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Paper short abstract:

My aim is to make introductory observations about the concept of work from an actor oriented point of view and the structural dynamics associated with it in the context of tanzanite mines (Tanzania) where I conducted a preliminary visit in 2010.

Paper long abstract:

A mine is a typical postcolonial place, where individual lives are governed and where the capital invested and the gemstone market assume a global dimension.

But who are the workers? How do they imagine, organize and produce their own individual life? What is the reality they are actually living in the mines?

In this context the people doing the high risk jobs are mostly youth. At first glance, the young workers are not employed as wage laborers, nor do they seem forced to stay. Thought it appears as a free individual decision aimed to change the workers' own difficult living conditions, the reality is that international organizations classify mine labour as hazardous work that exerts an enormous physical and psychological pressure.

What keeps these young laborers performing this high-risk job?

At first sight, the work appears to be motivated by the value of risk and its imaginary: to risk means to possibly succeed and mining becomes like an extremely dangerous game that could lead to finding the life-changing gem. But once there, workers are captured in the power-dominance interactions embedded in the specific mode of production that arises from the local history of this place.

Leaving aside the view of young social actors as passive and dependent subjectivities, after presenting the field spatially and historically and through a discussion of preliminary interviews and the literature, I will explain the premises for a further analysis of the youths' goals and strategies in the wider historical context.