalisation by opening a “gold-mining corridor”.
23The article by Edith Sawadogo Barry and Kouka Sawadogo (“Lode gold mining, promoting territorial roots in Burkina Faso: a case study of the municipality of Kampti”) also rethinks the distinctions between artisanal and industrial mining, by questioning how the actors (generally men) who fund and control gold pits adopt practices for the legitimisation of their activity, which can be assimilated into a form of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), which is a concept generally associated with industrial mining. The article shows that these investors contribute to local development through local investments to build community infrastructure and perform ritual sacrifices to ensure the productivity and safety of their activities. This type of investment embedded within a local development rationale appears necessary to legitimise mining projects, including artisanal mining, and to allow for them to be rooted within the host territories.
24In this feature, we have explored multiple dimensions of contemporary research into ASM, by digging deeper into the associative rationales that structure the organisation of miners and facilitate collective work. The contributions also explore shifts in the boundaries between industrial and artisanal mining, which have long been perceived as two distinct spheres. The articles uncover continuities and overlaps between these two modes of production, particularly through the standards and regulations governing them, but also through knowledge, bringing to light interconnected areas that are often underestimated. What’s more, the studies in this feature show how ASM offers a relevant reading of bottom-up state-building processes, or at least those built using activities considered informal or on the margins of legality, by identifying local governance practices, relationships of power and forms of institutional frameworks deployed around the access to resources.
25However, with one exception, the contributions concentrate on the African context, underlining the need to expand comparisons with other regions of the world through comparative and cross-cutting studies. The one article focused on Latin America offers a significant illustration of how organisational models can vary depending on the contexts. In this region, cooperatives can bring together thousands of members and play a central role in structuring mining activities, in strong contrast to African approaches, where cooperatives are generally perceived as formalisation tools that seek to gradually integrate informal miners within a stricter regulatory framework, and are sometimes used in an opportunistic manner by actors using them as a Trojan Horse to access resources. These comparisons enrich thinking around framework models, the rationales of actors and territorial specifics, thereby offering a more comprehensive understanding of ASM dynamics. In different contexts, it would also be useful to question to what extent these models are truly “cooperative” and include the collective ownership by workers of production means.
26Moreover, the links between conflicts, violence and ASM have been discussed in depth for over twenty years, particularly through regulation efforts that seek the accountability of actors in the downstream supply chain, such as refiners and buyers (Luning, 2013; Luning and de Theije, 2014). Blood diamonds and the Kimberley Process (2003) were emblematic in this regard, followed a few years later by the first binding regulations implemented by the United States (Dodd-Frank Act). Since then, other initiatives have been introduced, including by the European Union and the OECD, which are now concentrating their action on ethical matters and “clean” sourcing, along with private standards, like those established by Swiss Better Gold and the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA). However, these systems are far from sufficient to guarantee the disconnection between artisanal mining and armed conflicts. Contributions exploring these dynamics are notably absent, despite the fact that the intensification of demand for ore, driven by the energy transition, is exacerbating rivalries between actors and leading to competitions for resources, not without territorial implications, as demonstrated by the resurgence of the conflict in eastern Congo since 2024.
27Pollution issues are often cited by state actors to justify formalisation policies that benefit industrial mining. In this sense, governments often draw on research from the environmental sciences, presenting the ecological impacts of ASM, such as mercury pollution or water turbidity. However, recent research in the social sciences has been developing around these issues of territorialisation and pollution, particularly by studying the informal means of offsetting some impacts related to artisanal mining, whereby some forms of local redistribution can be interpreted as a means of offsetting the environmental externalities of mining. These externalities often become points of tension with populations living in mining areas. In this context, it would be interesting to continue to explore the links between conflicts and artisanal mining, particularly changes to how they are resolved, such as the example of a form of “CSR” implemented in Burkina Faso by artisanal miners, as described in this feature.
28Other avenues of research warrant further study, such as a more in-depth consideration of the gender dimension, which is especially relevant as we now know that ASM is an activity primarily carried out by the poorest populations on the global scale, a category where women are at the forefront. The presence of women in the artisanal mining production chain is underestimated (Ouédraogo 2020; Abrefa Busia and Arthur-Holmes 2024). Artisanal mining is often masculinised as it is associated with work considered as something only men could do. However, women are far from absent – not only do some of them secretly finance mining activities, but ore production would not be possible without a whole range of social reproduction activities that support it (childcare, care of the elderly or sick, cooking, collecting water, etc.) (Kassa 2020; see Koné et al. in the Sur le métier section in this issue). The feminised nature of these activities also implies that the environmental and health implications caused by artisanal mining are also feminised – environmental destruction and repercussions on public health especially affect (unpaid) work allocated to women, or to certain women, which increases their workload, leading to forms of injustice that may give rise to collective strategies that remain unexplored. It would be good to question the specific roles of women, the inequalities they face and the strategies they deploy, particularly in contexts of increased capital and the mechanisation of artisanal mining, which redistribute roles and relationships of power.
29Finally, research into the mechanisms to resolve conflicts around profit sharing also requires further study. The often-informal structuration of this artisanal activity, especially in the first stages of the value chain, favours the sometimes-violent capture of resources. These situations underline the need for more in-depth analysis of local relationships of power, resource ownership strategies and the tensions they cause, linked to the continuous processes of technical innovation and investment across the world of ASM. By comparing contexts, scales of analysis and disciplines, these avenues will enrich debates around artisanal mining by better understanding the complexity of contemporary transformations linked to this activity, and will model the key factors and social and political issues at work, in order to inform better public policies.