Research Publications

Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) is often informal and constitutes the leading nonfarm source of rural income in much of the world. Despite international support, over a billion dollars invested, and increased global scrutiny, there has been virtually no progress in formalizing ASM or mitigating its human and environmental harms. The formalization orthodoxy in ASM research and practice has failed mainly because it consistently overlooks, and often works against, the informality of ASM supply chains, rather than engaging constructively with it. This paper challenges this orthodoxy in three ways. It draws on informality theory to critique scholarly and developmental approaches to ASM that assume formalization improves the socioeconomic and environmental sustainability of ASM supply chains. However problematic, ASM serves as a rational means for marginalized people to pursue upward mobility. Secondly, utilizing a qualitative research design, we draw on 42 interviews with artisanal copper and cobalt miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in which respondents were asked to identify their principal challenges and policy recommendations. Our findings document miners' experiences of dispossession, displacement, and their pursuit of legitimacy. We demonstrate that miners' own policy recommendations are crucial to reframing ongoing ASM interventions. Informality presents both opportunities and challenges for ASM miners and is dialectically interlinked with formal institutions and histories of dispossession. Finally, drawing on our findings, we argue for ‘transformative cohabitation’ as a new approach to ASM. Rather than focusing on formalization and separation between actors, transformative cohabitation prioritizes three pillars of ASM intervention: land, labor, and legitimacy.