Paper short abstract:

This paper incorporates the broader socio-cultural context of decolonising mining communities in Africa in discussing workers' negotiation of the colonial/post-colonial boundary in contribution to how we can conceptualise labour over such a transition period.

Paper long abstract:

Colonial encounters in Africa engendered new forms of social stratification characterised by the influence of the formal sector on the labour market. However, the re-examination of the role of labour in extractive communities during the period of decolonisation suggests there is a need to enlarge the boundaries of the dominant Marxist concept of labour and class beyond the formal sector. The largely under-studied informal sector has been indirectly connected to the mining sector—contributing to, and being affected by spill-over effects such as job creation.

While this necessitates a historical analysis that incorporates the roles of non-waged actors including women and children in the context of late/post-colonial gold mining in Ghana, there has been a paucity of research to demonstrate how labour, both formal and informal, negotiated the colonial/post-colonial boundary within extractive communities, something which should illuminate the broader socio-cultural development of Ghana's gold mining communities as a whole.

Using in-depth analysis of a wide range of archival records alongside qualitative interview data from retired mineworkers, chiefs and long-term residents of the mining communities of Obuasi and Konongo, this paper seeks to contribute to knowledge about the labour in decolonising mining communities. It draws attention to the ways in which indigenes and migrant mineworkers in these communities negotiated the colonial/post-colonial boundary in their relationships with other actors in the industry (state, capital, local authorities etc) as well as their actions in meeting the challenge of accessing mineral wealth within decolonising cosmopolitan mining communities.