Exploring Young People’s Innovative Livelihood Strategies in response to socio-economic exclusion in mining communities: a case study of the Govan Mbeki Municipality.

Abstract

Large-scale mineral extraction in Africa has been widely scrutinised for its social, economic, and environmental impacts on local communities. However, limited empirical attention has been given to how youth navigate and innovate within these constraints, often flattening them into portrayals of dependency or deviance. This study explores the innovative livelihood strategies employed by young people in a mining town within South Africa’s Govan Mbeki Municipality, where historical inequalities and contemporary structural exclusion shape everyday life. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and using Honwana’s concept of waithood alongside Vigh’s theory of social navigation, the study demonstrates that young people do not remain passive within conditions of structural immobility. Instead, they transform marginality into opportunity through diverse livelihood practices, including waste recycling, informal entrepreneurship, creative arts, and the reappropriation of abandoned mining spaces. The findings reveal that access to mining wages reinforces gendered power hierarchies, while national and municipal by-laws further extend waithood by criminalising everyday survival activities. Yet youth continue to show resilience and aspire, strategically manoeuvring within these constraints, reworking masculinity, femininity, and provider roles in pursuit of what this study terms the “Kasi dream.”