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In the Peruvian Amazon, artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) remains poorly documented and understood, yet it has attracted many workers from the country's Andean regions for several decades. Excluded from mainstream development debates and dialogues, ASGM in Peru suffers from two fundamental assumptions. First, the sector attracts many Andean mobile workers but does not generate any impact on the local development of Andean regions of origin. Secondly, ASGM does nothing but produce exploitation and “modern slavery”. The objective of my thesis is to question and deconstruct these two assumptions, in order to offer an in-depth analysis of the social, economic, productive and environmental mechanisms at work in this type of activity. In order to do so, this thesis analyses ASGM through the prism of Andean mobilities. One of the major conceptual and theoretical issues that have received limited attention in literature on ASGM is its political economy in relation to mobility; there has been limited research undertaken to examine how ASGM associated mobility is reshaping livelihoods (Mkodzongi and Spiegel, 2020). In this very idea, my thesis explores the relationship between Andean mobilities, ASGM and household livelihoods in the rural areas of Peru, through the case study of the Andean district of Ocongate (Cusco) and the gold fields of the Amazonian department of Madre de Dios., (POLS - Sciences politiques et sociales) -- UCL, 2021

This inaugural World Development Symposium on Development and Poverty Alleviation brings together contributions from a range of disciplines, scholars, practitioners, and countries to mark the recognition of Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer (BDK) through the 2019 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. Contributors examine how BDK's work has changed the methods and study of Development Economics, and their extended impact in other social science and interdisciplinary fields. Although experimental evaluation has had a profound impact on the conduct of much research and policy making, further development of RCT approaches, and collaboration across methods and disciplines, and between scholarship and practice, remain crucial to address the most pressing challenges of sustainability and development.

Las ideas para el proyecto de investigación sobre el cual se basa este trabajo se empezaron a gestar lentamente en 2012, como parte de discusiones más amplias al interior del Centro de Investigación sobre Estados Eficaces y Desarrollo Inclusivo (Effective States and Inclusive Development, ESID), un esfuerzo de colaboración internacional entre centros de investigación coordinado por el Instituto para el Desarrollo Global (Global Development Institute) en la Universidad de Mánchester. La pregunta unificadora del ESID fue la siguiente: ¿Qué tipo de dinámicas políticas pueden ayudar a garantizar el desarrollo inclusivo y cómo estas pueden promoverse? El proyecto de investigación indagaba sobre cómo podían entenderse en el largo plazo las interacciones entre acuerdos políticos, gobernanza de la industria extractiva y patrones de inclusión. Cada uno de los autores había trabajado el tema de las industrias extractivas durante varios años y era más que evidente que las dinámicas políticas constituían un elemento central de la manera en que se aplica la gobernanza en este sector. Sin embargo, el reto de encontrar un lenguaje formal para hablar sobre esta dimensión política y de hacerlo de manera tal que permita una comparación sistemática y una síntesis a través de diferentes contextos de país despertaba nuestro interés. Y así empezó la iniciativa que ha culminado en este libro.