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Paper short abstract:

I examine the strategies by which migrant artisanal gold miners in Madagascar cultivate belonging, as well as attendant consequences. I argue that miners' "enskilment"--embodied, socially-embedded learning-in-practice--makes life meaningful while also serving as an "affective subsidy" for capital.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines how rural laborers in migrant-dominated extractive landscapes conceptualize and cultivate belonging, as well as the consequences for local societies and economies. Drawing on ethnographic evidence from the goldfields of Betsiaka in Madagascar’s far north and leveraging the concept of “enskilment,” I explore how artisanal miners come to feel “at home in their bodies and in the presence of others,” both under and above ground. In analyzing enskilment in Betsiaka, I draw on three terms miners use to describe their dispositions towards mining labor and the social world of the diggings: zatra (accustomed), mahay (skilled or knowledgeable), and tamana (at home). By stressing how they are accustomed to difficult work and discomforting conditions; their mining skill and knowledge of geology, custom, taboos, and lore; and their feeling at home in the diggings, migrant miners assert claims, valorize their labor, and craft novel identities. Beyond driving a perceptible transformation in rural sociality, I contend that cultivating belonging via enskilment facilitates ongoing mobility and “flexible extraction” (hence forms of capitalist expansion), as laborers acquire necessary knowledge, skills, and connections, as well as an abiding confidence that the displacement of the latest bust will give way to opportunity and community forged in the crucible of the next boom. It thus simultaneously makes life meaningful for miners, shielding them from destitution and generating (non)economic forms of value, even freedom—while also serving as an affective subsidy for capital, as exploitation, accumulation, and forms of unfreedom persist and proliferate.