Paper short abstract:

The paper analyzes the role of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) for the liquefied natural gas industry in Mozambique. It argues that TVET programs seeking to address resource curse effects through employment do not simply impart skills; they produce new worker subjectivities.

Paper long abstract:

Mainstream development actors posit that a 'skills gap' impedes opportunities for employment in extractive industries in developing countries, thereby exacerbating 'resource curse' effects such as enclaving. These actors promote technical and vocational education and training (TVET) as a remedy, assuming TVET will impart the necessary skills for employment in extractives and related sectors, such as infrastructure construction and services. TVET programs are thus proliferating across sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in oil- and gas-rich regions.

However, efforts to mitigate the resource curse by promoting TVET have not been well studied. Using findings from qualitative research on TVET related to the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry in northern Mozambique, this paper examines TVET's role in building a labor market for extractives. First, it analyzes how stakeholders conceptualize the importance of skills for employment as a strategy to reduce resource curse effects, and examines debates about which skills are considered most necessary or desirable. Second, through analysis of the expectations that people attach to TVET and LNG, the paper addresses how the controversial LNG project consolidates public support by promising jobs, using TVET as the bridge that will transform unskilled local people into ready employees. Finally, the paper argues that skills programs do not simply train people for jobs, but to adjust to a rhythm of work, hierarchy and discipline that suits a particular mode of production and that produces new worker subjectivities. The conclusions contribute to larger theoretical debates about labor by unsettling taken-for-granted assumptions about skills for wage-work as a development strategy.