Extractive peasants: reframing informal artisanal and small-scale mining debates

This paper explores the ongoing reconfiguration of peasant labour processes from agriculture to informal mineral extraction, outlining the motivations of the rural poor in adopting mining and quarrying, and discusses how social sciences can best account for this significant shift towards extractive livelihoods. It argues that the ‘extractive peasants’ best explain the contemporary changes in rural, mineral-rich tracts throughout the Global South, and peasant mining practices are part of the informal economies. The extractive peasants return intellectual attention to practices that disrupt contemporary global mineral production and place the politics of the poor within broader debates on resource politics.