Paper short abstract:

Small-scale gold mining has boomed at the margins of the law throughout the world. Yet not all is informal. In Burkina Faso 974kg were officially produced in 2014 and declared by 91 gold comptoirs. This paper examines the difference that comptoirs make in labour arrangements in Burkina Faso.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines inequalities in the small-scale mining sector in Burkina Faso across the so-called in/formal cleavage. With the gold rush of the mid-2000s, small-scale mining has boomed at the margins of the law in many places throughout the world. This boom has revived scholarly debate about the persistence of informality, emphasising the role of liberalising reforms that have pushed small-scale miners at the legal, social and economic margins. Yet not all small-scale mining is informal. In Burkina Faso, 230 artisanal mining concessions were registered in 2014, and 972kg of gold were officially produced and registered by 91 gold buying offices (comptoirs). In a context where informality is the norm, this paper turns around the scholarly focus on the causes of informality, and rather interrogates the difference that formalising small-scale mining makes. It argues that what passes as formal small-scale mining actually characterises uneven spaces of mining access and labour arrangements in Burkina Faso. It complicates research and policy assumptions that consider formality as a norm to pursue and rather invites careful mapping out uneven political economic spaces of small-scale gold mining in/formalisation. This case from Burkina especially draws attention to the differences in labour arrangements between so-called formal and informal spaces of artisanal mining that have shaped across the in/formal cleavage.