The Politics of Industrialization: Controversies about Gold Mining in French Guiana

• In Event: Citizen Bureaucraft - I

Abstract

This paper is part of a research program about mining controversies in France and its oversee territories, which explores the connections between mineral extraction and the re-composition of the sovereign State. We use a fieldwork in French Guiana conducted in early 2019 in order to explore a dimension of this program, namely the politics of mining industrialization at the edges of the French polity.
Gold mining has been an important activity in French Guiana. It has been conducted by small and medium-scale companies, while numerous individuals illegally exploit gold deposits. A large-scale industrial project is a recent initiative. Called Montagne d’Or (“Gold Mountain”), this project gathers Canadian and Russian companies. It is often presented as lifting mining activities up to the industrial scale, which would ensure that environmental regulations are respected and illegal activities limited. This project has faced vocal oppositions and is still vividly debated.
The language of industrialization plays on dichotomies between what is legal/illegal, global/local, sustainable/unsustainable. It associates itself with the first halves of these oppositions. We show that the project of industrialization rather reframes what “legal”, “global” or “sustainable” mean, and, in doing so, clashes with other understandings of the future of French Guiana. We analyzed the associated controversies in order to explore the political categories at stake with industrialization. We focus in particular on the envisioned role of the French state toward a territory at its margins, and the problematic position of indigenous groups within a polity that imagines its citizens in universal terms.

Authors

• Brice Laurent, Ecole Des Mines De Paris

• Julien Merlin, Mines Paristech

• Liliana Doganova, Mines ParisTech

• Yann Gunzburger, Ecole des mines de Nancy