Migration, housing and attachment in urban gold mining settlements
Mining settlements are typically portrayed as either consisting of purpose-built housing constructed by mining companies to house their workers, or as temporary makeshift shelters built by miners working informally and inhabited by male migrants who live dangerously and develop little attachment to...
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| Published in: | Urban studies (Edinburgh, Scotland) Scotland), 2019-10, Vol.56 (13), p.2670-2687 |
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| Main Authors: | , , |
| Format: | Article |
| Language: | eng |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | Mining settlements are typically portrayed as either consisting of purpose-built housing constructed by mining companies to house their workers, or as temporary makeshift shelters built by miners working informally and inhabited by male migrants who live dangerously and develop little attachment to these places. This paper contributes to these debates on the social and material dynamics occurring in mining settlements, focusing on those with urban rather than rural characteristics, by highlighting how misconceived these archetypal portrayals are in the Ghanaian context. Drawing on qualitative data collected in three mining settlements, we explore who is moving to and living in the mining towns, who is building houses, and how attachments to place develop socio-temporally. Through doing so, the paper provides original insights on the heterogeneous nature of mining settlements, which are found to be home to a wide range of people engaged in diverse activities. Mining settlements and their attendant social dynamics are shown to evolve in differing ways, depending on the type of mining taking place and the length of time the mines have been in operation. Significantly, we illustrate how, contrary to popular understandings of incomers to mining settlements as nomadic opportunists, migrants often aspire to build their own houses and establish a family, which promotes their attachment to these settlements and their desire to remain. These insights further scholarship on the social and material configuration of mining settlements and feed into the revival of interest in small and intermediate urban settlements.
人们对采矿住区通常的描述是，由采矿公司建造的、用来安置工人的专用房屋，或由非正规矿工建造的、男性移民居住的临时住处。这些移民过着危险的生活，并且对这些地方几乎没有依恋。本文凸显了这些原型描述与加纳的实际情况相差多么遥远。我们重点关注那些具有城市特征而非乡村特征的人，从而为关于采矿住区中的社会和物质关系的探讨作出贡献。利用在三个采矿住区收集的定性数据，我们探索哪些人在迁移到并生活在采矿城镇，哪些人在建造房屋，以及对地方的依恋如何在社会时间上发展。籍此，本文提供了关于采矿住区异质性的一手认识，我们发现这些住区是从事各种活动的人们的家园。我们表明，采矿住区及其随之而来的社会动态以不同的方式演变，这取决于采矿的类型和矿场运行的时间长短。我们所表明的值得注意的一点是，与人们普遍的认识不同，迁移到采矿住区的并不是机会主义游民。相反，移民往往渴望建造自己的房屋并建立家庭，这促进了他们对这些住区的依恋和他们留下的愿望。这些见解是对采矿住区的社会和物质配置的进一步学术思考，并促进了人们对中小城市住区兴趣的复燃。 |
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| ISSN: | 0042-0980 1360-063X |