UCL - SSH/IACS - Institute of Analysis of Change in Contemporary and Historical Societies, UCL - Faculté des sciences économiques, sociales, politiques et de communication, Yépez del Castillo, Isabel, Leloup, Fabienne, Ansoms, An, de Nanteuil, Matthieu, Delgado, Deborah, Bebbington, Anthony, Delmotte, Céline, UCL - SSH/IACS - Institute of Analysis of Change in Contemporary and Historical Societies, UCL - Faculté des sciences économiques, sociales, politiques et de communication, Yépez del Castillo, Isabel, Leloup, Fabienne, Ansoms, An, de Nanteuil, Matthieu, Delgado, Deborah, Bebbington, Anthony, and Delmotte, Céline
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