Mining-induced displacement and livelihood resilience: the case of Marange, Zimbabwe

Abstract

Mining activities are increasingly causing mass displacement of people around the world. These displacements largely affect poor rural families, which, are forced to bear the brunt of displacement and the loss of livelihood assets. The loss of land and other productive livelihood assets exacerbates the vulnerability of displaced people to livelihood shocks and poverty. In Zimbabwe, neoliberal extractive investment enclaves have led to the displacement of thousands of families. Much of what we know about mining-induced displacement is the vulnerability and suffering of displacement victims. This dominant scholarship reduces displaced people to passive and helpless victims of displacement. However, little is known about the resilience and ingenuity of internally displaced people. In the absence of adequate compensation and social support from the state, how do displaced people sustain their livelihoods? This article, through an ethnographic study, attempts to address this and related questions by examining the individual and collective resilience of the displaced Chiadzwa people in Marange, eastern Zimbabwe. We show how displaced people use their agency to rebuild local self-support systems that sustain(ed) livelihoods.